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standing by his bed, and the humble expiation of his fault made the best possible record of its grossness.

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"I find myself just able to hold the pen during a few minutes, and take this opportunity of expressing my sincere grief for having done, written, or said, any thing disagreeable to your Excellency. My career will soon be over; therefore justice and truth prompt me to declare my last sentiments. You are in my eyes the great and good man. May you long enjoy the love, veneration, and esteem of these States, whose liberties you have asserted by your virtues." Washington's Writings, vol. v. p. 517.

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The Appendixes contain a mass of new and highly interesting matter. The first, which is the longest, consisting of nearly a hundred pages, relates to the operations in Canada from August, 1775, to the final expulsion of the American forces from that province, in the autumn of the following year. The extraordinary resource and vigor shown by Arnold in the expedition through the wilderness, from Fort Western to the St. Lawrence, with the extreme hardships which nothing but the confidence of his troops in their commander enabled them to bear,—the desperate gallantry and disastrous issue of Montgomery's night attack on Quebec, the occupation of the upper country, the shifting hopes and fears, adhesion and hostility of the inhabitants, the tragical events following the defeat at the Cedars, the succession of seeming accidents which, from time to time, brightened and obscured the prospects of the expedition, making them one day seem almost sure and another well-nigh hopeless, compose a tale the like of which, for animated and varied interest, is rarely found in history. Montgomery's is a stirring name. His earlier fortunes, his heroic persistence through the preliminary difficulties of the campaign, his generous Irish nature, the place and manner of his fall, invest it with an interest much warmer than esteem. It seems an outrage now to couple Arnold's name with his. But at the date of their storming of Quebec, who could say which of them was the worthier? Sound, wounded, or half-starved, in bivouac or in hospital, in field or in council, on land or on shipboard,

wherever Arnold was, there was contrivance, valor, method, and efficiency. Colonel Ward, who (then a Captain in the Rhode Island line) was of the party up the Kennebec, was asked how it was that the men kept their spirits up, when they were reduced to making soup of their moose-skin moccasins. He said, every man felt sure that Arnold would get them through.

The first Appendix to the second volume, tells the story of the operations of Charles Lee, in the spring and summer of 1776, in Virginia and South Carolina, including the repulse of the British squadron from Sullivan's Island, by Colonel Moultrie and Colonel Thompson, on the 28th of June. The following letter to the President of Congress, at the close of the campaign, is a graver specimen, than most, of Lee's epis tolary style.

"SIR,

"Savannah, 24 August, 1776.

"Your letter, with the thanks of the Congress, reached me at Petersburg. The approbation of the freely chosen Delegates of a free and uncorrupt people, is certainly the highest honor that a man of any sentiment can be ambitious of; and I shall consider it as a fresh stimulus to excite my zeal and ardor in the glorious cause in which I am engaged. May the God of Righteousness prosper your arms in every part of the Empire, in proportion to the justice with which they were taken up! Once more let me express the high satisfaction and happiness I feel in this honorable testimony; and once more let me assure the United States of America, that they cannot meet with a servant, whatever may be his abilities, animated with a greater degree of ardor and enthusiasm for their safety, prosperity, and glory.

The present state of this Province, its strength and weakness, I shall transmit to the Board of War, according to the directions I have received. Be persuaded, Sir, that I am, with the greatest respect," &c. Vol. ii. p. 510.

The second Appendix to the same volume (in which Brockholst Livingston, who but lately was worthily moving among us in the sanctity of the judicial ermine, figures as the youthful aid of St. Clair.) represents the vicissitudes of the Northern campaign of 1777, when New England and New York were building their breast work against Burgoyne. St. Clair falls back from Ticonderoga. Seth Warner musters on "the

Grants." Stark comes pellmell from New Hampshire, cuts Baum and his meddling Hessians to pieces at Bennington, and the same day, with the help of Warner's opportune reënforcement, extinguishes Breyman. Arnold's adroit finesse scatters St. Leger's Indians from before Fort Stanwix. Brown snips off three hundred men from a not too numerous army. Lincoln draws the cords tighter at Stillwater. At length the

game is up, and the hunter is prostrate in the snare. With singular indecorum, Gates omits to send any intelligence of his victory to the commander-in-chief, and (as we were told by Colonel Pickering) it is first known at head-quarters through a private letter to Colonel Palfrey. Nor has he written to any one that, at the decisive second action of Behmus's Heights, Arnold's was the controlling spirit. Arnold was under arrest, but there was no keeping him quiet in his tent, when such deeds were doing. Armstrong, then aid to Gates, used to relate, that he was sent to order Arnold in, and chased him about the field for that purpose an hour; but that the quick-eyed soldier evidently guessed his errand, and would never wait for him to come within speaking distance. The troops cared little about his disgrace, and gladly obeyed his orders.

