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    ** Why do men call me a presumptuous cur , A vapouring blockhead , and a turgid fool , A common nuisance , and a charlatan ? 1 'ire dashed into the sea of metaphor With as strong paddles as the sturdiest ship That churns Medusae iuto liquid light , And hashed at every object in my way . My ends are public . I have talked of men As my familiars , whom I never saw . Nay—more to raise my credit—I have penned Epistles to the great ones of the land , * When some attack might make them slightly sore , Assuring them , in faith , it was not I . What was their answer ? Marry—shortly this : 4 , in the name of Zernebock , are you ?' I hare reviewed myself incessantly—Yea , made a contract with a kindred sonl For mutual interchange of puffery . Gods—how we blew each other ! But , 'tis past—Those halcyon days we gone ; and , I suspect , That in some fit of loathing or disgust , Mine ancient playmate hath deserted me . And yet I am Appollodorus still I I search for genius , having it myself , With keen and earnest longings . I survive To disentangle , from the imping wings Of oar young poets , their crnstaceous slough . I watch them as the watcher on the brook Sees the yonng salmon wrestling from its egg , And revels in its fixture bright career . " " Towards the firmament I gaze with longing eyes ; and , in the name Of millions thirsting for poetic draughts , I do beseech thee , send a poet down ! Let him descend e ' en as a meteor falls , RnsHincr of nnnnilnv _ - _

    \_ Se is crushed by the Jail of the body qf Havbbillo . " " We then find Firmilian wandering among the mountains , and lavishing a superfluity o f apostrophe upon the rocks , forests , and cataracts around him . Whatever may be bis moral deficiencies , we are constrained to admit that he must have studied the phenomena of nature to considerable purpose at the University of Badajoz , since he explains , in no fewer than twelve pages of blank verse , the glacier theory , entreating his own attention—for no one is with him—to the striated surface of rocks and the forcible displacement of boulders . He then , by vay of amusement , works out a question in conic sections . But , notwithstanding these exercitations , he is obviously not happy . He is still as far as ever from his grand object , the thorough appreciation of reinorse—for he can assign a . distinct moral motive for each atrocity which he lias committed . He at last reluctantly arrives at the conclusion that he is not the party destined— ¦ _; . To shrine that page of history in song , \ And utter such tremendous cadences , That the mere babe who hears them at the breast , Sans comprehension , or the power of thought , Shall be an idiot to its dying hour ! I deemed my verse would make pale Hecate ' s orb Grow wan and dark ; and . into ashes change The radiant star-dust of the , milky-way . I deemed that pestilence , disease , and death Woald follow every strophe—for the power Of a true poet , prophet as he Is , Should rack creation !

    " If this view of the powers of poets and poetry be correct ., commend us to the continuance of a lengthened period of prose !" la BentUjfs Miscellany there is one serious and very sensible paper—How to deal with the Greeks ; G race Greenwood pursues pleasantly enough the narrative of her travelling adventures ; Shirley Brooke and others continue their fictions . The Dublin University Magazine has an interesting , article on Dante and his Translators ^ a genial notice of Professor Wilson ' s life and character , and some readable sketches of French Dramatists and Actors .

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    stud y and the tendencies which should most particularly engage their examination . J e ^ It has , we think a further use ; though this was not intended by the author . It sets forth the feelings of an able and experienced Whig politician on the subject of active political practice in America , and enables us to discover in what it is , that the Whi gs or Liberals of the present day are below the argument of the constitution at home , respecting which they boast so much . We discover from . Mr . Tremenheere s volume that the political principles of his party depend more upon the fear of certain national Powers which called their party into existence , than upon any wellunderstood principles a priori , or upon any enlarged conception of the method by which national powers have been worked ou $ in practice .

    The history of America forms an appendix , continuation , or branch of our own history , and . the moral which it tells is exactly the same as that of our own history , with some instructive diversity in the mode of presenting the , moral during these latter years . In extremely modern times it has become the practice to view every human proceeding with regard to certain didactic preconceived objects of the course of action , and too little regard has been paid to that necessity which the history of every country teaches , for keeping up the energy of a people-by affording scope for the action of that people . Now , the whole history of America is a proof of the fruits which spring from well-developed energy . The very first discovery of thfe continent , dictated , if you like , by personal ambition to secure distinction and immortality in history , by a vague idea of acquiring wealth , by projects

    of creating states and rounding empires , can only be traced with any distinctness to the one common source—an inherent sense of energy in the men who took the lead , and a desire to exercise that energy in a novel and striking manner . Columbus , who pestered the monarchs of Europe fori the means without which he could not have landed on the western shbreV of the Atlantic ; John and Sebastian Cabot , who followed his example and first landed on the Spanish Main -under the' patronage of Henry YIIv £ Cartier , who bore the French flag up the St . Lawrence ; Columbus ' s companion , Ponce de Leon , who discovered Pascua Florida- —Flowery Easter--since called Florida ; Cortes and Pizarro , who bore the Spanish and Portuguese flags in Mexico and Peru ; and Soto , who landed in Cuba : to say

