specifically to draw the reader's attention) relating to a variety of subjects, on which, either from personal observation on the most extended scale, or from laborious and systematic discussion of the observations of others, he is entitled to every attention.

Where history fails, however, as is the case notes (to some of which we have had occasion with the barbarous nations of the New World, and those, which in other regions are fast disappearing before European encroachments, language, physical resemblance, and similarity of customs (when not traceable to general principles of human nature) are all the guides which are left to us in tracing the affiliation of races. That aiding and warning light withdrawn, it behoves us to be all the more scrupulously careful in collecting and preserving unimpaired and undistorted whatever vestiges of human language still subsist. And here we must enter our protest, we fear an unavailing one, against the supineness which suffers those invaluable monuments, the unwritten languages of the earth, to perish with a rapidity yearly increasing, without one rational and well concerted effort to save them in the only mode in which it can be done effectually, viz., by reducing them to writing according to their exact native pronunciation through the medium of a thoroughly well considered and digested Phonetic alphabet. About sixty well chosen, easily written, and unequivocal characters, completely exemplified in their use by passages from good writers in the principal European and eastern languages, would satisfy every want, without going into impracticable niceties; and we earnestly recommend the construction and promulgation of a manual of this kind for the use of travellers, voyagers, and colonists, as a matter of pressing urgency, to the consideration of philologists, ethnologists, and geographers, in their respective societies assembled.*

While the preceding pages were in progress, we have been favored with the perusal, in proof sheets, of a portion of the second volume of the "Kosmos," (translated and edited as above,) containing, under the title of "Incitements to the Study of Nature," a series of beautiful and brilliant essays of the highest literary merit, and full of scholarship, classical research, and artistic feeling, on the reflex action of the imaginative faculty when excited by the contemplation of the external world, as exemplified in the production of poetic descriptions of nature (especially of wild and landscape scenery,) and in landscape painting. For examples of the former kind, M. de Humboldt lays under contribution the literature of all ages and nations, from ancient India to modern Europe, entering largely into the influence exercised by the peculiar aspect of society in each on the development of this form of the poetic sentiment, which he regards, and justly, as the first expansion of the heart towards a recognition of the unity and grandeur of the Kosmos. In like manner the art of landscape painting is traced from its first origin as the mere background of historical composition or scenic decoration, to its grand developments in the seventeenth century-to "Claude Lorraine, the idyllic painter of light and aërial distance, Ruysdael's dark forest masses and threatening clouds, Gaspar and Nicholas Poussin's heroic forms of trees, and the faithful and simply natural representations of Everdingen, Hobbima, and Cuyp." The gradual emancipation of the art from its trammels, as a subordinate auxiliary, and its assumption of an ideal of its own embodying, are shown to be ever found in connection with increasing knowledge and observation of nature consequent on advancing cultivation. To such poetic descriptions and depicted scenery, as well as to the view of exotic products assembled in collections, hot-houses, and museums, he traces much of that lively impulse which stimulates young and * Many attempts at the construction of such alphabets excitable minds to foreign travel for the sake of have been made, but none at all satisfactory. That of knowledge, and to the prosecution of physical Young (Lectures, ii. 276) is perhaps the most complete in its analysis of speech, though still defective, and in study at home. These essays form a graceful some points erroneous-his system of characters wretched. and elegant episode, interposed between the more Gilchrist's is perhaps the best known, and in profession massive and austere divisions of the general subnothing short of absolute universality, but its author (a Scotsman) was altogether defective in ear, and his exam-ject, the "Physical Description of the Universe," ples in consequence self-contradictory-his system of which we have passed in review, and the "Hiswriting confusion itself. The Fonotipik kariktur, de

We have been so intent on the subject matter of the work before us, as to have left little space for comment on the mode of its presentation to the English reader. The author has been especially fortunate in his translator (translatress we should rather say, since, in the style of its execution, we have no difficulty in recognizing the same admirable hand which gave an English garb to Baron Wrangell's expedition to the Polar Sea.) So perfect a transfusion of the spirit and force of a very difficult original into another language, with so little the air of a translation, it has rarely been our fortune to meet with. To the editor it is indebted for several very interesting and instructive

vised by the ingenious Mr. PitmUn and his associates for tory of the Contemplation of Nature;" and will the speedy and effectual abrogation of the English lan- be read with equal enjoyment by the poet, the guage, would have considerable merit were it not founded on an essentially English instead of a cosmopolitan view artist, and the philosopher. of the vowel sounds as represented by European letters, and therefore sure to be rejected by every foreign philologist. Yet even this, enlarged to suit the exigencies of the case, would be preferable for temporary use to the present no-system in which each traveller in his diary, and each missionary, in formal grammar and dictionary, confounds and forever mars, as seems good in his own eyes, the pronunciation he pretends to fix.

