infant people to shake off the trammels of colonization; late events, of little except moral interest; partial, procrastinated, and seldom signalized warfare; the adjustment of treaties and formation of republican institutions, though highly interesting to moral contemplation, are much less malleable, than remote and doubtful traditions of astonishing transactions into that magazine of entertainment, which seems to be looked for in a modern history. But whatever the present age may desire, facts soon become vastly more important than dissertation; nor can moral results ever be fairly taken, unless readers may implicitly rely on the truth of the details.

The narrative of the Life of Washington might perhaps have been enlivened with more biographical and characteristic sketches. But it must be remembered that to draw living characters is an arduous and invidious task. And when the whole subject matter is well considered, the author will be found entitled to our approbation for the caution he has exercised in this particular. As to Washington himself, the uniformity of his life, and taciturnity of his nature precluded any sufficient funds for this minor scene: though I cannot refrain from observing that his unaffected and warm piety, his belief in the christian religion, and exemplary discharge of all its public and private duties, might have been enlarged upon with more emphasis and advantage.

At such a period as the present, when the press, instead of enlightening the community, is converted into a most powerful engine of falsehood, proscrip

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tion and confusion, when letters are perverted to the most treacherous and unworthy purposes, when histories, state papers, public records and official communications are mutilated, suppressed or published, as it suits the object of the moment, to distort or disguise, and not to make known facts; and when especially a usurpation of hypercriticism is subsisting on the excoriation of literature, it behoves every American, who admires the history of his country, it behoves indeed every man, who loves truth, to uphold an authentic national work, like Marshall's, against its malignant enemies and lukewarm friends, and to cherish it as a performance whose subject and authenticity alone, independent of any other merits, will preserve and magnify it for ever.

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LETTER VIIL

FROM INCHIQUIN.

Dated at Washington.

YOUR short letter of the 20th October, which I received a few days ago by a vessel from Amsterdam, imposes a harder task than I had prepared to perform. Though I have never been inattentive to the national characteristics of the American people, it was not my intention to write a separate account of them; but rather that you should glean these particulars from my communications generally. Non hoc pollicitus. As, however, you enjoin it, I will cheerfully endeavour, from the scanty materials, and little time I can command, to sketch their character; premising that I enter on the subject with more than ordinary diffidence, from the assurance I feel of its intrinsic difficulty, and the many prejudices I know I must encounter. To be as perspicuous as possible, I shall pursue the inquiry under the separate considerations of, 1. Their origin and population; 2. Their provincial diversities; 3. Their natural and political association; 4. Its moral results; and, lastly, their resources and prospects.

1. History affords no instance of a nation formed originally on such principles, or of such materials, as the American. It is a common opinion, that these materials were of the worst species; vagabonds, mendicants, and convicts. But the fact is, that the first settlers were mostly of reputable families and good character, who came to America under the auspices of intelligent and distinguished individuals, in the language of their own epic, " braving the dan gers of untraversed seas," in an honourable and sacred cause. From these sources, the great currents of American population have proceeded, increased much more partially than is commonly supposed, from foreign streams.*

The indigenous stocks of nations are patriarchal; but time, conquest, and migration, have successively engrafted so many exotic species on almost every original stock, that there are few people, if any, whose descent is unadulterated from their primeval ances.

* After the battle near Worcester, where Charles I. was defeated by Cromwell, 7,000 Scotch and Dutch, who were taken prisoners, were sent to London, there sold as slaves, and thence transported to work the American plantations. But though these men had the misfortune to be treated igno. miniously, contrary to the laws of war and society, as now acknowledged, they are not to be accounted infamous, and superadded to the imaginary hordes of bondsmen and convicts, that are, by the vulgar in Europe, supposed to have been the original and most numerous occupants of the American It is indeed of very little consequence to the present inhabitants of this country, who the settlers of it were two hundred years ago. But if this point were worth an inquiry, it might be shown that the vulgar opinion is as erroneous as it is absurd.

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tors. Without extending our view to Asia or Africa, where their ancestry is much purer than in Europe, a slight examination of European pretensions to ori. ginal nationality, will serve to show how little there is to boast of. The barbarian aborigines of most European countries, have been mixed with Roman conquerors, and thus blended, received the compulsory accessions of northern savages, who, at later periods, overran nearly all the continent. The ancient Romans, a highly national, were not an original people, but a band of freebooters, whose first national act was forcibly uniting themselves with foreign women, and who, during the first centuries of their existence, were almost perpetually employed in the subjugation of foreign nations, that were successively embodied with the Roman empire. Modern Europe is composed of mixed nations, whose broadest distinctions have appeared since their resurrection from the darkness of the middle ages, and are ascribable more to the influence of laws, than to the difference of climate or natural constitution.*

The white population of North America is of European extraction, with scarcely any admixture with the Indian aborigines. At least three-fourths of the people of the United States derive their descent and national sympathies, through a tradition varying from one to two centuries, from neither conquerors, colonization, adventurers, nor savages, but from

* The origin of nations is buried in fable. Father Lafiteau traces the genealogy of the Americans, some of them, to the ancient Greeks.-Volt. Es. sur les Maurs, Disc. Prelim. 29.