Sir Henry Clinton, as is well known, projected a push up the Hudson River, to effect a junction with Burgoyne from the North. When this scheme was frustrated by the capture of the latter, Putnam had an ill-considered plan of his own for an assault on New York, which disinclined him to send the reënforcements of which Washington was in sore need in Pennsylvania. These matters, with others incident and consequent to them, are elucidated in the third Appendix to the second volume, which ends with a highly characteristic letter from Washington after the withdrawal of the distressed army into winter-quarters at Valley Forge.

The volumes are prepared with the good judgment, good taste, and careful illustration, which the public looks for in whatever passes through the hands of Mr. Sparks.

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ART. V. Considerations on some Recent Social Theories. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1853. 16mo. pp. 158.

A FEW extracts from this unassuming volume will be acceptable to the reader. They may induce him to a more complete perusal of pages which offer a good deal of interesting and trustworthy information, and of just and temperate thought.

Our author begins with the vague declamations, rather than positions, which have lately been current in Europe,— "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," "God and the People," "Direct Popular Government," "The Universal Republic," and the like. Several of these he sums up in the old formula, Vox populi vox Dei, and devotes his first chapter to the question of its correctness. The high doctrine proclaimed by the fervid Italian leader, of the supreme "authority of the People as the collective, perpetual interpreter of the will of God," finds but little favor with him. Who and what, he asks, is this "royal priesthood," this "peculiar people."

"In all historical times, the great mass of men have been exposed to physical and moral evils, sometimes of one kind, sometimes of another, but always of such a sort as to hinder them from the attainment of more than a small measure of earthly good, and to prevent the full development of their spiritual powers. And this poor, oppressed, laboring, and suffering assembly of men, bound together in every age by the tie of a common misery, -this, in the language of the present times, is "the people." It has been the people who have ministered to the ambition, and who have borne the cruelties, of kings; who have suffered from the misgovernment and the mistakes of rulers; who have ignorantly worked, under false direction, for their own sorrow; who have fought against their own good; who have been captivated by fatal delusions; who have been scourged by pestilence and famine and war; who have obeyed false prophets, and have killed the prophets and the servants of God. And now, eighteen hundred years after the divine preaching of the religion whose substance and whose authority were the doctrines of immortality and of love,—and which, as a consequence from these doctrines, announced the kingdom of Heaven upon Earth; declaring the eternal connection of man with man, and the responsibility of man to man; intrusting those children of God who

were poor in earthly or in heavenly possessions, to those who were rich, — even now, "the people" sit in the dark night of ignorance, and know little of the light of love and faith, catching only a feeble glimmer of the dawning of the day of human brotherhood upon earth.

"It is not, then, to this people that we are to look for wisdom and intelligence. It is not to them that we are to trust the progress of improvement. They could not, if they would, rescue themselves from evil; and they have no help for others. But their progress must be stimulated and guided by the few who have been blessed with the opportunities, and the rare genius, fitting them to lead. Nor is their advance to depend on the discovery of any new remedies. There are now at work in the world, principles of virtue and strength enough for all the trials and exigencies of progress. The improvement which is certain must come from the gradual spread of these old principles; from their taking possession of the hearts and ruling the lives of men; and the way for them is to be cleared and made easy by the efforts of the wise and the good everywhere. These principles are not named Equality, nor Communism, nor the Solidarity of Peoples: they are Love, and Truth, and pure Liberty." pp. 18–20.

We cannot, indeed, any more than our author, soar to the high modern Mazzinian acceptation of the ancient maxim. Those who use it should at any rate, we think, temper it in application by the rule,

"Nec deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus;"

and may, perhaps, find their advantage in collating it with another significant dictum which tells us that at times

"Sua cuique deus fit dira cupido ; "

a people can be the slave of cupidity and resentment; a people can be pusillanimous, dastardly, and base; a people can be also fiendishly inhuman; the fears and passions of a people, when once excited, are more hopelessly irrational, more wildly uncontrollable, more extensively ruinous, more appall ingly terrible, than those of councils and kings. Nevertheless, depravation and barbarism apart, in an average state of society, a state such as we hope and believe in for the future, it may be true that the common impulses and plain feelings of the people may be expected to be honest and good. Great questions, that must go back for their solution to natural instincts and unconscious first principles, may refer themselves

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