Of the "History of the Contemplation of Nature," one section only has reached our hands; sufficient, however, to convey a notion, and to correct an impression we had formed, as to our author's intended mode of handling this part of his matter. The history with which he proposes

[The National Era is one of the few papers which can look at a subject on all sides; and we recommend to our northern, as well as to our southern readers, its opinions as always well worthy their consideration, however they may disagree with them. We are especially willing to hear anybody by whom the preservation of the Union is considered a cardinal point.]

something to have established institutions which have prevented the excessive growth of pauperism, and which have secured to every freeman the privilege of sitting under his own vine and fig-tree, none daring to make him afraid. because we have done this for seventeen millions of freemen, and have thrown open the same blessPLAN OF PACIFICATION AND CONTINENTAL UNION ings to the myriads of suffering emigrants from

-ANNEXATION OF THE STATES OF MEXICO.

And it is

the Old World, that we have hope of the redempSix months ago we wrote an article proposing tion and elevation of the two-and-a-half millions of a plan of Pacification and Continental Union, for slaves, who, to the dishonor and condemnation of the purpose of extricating the United States and a portion of our countrymen, are excluded from the Mexico from their present unhappy controversy, common heritage. With such views, we must be and securing the permanent peace, freedom, and pardoned for dwelling with pleasure upon the well-being of the entire continent of North Amer-extension of our territory and expansion of our ica. population.

The views and arguments then presented we shall not repeat. Since that time public opinion has undergone some change. What then seemed extravagant is now seriously entertained by many sober, reflecting minds. So strong had become the manifestations of this change, that Mr. Calhoun took the earliest opportunity, in the opening of this congress, to direct attention to them, and warn his southern friends against the annexation of Mexico, as the deadliest blow that could be inflicted upon the system of slavery. That such an event would violently disturb the system within its present limits, we do not suppose, but, as we shall have occasion to show, it would erect a perpetual bar to its extension.

The journals referred to seemed entirely to overlook the anti-slavery bearings of our plan. The largest and most densely peopled portions of Mexico are unsuited to slave labor. This the slaveholders well know; and it is equally well known that the people themselves, a large majority of whom is of the Indian race, are possessed by an ineradical antipathy to slavery. The incorporation of an anti-slavery safeguard in the draft of propositions for a peace, submitted by the Mexican commissioners to Mr. Trist, was the offspring of this sentiment.

Our plan proposed voluntary annexation, the states of Mexico being permitted to enter the Union on a footing with the original states. Necessarily they would come in free, and thus continue; and this simple fact, it is obvious, would raise a barrier to the diffusion of slavery, more secure than any that could be provided by the power of the national legislature. The certainty of such a consequence will hardly be contested by any one who is acquainted with the speculations of southern newspapers, or has listened to the debates in the senate of the United States, in relation to this subject.

One or two anti-slavery journals denounced us as guilty of pandering to the popular lust of conquest, of inflaming the pride of a people already puffed up beyond measure. Such was not our object. We but stated facts concerning the position, character, progress, prospects, and responsibilities of the American nation. Are we to be condemned for thinking that God has not given over our countrymen to ruin, but that his longsuffering is still to be exercised towards them? One aspect of our plan we thought would comThat we have abused power, been perverse and mend itself to the advocates of the cause of peace. ungrateful amidst unexampled prosperity, commit- Artificial boundaries between neighboring nations ted crimes for which we should clothe ourselves in are provocations to war. Had it not been for the sackcloth and ashes, is too true; but we are not voluntary amalgamation of Scotland and England, all evil, evil only, evil continually. He, who perpetual feuds would have drenched their borders would have spared Sodom had there been ten with blood, and checked the growth of both counrighteous men in it, is not yet prepared to over- tries. Voluntary union has harmonized Celt, whelm us with devouring fire. There is room for Saxon, and Briton. Different races have settled repentance; there is ground for hope; there is Mexico and the United States, but no natural evidence of progress; 66 a hymn for the day that boundaries divide them. We can give no counteis dawning" is going up to heaven from myriads nance to that doctrine of races which finds in their of the pure in heart; we have yet the ability and distinctions perpetual sources of antagonisms. That means for self-regeneration. It is something that is not the doctrine of Christianity. All men are we have carried out the principle of self-govern- of one flesh, formed by God's fingers, reflecting ment in this New World in its full application to the same divine attributes—all men are brethren. seventeen millions of freemen. It is something to Where physical circumstances and political neceshave demonstrated that the voluntary principle in sities throw them together, in equal conditions, religious affairs is more efficacious and fruitful than they will readily harmonize, under the influence of the policy of governmental interference. It is the spirit of Christian Brotherhood, and of enlightsomething to have recognized the educational ened self-interest, so characteristic of the age. wants of the masses, and to have instituted Once it was not so; when men acted on the maxim immense, well-directed charities for the enlighten- of Hobbes, that war was the natural state of manment of paganism, and relief of poverty. It is kind. The emigrants from the northern hives of