    nothing of the Norwegians , the Germans , the Dutch , or the'Swedes , who traditionally preceded some of these men on the western shores , or planted the family names of their country in the region now occupied ? by the tJn ^ d States , —these are nothing more than individual examples ^ of ; the energy / which then lived in Europe , burning for an extension © fi the field on whief it might exercise itself , and so . " calling mto e ^ tenc ^ ^^ as Oa ^ ning ^ two for all human purposes , " a new world , * with eveiyt ^ ingj that "has fol ^ lowed from the discovery of that region . In the very aSt of ; its discoverjr America is the greatest monument to the practical benefit : derived ; front energy , exercised for its own sake . It would have been trul y impossible for any one of the men concerned to define the results which Lave actually ensued from their blind instinct of exercising ; their faculties and spiritto the utmost *

    but if mankind were to stop its actfofi to the ^ pttrstiit of those objects alonei which it can define , we may sit down , in supineness ' and say , thafc the history of civilisation baldterminated with ust * -we nWeonly "to"letour hair ' gr 61 » : greyi and to prepare ourselves for the tomb of history and mankind . . ¦¦ ••> - . It us the same with the history of colonisation in America . The adven turers who founded Virginia and named it after the <; Lion Queen j the Catholics who established themselves under the" proprietary of Lord Balti more in Maryland ; the Dissenters who had suffered from the persecution which Protestants had copied from the Catholics they had conquered , and founded the evangelical states of New England ; the Frenchmen who bore feudality to the banks of the St . Lawrence , ' —carried with- them privileges

    commissions , grants of land , titles , and royal authority , without stint or monotony of form , — -privileges , grants , and authorities that died before they were put into practice , or have been swept away by the changeable weather of time . But the thing which they did carry over , whether French , Spaniard or Anglo-Saxon , was the same energy of the adventurous discoverers , witb so much of civilisation as they had learned in the old land , and with some renewed spirit of self reliance alive in the body , the heart , and blood of the people themselves . Anybody who sought the history of America in the charters , grants , statutes , and patents by which the first colonies were founded would expect to find there a motley crew of . states , Catholic ^ Royalist , aristocratic , commercial , and evangelical : but looking at the re-

    THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES . The Constitution of th * United Slates compared with our Own . By Hugh Seymour Tremenheere . John Murray . 1854 . Mr . Tkembnheehk ' s volume is a valuable contribution to the -works of discussion on American politics , with a reference to European interests and the course of events on this side of the Atlantic . We put no qualification upon that description , although the book does , in reality , not fulfil its title . Mr . Tremenheere professes to discuss the Constitution of the United States , and to compare it with our own ; but the real substance' of his volume is to consider at great length the origin , rise , progress , and probable results of certain abuses incidental to the practice as well as the constitution of the United States , as those abuses may be surveyed from the point of view

    sudphed by an acquaintance with . English politics . The Constitution of the United States , as expounded by the statute setting forth its principles aud enactments , as developed in the history of the country or in the opinions of eminent Americans , is not set forth in any part of this volume : and the reader who expects to find it there , will discover that he must still seek it m the works of Jefferson , Marshall , Kent , or Bancroft with tLe reconsiderations that it has derived from philosophical inquiries like De Tocquevill , or travellers like Arfwedson and Grund . Nor is tne Constitution of the United States compared with our own , for our constitution is not set forth . Com parisons , indeed , occasionally arise , but they arc very partial , and anything like a parallel exposition is absent from the volume . Nevertheless , Tve regard it as very valuable .

    Mr . . Tremenheere , as wo gather from this book , is thoroughly imbued with the opinions at present dominant in England . He is , as everybody icnows , familiar with official atfairs ^ he has been usefully employed in the business of examining and reporting on specific subjects , and if he does nothing more , at all events he puts into a compact , intelligible , and accessible form , we may say , the views of a Whi p on the Constitution of the United btates , its dangerous tendencies , and its actual abuses . It will be very useful for those who desire to arrive at the truth respecting the American Constitution ; since it points out to them the points which they are to

    public as it actually exists , he finds all these separate origins merged and fused into a republic , which may be reckoned to comprise thirty-six separate states , differing excessively in their physical geography ; differing in their domestic institutions , in their local laws , even in details of electoral suffrage ; but jet possessing a marked national characteristic in physiognomy , mind , and purpose , and presenting almost the sole example in the history of the world of a people who , tinder various conditions of qualifying test , exercise the electoral suffrage , and exercise also a practical influence on the conduct and policy of their supreme Government . There were three things which the English colonists of America earned over with them , and it is important for us to distinguish these three things very distinctly . They were , first , the common law of this country , which means the usage that the people of tfiis country had formed for itself ;

    secondly , the rights which the people of this country had acquired , or were acquiring for themselves , by contest with the kings or nobles that had denied those rights ; and thirdlj , the bone and sinew , the hard-headed sagacity , and indomitable courage of the English people , at that time in its history when the national vigour was drawn forth to its utmost development by the contest with the Stuarts . Common law , established rights , and English p luck , were the three elements of the American republic drawn from England at the very height of her national activity . When King George III ., with his hazy mind and high prerogative notions , aided by the financial wisdom of Mr . Grenville in 1763 , or the Heaven-born inspirations of William Pitt , at a considerably later date , undertook to levy taxes on the colonists , without allowing those colonists any voice in the enactment , for purposes in which those colonists could have no share , then that 6 ame hard-headed sagacity taught the colonists the meaning of the act . Their vague conception of their common-law rights told them that they were injured : and " grit

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    May 6 , 1854 . ] THE LEADE R . 425

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), May 6, 1854, page 425, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2037/page/17/