grace diffused over nature, almost all the individual endless imitations of some of them; as the acorn, forms are agreeable to the eye, as is proved by our the grape, the pine-cone, the wheat-ear, the egg, the wings and forms of most birds, the lion's claw, the serpent, the butterfly, sea-shells, flames, clouds, buds, leaves, and the forms of many trees, as the palm. tented with those of any other person. This finitude which it hath, like space and time, will phenomenal world has for its final cause the make all matter gay. But besides this general development and education of the finite mind. It follows, therefore, that all which a realist could say of the utility of nature can be advanced also by the idealist. He has his practical point of view, and can discourse, as Mr. Emerson does here, on the various "uses" of nature, which, he says, "admit of being thrown into the following classes-commodity, beauty, language, and discipline." We have not the least intention of proceeding further with an analysis of this essay; as we have already intimated the value of Mr. Emerson's writings appears to us to consist in the beauty and truthfulness of individual passages, not at all in his system, or any prolonged train of reasoning he may adopt. It is impossible to read this production without being delighted and arrested by a number of these individual passages sparkling with thought or fancy; it would be equally impossible to gather from it as a whole, any thing satisfactory or complete. "The influence of the forms and actions in nations, it seems to lie on the confines of Commodity ture is so needful to man that, in its lowest funcand Beauty. To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone. The tradesman, the attorney, comes out of the din and craft of the street, and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again. In their eternal calm he finds himself. The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired so long as we can see far enough. 66 But in other hours nature satisfies the soul purely by its loveliness, and without any mixture of corporeal benefit. I have seen the spectacle of morning from the hill-top over against my house, from day-break to sunrise, with emotions which cloud float like fishes in the sea of crimson light. an angel might share. The long slender bars of From the earth, as a shore, I look out into that On the beauty of nature he is always elo- silent sea. I seem to partake its rapid transformaquent; he is evidently one who intensely tions; the active enchantment reaches my dust, feels it. "Every day, the sun; and, after and I dilate and conspire with the morning wind. sunset, night and the stars. Ever the How does nature deify us with a few and cheap winds blow, ever the grass grows.' The elements! Give me health and a day, and I will shows of heaven and earth are with him a make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The dawn portion of daily life. "In the woods is is my Assyria, the sunset and moonrise my Paphos, and unimaginable realms of faerie." perpetual youth." "We talk," he says in another place, "with accomplished persons Mr. Emerson has published a volume of who appear to be strangers in nature. The poems, and it has been generally admitted cloud, the tree, the turf, the bird, are not that he has not succeeded in verse. theirs, have nothing of them; the world is there are touches of charming poetry in his only their lodging and table." No such prose. This discrepancy, which is not unstranger is our poet philosopher. "Cross- frequently met with, must result, we preing a bare common, in twilight, under a sume, from an inaptitude to employ the clouded sky, without having in my thoughts forms of verse, so that the style, instead of any occurrence of special good fortune, I being invigorated, and polished, and conhave enjoyed a perfect exhileration. Al-centrated by the necessary attention to line most I fear to think how glad I am." The only quotation we shall make from the essay on "Nature," shall be one where he treats of this subject But and metre, becomes denaturalized, constrained, crude, and unequal. We have looked through this volume of poems, but we should certainly not be adding to the reputation of the author by drawing attention to it. If we wished to find instances of the poetry of Emerson, we should still seek for them in his prose essays. Thus he says: "A nobler want of man is served by nature,— namely, the love of beauty. Such is the constitution of all things, or such the plastic power of the human eye, that the primary form, as the sky, the mountain, the trees, the animal, give us a delight in and for themselves: a pleasure arising from God allows me, let me record, day by day, my "In this pleasing contrite wood-life which outline, color, motion, and grouping. And as the eye is the best composer, so light is the first of honest thought, without prospect or retropainters. There is no object so foul that intense spect, and I cannot doubt it will be found light will not make beautiful. And the stimu- symmetrical, though I mean it not and see lus it affords to the sense, and a sort of in- it not. The swallow over my window should interweave that thread or straw he carries in this :-"God offers to every mind its choice his bill into my web also.” between truth and repose. Take which you "Our moods," he says, do not believe please-you can never have both. Between in each other. To-day I am full of thoughts; these, as a pendulum, man oscillates ever. but yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in this He in whom the love of repose predominates, direction