Europe and Asia, in looking out for new homes in measure. What is it the advocates of the cause of the south, prepared themselves for overcoming the universal peace contemplate, as a preventive against hostile reception they were sure to meet. Instead war? An international tribunal for the settlement of being welcomed to the hospitalities of a more of international controversies. Has not the conadvanced civilization, their animosities were aroused gress of the American Union performed precisely by the fierce opposition of armed legions, and their the functions of such a tribunal for numerous powsettlements were effected amid blood and suffering, erful states, which, if politically isolated, each whence sprung undying hate and enmities. In wielding the power of peace and war, would, ere this way, clans and races were insulated and this, have been dripping with each other's blood? embittered, and Europe was parcelled out among Suppose this congress, by the voluntary annexation tribes, which, foes in their infancy, have retained, of Mexico, to become the supreme legislature over as nations, their antipathies. But now, emigrants | the North American Continent, with the exception from all these jarring nations, crowd our shores (temporary, may we not hope?) of the Canadas, every year, in numbers exceeding the aggregate and we have a grand international tribunal for of the emigration for a score of years, in ancient keeping the peace of the hundreds of millions who Europe; and here their jealousies melt away-are destined to inhabit this continent, and at the Saxon and Celt embrace-all distinctions are same time a glorious example presented to the swallowed up in the great vortex of our popula- world of the social means by which Christianity tion, all are Americanized. And why? Chiefly may establish her reign of universal peace. But because all, with the sad exception of the colored our plan contemplated voluntary annexation, and people, are equal-upon all rest our institutions no other. The intervention of force would defeat equally over all their fostering care is equally the experiment, and entail ruin on both parties. spread-all are permitted to obey, without irritat- Of what value is the forced union of England and ing interference, the laws of their own being, Ireland to either country? A corroding cancer to with nothing to provoke the pride or antipathies England, a wasting curse to Ireland. The coerced of race-each one feels that he has an equal right annexation of Mexico would never result in real with the most favored, to call this his country-union There may be subjugation, but no incorand thus the spirit of unity pervades and assimi-poration; and the subjugation would cost this lates the whole mass. country its republicanism, and Mexico its life. Subjugation and extermination would be inseparably linked together.

The annexation of the states of Mexico would break down the partition wall between the two countries. It would give the citizens of both one country, one home, one interest; a common glory and a common destiny. There might not be much immigration from the south, northwardly, but there would be an almost unlimited infusion of American life into her veins.

Now, what is the alternative? If our plan be not adopted, if the project of wholesale subjugation be repudiated, as we think it will be, what then follows? Fractional annexation, for the benefit of slavery-the amount and the time always to be determined by the demands of slave labor for more soil In one steamer on the lakes, you shall see six to blast and desolate. That this will be the fixed hundred souls, the entire population of a township policy of the government, unless one or the other in the state of New York, embarked for the shores of the modes just indicated be adopted, is as cerof Wisconsin. The process of interior emigration | tain as that in fifty years slaveholding territory has transcends all conception. It is a movement, un-been trebled, and nine new slave states added to interrupted in its flow, magnificent in its results, the Union. The annexation of Texas, in its inby which hundreds of thousands of our citizens, ception, progress, and accomplishment, foreshadows every year, change their homes, it may be their pursuits, without noise, without agitation, without the slightest disturbance to the machinery of society; and the great two-fold effect is, the rapid development of the resources of the country and the close cementing of its most distant sections. The annexation of Mexico would be followed by an unlimited expansion of this movement. The great ocean of life would begin to heave and swell upon the shores of the south-west, American civilization would infuse itself into the forms of Mexican society, and, ere long, the demonstration would be complete, that even the Aztec race was capable of expanding with the power of what men style the Caucasian civilization-in a word, that no race of mankind is so degenerate as to be beyond the in-springing up, which may make a reorganization of fluences of the agencies which a kind Providence the Union an act of high expediency—a reörganhas arranged in these latter days, for the redemp-ization, by which a union might be formed, extendtion of all his children. ing from the utmost bounds of human labor in the

the future. Will the non-slaveholding people of this country suffer themselves to be committed to such a policy? Not forever. The hour of resistance must come, but the danger is that it will come too late. It may come only when the sole hope of release from such companionship in crime will be a division of the Union, and a reörganization of the majority of the states in the temperate latitudes. The people of these states cannot continue forever linked to the cause of slavery-propagandism. If the slave power hold on to the government, using it, from time to time, as the agent for the dismemberment of Mexico, in fractions, just to suit the demands of slave labor, there are countries on our northern border, in which a sentiment is already

We proposed our plan, then, as a great peace north, to the extreme limits of free labor in the

south-a union established not upon compromise, | than they are now doing, and the people of this but upon the great principle-liberty, the inalien- country will not be held accountable for the conable right of every human being, and law, its de- sequences of a career forced upon them by the fence. foolhardiness of another. At any time since the It were well for slaveholders if they would take beginning of the war it has been in the power of warning in time.

