to turn into mockery all our dreams of enduring prosperity. The wisest statesmen have felt, that the experiment of our government was called, in these circumstances, to pass through a crisis more trying, in some respects, than any which it had ever been subjected to before. It seemed not unreasonable to fear, that the vortex of excitement and agitation into which the nation was so suddenly drawn, and from which it had no power apparently, to make its escape, would end in desperate revolution, overturning our old established state, and carrying our des tiny in some new direction. Had it been divinely foretold in 1845, that the revolutionary spirit was to be let loose as it has been since among the nations, without mention of the field it should traverse, the most sagacious politicians, probably, would have been ready to locate, at least its central catastrophe, in America rather than Europe. It must have been felt, at all events, that no such general convulsion could well take place in Europe, without communicating itself by sympathy and contagion to the predisposition which seemed to be already at hand, on all sides, for the same thing in this country. And yet it has not been so. Texas has taken her place quietly, in the circle of confederate States. The Oregon boundary has been peacefully settled. The Mexican war has been conducted through a series of brilliant victories, that have filled the whole world with admiration, to a triumphant well consolidated peace. While the European world seemed to be meditating only the proper time and way for interfering with our affairs, all its energies and thoughts have been suddenly called into requisition, by the universal crash which has fallen upon it, like thunder out of a clear sky, at home. In the very midst of this vast and fearful commotion, we have been enabled to bring our own troubles, as a nation, to the happy termination just mentioned, and to take our position, with calm dignity, on the same political ground we occupied before. The nation has resumed its ancient course, only with a field of action vastly more broad and free; and might seem, to have gathered fresh confidence and strength from its difficulties, coming out of them more recruited than exhausted, like a strong man girded for the race. It has indeed accomplished a change, that may be counted fairly parallel in

magnificent meaning with the change that has taken place in Europe, and that will be found to have just as much to do in the end, no doubt, with the world-historical epoch which has been reached at this time; but under what different aspect and form! We might seem authorised, by the contrast, to compare the epoch itself with the mystic cloud at the Red Sea, which was all darkness, we are told, on one side, and on the other full of light. Its significance, in this view, may justify us in styling it emphatically, the American epoch.

It is hardly necessary to say that our sense of the vast significance of the crisis, through which the nation has lately passed, is not conditioned at all by any opinion we may entertain of the right and justice of the measures by which it has been accomplished. With the political morality of the Mexican war, we have here nothing to do whatever; just as little as we found it proper to take our measure of history, in the case of the late revolutions in Europe, from any particular estimate of the actors immediately concerned in bringing them to pass. In this case, as in that, we must distinguish between what is human in history, and what is properly universal and divine. The first may be worthy of all reprobation, where we are still bound to adore the presence of the second. It is with the second only, the interior objective life of history, its true and proper worldsense, that we are concerned at all in our present contemplation.

Certain it is, in this view, that the great events which have occurred in our history of late, are just as full of significance for a thoughtful mind, as has now been represented. It is not easy, adequately, to express, how much is involved in the movement which has taken place, or in the general result which has been reached by its means. It has served to test the capabilities of the nation, and to make the world sensible of its resources and powers, beyond any other ordeal through which it has passed. The experiment of our republican institutions has been placed by it on a far more sure footing, than ever before. Much that seemed problematical has been settled and made sure. The mere fact of its being able to come so triumphantly through such a crisis, in the midst of so many disturbing forces at work on all sides, is an argument of utility and strength in the nation

beyond any which has been exhibited before. The sudden expansion of its territory, is only in keeping with the development of its inward greatness; the moral holding equal step with the physical; the genius of the country, especially as set in contrast with the revolutionary spirit across the Atlantic, towering to an independent height, which is answerable, fairly, to the gigantic measure of its new bounds. Never before was it so respectable in the eyes of the world, never so sure of its own strength at home.