in which now I see so much; and will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, a month hence, I doubt not, I shall wonder the first political party he meets,-most who he was that wrote so many continuous likely his father's. He gets rest, commopages. Alas for this infirm faith, this will dity, and reputation; but he shuts the door not strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast flow! of truth. He in whom the love of truth I am God in nature-I am a weed by the predominates, will keep himself aloof from wall!" all moorings and afloat. He will abstain "A lady," he writes on another occasion, from dogmatism, and recognise all the op"with whom I was riding in the forest, said posite negations, between which, as walls, to me that the woods always seemed to her his being is swung. He submits to the to wait, as if the genii who inhabit them inconvenience of suspense and imperfect suspended their deeds until the wayfarer has opinion, but he is a candidate for truth, as passed onward. This is precisely the thought the other is not, and he respects the highest which poetry has celebrated in the dance of law of his being." the fairies which breaks off on the approach We gather from what little has reached of human feet." The lady had a true poetic us of his biography, that he has in fact feeling. And the following thought is illus- sacrificed somewhat of the commodity of trated by a very happy image: this life, to this "higher law of its being." "In man, we still trace the rudiments or In a work which has just fallen into our hints of all that we esteem badges of servi- hands, entitled "The Prose Writers of tude in the lower races, yet in him they en- America; with a Survey of the Intellectual hance his nobleness and grace; as lo in History, Condition, and Prospects of the Eschylus, transformed to a cow, offends the Country, by Rufus Wilmot Griswold," we imagination, but how changed when as Isis find the following scanty account of Emerin Egypt she meets Jove, a beautiful woman, son: "He is the son of a Unitarian clergywith nothing of the metamorphosis left but man of Boston, and in 1821, when about the lunar horns, as the splendid ornament seventeen years of age, was graduated at of her brows!" Harvard University. Having turned his In his philosophy, we have seen that Mr. attention to theology, he was ordained Emerson is an idealist, something, too, of a minister of one of the congregations of his pantheist. In theology, we have heard him native city, but embracing soon after some described as a Unitarian; but although the peculiar views in regard to the forms of Unitarians of America differ more widely worship, he abandoned his profession, and from each other, and from the standard of retiring to the quiet village of Concord, after orthodoxy, than the same denomination of the manner of an Arabian prophet, gave men in this country, we presume there is no himself up to thinking,' preparatory to his body of Unitarians with whom our philoso- appearance as a revelator." Which meagre pher would fraternize, or who would receive narrative, not very happily told, leads us to him amongst their ranks. His Christianity infer that the recluse of Concord has lived appears rather to be of that description up to the high spirit of his own teaching. which certain of the Germans, one section, It is remarkable that Mr. Griswold, in of the Hegelians, for instance, have found the prefatory essay which he entitles The reconcilable with their Pantheistic philoso- Intellectual History, Condition, and Prosphy. It is well for him that he writes in a pects of the Country, although he has introtolerant age, that he did not make his ap- duced a host of writers of all grades, some pearance a generation too soon; the pilgrim of whom will be heard of in England for the fathers would certainly have burnt him at first time, never once mentions the name of the stake; he would have died the death of Emerson ! Yet, up to this moment, Giordano Bruno. And we believe-if the America has not given to the world anything spirit of his writings be any test of the spirit which, in point of original genius, is comof the man-that he would have suffered as parable to his writings. That she has a a martyr, rather than have foregone the thousand minds better built up, whose more freedom and the truthfulness of his thought. equal culture and whose more sober opinHis essays are replete with passages such as ions one might prefer to have, this is not the question-but in that highest department 97,2191. The dock revenue, in 1831, was 183,4557., The shipping of the port was, in 1831, 12,537 ves- Very popular he perhaps never may become; but we figure to ourselves that, a century hence, he will be recognised as one of those old favorite writers whom the more thoughtful spirits read, not so much as teachers, but as noble-minded companions and friends, whose aberrations have been long ago conceded and forgiven. Men will read him then, not for his philosophy, they will not care two straws for his idealism or his pantheism: they will know that they are there, and there they will leave them-but they will read him for those genuine confes-be the nearest approach yet made to the long-talkedsions of one spirit to another, that are often of "perpetual motion." The inventor states that a breathed in his writings; for those lofty sentiments to which all hearts respond; for those truths which make their way through all systems, and in all ages. A ROMAN RELIC.