From the N. O. Picayune of Jan. 8.
THE WAR-PROSPECTS.

In the announcement of Gen. Scott's order of the 15th December-"The army is about to spread itself over and to occupy the Republic of Mexico, until the latter shall sue for peace in terms acceptable to the government of the United States" is seen the commencement of a system of operations which the events of the past year have foreshadowed as inevitable. From the lifting of the curtain, at Palo Alto, to the grand finale before the city of Mexico, every scene has been heralded as the last act of the drama; but those who were acquainted with the actors upon the bloody stage knew better. Whatever damage was done to the vanity of Mexico by beating her armies, was tinkered up by a proffer of peace, which her generals construed in a way to cover the defeats they had encountered. The people could not comprehend the idea of victors being supplicants for peace, and popular leaders were not interested in explaining the phenomenon to them. The predictions that were laughed at in the beginning have come to pass, and the government has been compelled to withdraw our troops ingloriously from the field, or charge them with the duties and responsibilities of conquerors.

Who can say what the Mexican government would have done, had our army, from the commencement of the war, been instructed to do what Gen. Scott is in the act of doing now? Is it not probable that terms of peace would have, ere this,

Mexico to secure her nationality by making or lis-
tening to overtures of peace; and even now terms
which would leave her sovereignty over a larger do-
main than she can rule, intact, would be embraced
with alacrity by the authorities of the United States.
But what will become of her if she pause till the
army stretch its arms to all places of her pride,
and lay its hands upon all the towers of her
strength? And what yet if the infatuation of her
chiefs detain the military governments of the
United States in their midst till the better order of
Mexicans claim the protection of a power whose
martial law is milder in enforcing order, than the
governments they have been accustomed to were
in failing to do so? The army is about to spread
itself over and occupy Mexico till the Mexican
republic "shall sue for peace in terms acceptable
to the United States." When will that be?
What indications are there that it will ever be ?
It is the misfortune of Mexico that those who
would serve her do her harm—those who in this
country, and they are among the greatest and best
of the land, who would not take an inch of her
Whilst con
territory, but keep the issue open.
gress is debating and statesmen building up ther-
ries, and politicians fingering the public pulse, the
army is spreading itself over," and whilst the
agitation of topics connected with the war is kept
up, it is "occupying the republic of Mexico."
The energies, enterprise and wilfulness, so to
speak, of a bolder and a superior race, are per-
meating the hills and valleys of the overrun repub-
lic. Nor is it prophetic of the long dominion of
a hybrid people to have their flowers scented by

66

been offered by the vanquished enemy? These any of Saxon origin. We may condemn, we

may argue against the tendencies of a race of men are questions which it may be idle to debate now; but the army, as a mission of peace, has done of higher organization, bolder hearts, more enternothing, whilst in its proper calling it has per-prising minds, of superior thews and muscles, and stouter wills, to supplant weak and emasculated

wrong all this is-homilies to this day are written against the pilgrim fathers for ejecting the savages from the primeval forests of the North-but until the eloquence of ethics can melt human nature and mould it anew, we apprehend the world will wag on much after the old fashion. No scrap of philosophy, nor moral essay, nor political disquisition can countervail the dangerous odor of fields, in perennial blossom, to an army of Anglo-Saxons

formed wonders. And this was foretold. It is in no spirit of querulousness that the mis-tribes-good authority can be evoked to show how takes of the past are cited, in view of the new line of policy adopted, but in justification of a change in the strategy of the war, which is the beginning of an end that is shrouded in darkness. "The army is about to spread itself over and to occupy the Republic of Mexico." It is about to establish civil government, to a certain extent― to levy and collect taxes-to lay and inforce imposts to regulate commerce between the different states to reform the administration of public affairs, and, indeed, do such other acts as pertain to the powers of an organized and established state. What this condition of things will lead to, what it ought to lead to in the end, will depend more upon the course Mexico and Mexicans may pursue, than upon any fixed purpose in this country to blot her out of the list of nations. United States government can scarcely do less

The

From the Journal of Commerce.
SCENES OF THE WAR.-NO. 1.
THE VOLUNTEER'S MOTHER.
Ir was the noon of night. The stars
On Mexico were gleaming,
A soldier slept upon his arms,
And as he slept was dreaming.