-A Roman sword blade, in a beautiful state of preservation, has been dug up at the gas station, Bath. It is of brass, the metal beautifully tempered to almost the fineness of steel, and bears evidence of having been richly plated with gold. It is about sixteen inches in length, and, save one indentation of the edge, caused by the implement of the workman who turned it up, is as perfect, from hilt to point, as when it first left the hands of the artificer. It is in the possession of Mr. John Harris, of Southgate-street, who, we believe, intends to transmit it to the Archæological Society. MONASTIC INSTITUTION IN GLASGOW.-Another monastic educational institution is to be founded in Glasgow. One of the "merchant princes," Mr. Alexander Hermitage, has left nearly £60,000 to endow a hospital for the "education, clothing, and, if necessary, the support of poor children of both sexes" in the city. By all means, let really poor children have tuition, clothes and food for nothing, but let there be no estrangement from the parental roof-especially let there be no more taking of children from homes already comfortable, in order that competent but penurious parents may shift a natural burden from their own proper shoulders, and so, at the sacrifice of independence and of their children's affection, bring about the eleemosynary up-bringing of their own flesh and blood.-Daily News. THE PROGRESS OF LIVERPOOL-A Liverpool paper has published the following statistics of the growth of the commerce of Liverpool. The population in 1831 was 205,964; in 1846 it had nearly doubled, being 358,655. The revenue produced by the corporation property was 45,9687.; in 1847, it was 59,336. The town dues were in 1831, 49,3321.; in 1847 they were nearly double, the amount being "Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, THE ELECTRIC CLOCK.-This invention is said to solid three-feet cube of zinc, and a corresponding CURIOUS LIST OF VESSELS.-The shipping (says Sir Harris Nicolas) of this period, consisted of ships, cogs, galleys, barges, crayers, flutes, or fluves, balingers, pinnaces, shutes, doggers, hulks, lynes, keels, segboats, fishing-boats, hock-boats, liques, lighters, pickards, lodeships, vissiers, and busses, but the two latter are rarely mentioned after the middle of the fourteenth century. THE EDINBURGH REVIEW.-The correspondent of the London Daily News writes: "The Edinburgh Review has now only a nominal connexion with Edinburgh. On the insolvency of Messrs. Constable and Co., in 1826, it became the property of Messrs. Longman and Co.; and on the death, in the beginning of the present year, of Mr. Macvey Napier, the editorship was transferred to England; and in future the printing is to go thither also. The new editor is understood to be Dr. Empson, professor of law in Hertford College, and son-in-law of Lord Jeffrey. From the Dublin University Magazine. THE ELOQUENCE OF THE CAMP-NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. THE sayings of soldiers, and those related to them, have been memorable in all ages. A Lacedemonian mother, addressing her son going to battle, said "Return living with your shield, or dead upon it." A sentinel who allowed General Joubert to enter Napoleon's tent without giving the password was brought before him-" Go," said he "the man who forced the Tyrol may well force a sentinel.” A general officer, not eminently distin Xerxes, menacing Leonidas with the overwhelming numbers of his army, said-guished, once solicited a marshal's baton"Our arrows will obscure the sun." "It is not I that make marshals," said he "Well," replied the Spartan, "it is victories." fight all the better in the shade." we shall On the field of Austerlitz, a young RusCommanders have been remarkable for sian officer, taken prisoner, was brought bethe ready tact of their improvisations. fore him-" Sire," said the young man, Cæsar stumbled and fell on landing in" let me be shot! I have suffered my guns Africa. He instantly affected to kiss the to be taken."-" Young man," said he, soil, and exclaimed "Africa! I embrace" be consoled! Those who are conquered thee." by my soldiers, may still have titles to glory." When Dessaix received his death-wound at Marengo, his last words were "Go and When the Duke of Montebello, to whom assure the First Consul that my only regret he was tenderly attached, received a mortal in leaving life is, that I have not done wound from a cannon-ball, Napoleon, then enough to be remembered by posterity." in the meridian of his imperial glory, rushA drummer, one of whose arms was car-ed to the litter on which the dying hero ried away by a cannon-ball at the moment he received an order to beat the "charge," exclaimed "I have still one hand left," and beat with the remaining hand. On catching the first sight of the Mamelukes, drawn up in order of battle on the banks of the Nile, in view of the pyramids, Bonaparte, riding before the ranks, cried "Soldiers! from the summits of yonder pyramids forty generations are watching you." was stretched, and embracing him, and bedewing his forehead with his tears, uttered these untranslatable words-" Lannes ! me reconnais-tu ?-c'est Bonaparte c'est ton ami!" -- In the Russian campaign he spirited on his troops by the assurance"Soldiers! Russia is impelled by Fate! Let its destiny be accomplished!" On the morning of the battle of Moscowa, the sun rose with uncommon splenTo a troop of artillery which had failed dor in an unclouded firmamentBein their duty, he said "This flag that you hold !" exclaimed Napoleon to his soldiers, have basely deserted shall be placed in the" it is the sun of Austerlitz." Temple of Mars, covered with crape-your corps is disbanded." On hearing the first gun of the enemy at Friedland, he exclaimed-" Soldiers! it is an auspicious day. It is the anniversary of Marengo." The fourth regiment of the line on one occasion lost its eagle-"What have you done with your eagle ?" asked Napoleon. "A-regiment that loses its eagle has lost all. Yes, but I see two standards that you have taken. "Tis well," concluded he, with a smile-" you shall have another eagle." He presented Moreau, on one occasion, with a magnificent pair of pistols as a cadeau. "I intended," said he, " to have got the names of your victories engraved upon them, but there was not room for them." It will be recollected that the battle of Austerlitz was commenced at sunrise, and that on that occasion the sun rose with extraordinary splendor. At Montereau the guns of a battery near his staff were ineffective, owing to having been ill-pointed. Napoleon dismounted from his charger, and pointed them with his own hands, never losing the skill he acquired as an artillery officer. The grenadiers of his guard did not conceal their terror at seeing the cannon-balls of the enemy falling around him-"Have no fears for me," he observed, "the ball destined to kill me has not yet been cast." In his celebrated march from Frejus to Paris, on his return from Elba, one of the regiments at Grenoble hesitated before de " claring for him. He, with a remarkable | ral of the Directory, he treated, not in the instinct, leaped from his horse, and unbut-name of the Directory, but in the name of toning the breast of the grey surtout he Bonaparte. He was not merely comusually wore, laid bare his breast-" If mander-in-chief of the army-he was its there be an individual among you," said he, master; and the army felt this, and the "who would desire to kill his general-his republican tacitly acknowledged it. The emperor let him fire." oldest generals quailed under the eagle eye of this youth of five-and-twenty. It may It was, however, in his harangues to the soldiers, delivered on the spur of the mo- His eloquence of the field has no examment, and inspired by the exigency of the ple in ancient or modern times. His words occasion, and by the circumstances with are not the words of a mortal. They are which he found himself surrounded, that his the announcements of an oracle. It is not peculiar excellence as an orator was devel- to the enemies that are opposed to him that oped. The same instinct of improvisation he speaks, nor do his words refer to the which prompted so many of his strategical country he invades. He addresses Europe, evolutions, was manifested in his language and speaks of the world. If he designates and sentiments. At an age, and in the the army he leads, it is THE GRAND ARMY! practice of a profession, in which the re- If he refers to the nation he represents, it sources of the orator are not usually avail-is THE GREAT NATION! He blots empires able or even accessible, he evinced a fer- from the map with the dash of his pen, tility, a suppleness, and a finesse, which and dots down new kingdoms with the hilt bordered on the marvellous, and which, of his sword. He pronounces the fate of with an audience not highly informed, might dynasties amidst thunder and lightning. easily pass for inspiration. What language His voice is the voice of destiny! it were best to use, what conduct it were To reproduce his highly figurative lanbest to pursue, and what character it were guage, after the fever of universal enthusibest to assume on each occasion which pre-asm, in the midst of which it was uttered, sented itself, he appeared to know, instan- has cooled down, is hazardous. taneously and instinctively, without consideration, and without apparent effort of judgment. He gained this knowledge from no teacher, for he never had a mentor; he gained it not from experience, for he had not years. He had it as a gift. It was a natural instinct. While he captured the pontifical cities, and sent the treasures of art of the Vatican to Paris, he was profoundly reverential to the Pope. Seeking an interview with the Archduke Charles, prejudices-have grown up. In the days the lieutenant of artillery sprung from the people met the descendant of the Caesars with all the pride of an equal, and all the elevated courtesy of a high-born chevalier. landmarks. An undefined future presented He enforced discipline, honored the arts itself to all minds. The marvellous achieveand sciences, protected religion and pro- ments of the French army itself, led by a perty, and respected age and sex. In the boy on the plains, illustrated in other days city he sacked, he put sentinels at the by Roman glory, heated all imaginations to church doors to prevent the desecration of a point which enabled them to admire what the altar. To set the example of respect may seem to border on bombast in the prefor divine things, he commanded his mar- sent prevalence of the intellectual over the shals with their staffs to attend mass. He imaginative, and of the practical over the managed opinion, and turned popular pre- poetical. judice to the purposes of power. In Egypt, he would wear the turban and quote the Koran. His genius for administration was no way inferior to his genius for conquest. He could not brook a superior, even when his rank and position were subordinate. In his first Italian campaign, as the gene seem to border on the ridiculous. Subli- Napoleon's splendor, military renown was Let the reader, then, try to transport himself back to the exciting scenes amidst which Napoleon acted and spoke. At six-and-twenty he superseded Scherer in the command of the army of Italy, surrounded with disasters, oppressed with despair, and utterly destitute of every pro |