The sense of what has now been said in a general way, seems to have impressed itself strongly on many persons, in connection particularly with the occasion of our late Presidential election. Coming, as this did, on the heels of the Mexican war, with all the new relations and exciting prospects which have grown out of it, after a most earnest political campaign, and in full face of the tumultuating agitations of the European world, it might have been apprehended that such an issue joined at this time between the two great parties of our country, would bring into jeopardy at least the interests of order and peace in every direction. These considerations could not fail, at all events, to place in strong relief the significance of the experiment and example the nation was called thus to present before the eyes of the civilized world; and when this took place under the most triumphantly successful form, it is not strange that the spectacle should have produced a feeling of moral sublimity, and a sentiment of faith in the destiny of the republic, such as no occasion of a like sort in its history ever wrought before. No more impressive commentary can well be imagined, on the spirit of our institutions; no more emphatic answer to all scepticism or scorn, as exercised at their expense. The whole world beside has no such spectacle to show; the very posibility of it can hardly be imagined in any land but our own. The following statement of the case by one of our secular papers, well deserves here to be repeated and kept in mind.

"Only consider it. In the short space of less than twelve hours, the dynasty of a great nation was to be changed. Four millions of people, representing the opinions, and the will, of nearly twenty millions, were, by a simultaneous act, to decide for them

selves, amid all their own diversities of sentiment, to what hands they would commit the direction of their country's mighty energies. It must be a wonder to the millions of lookers-on, who are not imbued with republican influences, that the contest was decided so speedily, so quietly, with such an utter absence of unreasoning passion; in fact, it may be said to have been governed solely by the inspiration of pure reason. Imagine the attempt of a people living under a monarchy, to change, we will not say the principle of their government, but merely the dynasty, the human instruments representing or embodying that principle. Such attempts have been made in various countries, and with various success. And everywhere the struggle has been protracted, furious, anarchical, destructive; bringing into action the wildest and most ungovernable impulses of human nature, and filling the land with misery and desolation. Here, under the benign influence and inspiration of republicanism, through the wholesome sway of matured republican habits, not only was the great work accomplished between the rising and the setting of the sun, but so calmly, in such perfect order, that no uninstructed observer could be aware that it was in progress. The usual avocations, amusements, and enjoyments of every-day life were pursued without a visible interruption. All the marts of business were in their accustomed activity; carriages, public and private, went up and down the streets, as is their wont; fair women thronged the fashionable side-walks, gay in apparel, graceful in movement, giving themselves up to the pleasure or more serious purpose of the hour, as if utterly unconscious of the great political crisis ripening around them-of which, indeed, there was nothing to remind them. Not that the magnitude of the crisis was not appreciated; not that the thousands and tens of thousands practically engaged in it were careless or indifferent as to the result; but simply because their sense of its importance was regulated and controlled by a corresponding perception of the dignity and beauty of good citizenship, which demands, first, the observance of order and decorum in all great public acts, and, second, a cheerful and hopeful acquiescence in every determination of the people's will, lawfully manifested in due and proper form by a majority of the people."

The significance of what has taken place latterly on both sides of the Atlantic, lies not so much in the European or American movement separately considered, as in the relation which the one may be seen evidently to carry towards the other. It is not possible, if God be indeed at the helm of history, that the course of things in the old and new worlds should not be

comprehended, in some way, in a common plan, and have regard thus to a single universal end; and it might reasonably be supposed, that in proportion as the elements and powers at work in each direction should acquire force, and seem ready to precipitate themselves in their last result, the reality of this correspondence and the general form and bearing of it also, would rise more and more into view. Accordingly, it is just here, in fact, that the earnest and contemplative student finds most to fix his attention and engage his admiration. The simultaneousness of the two series of developments, which have burst so suddenly and with such apparently independent process, on the world's astounded sense, here and in Europe, may be said to show, beyond all else perhaps, the solemn meaning of the age. On one side, we have the breaking up of old institutions and forms, in which has been comprehended for centuries, the central power of the world's civilization; as though this order of life had now finished its course, and the time were at last come for it to be taken out of the way, in order to make room for another stadium under some higher and better form. On the other side, we behold suddenly springing into new importance and promise, after long years of comparatively silent preparation, what might seem to be here, in America, the very asylum that is needed, and the best theatre that could be found, for the accomplishment of so great a metempsychosis in the flow of universal history. All indications on either side, point negatively or positively, precisely in this way. It is, in the first place, the spirit of America, or if we choose so to call it, the genius of Protestantism, itself, as it has come to identify itself with our American institutions, that forms, however blindly and darkly, the propelling force in the revolutions of Europe. They carry in themselves, under all their whirlwind violence, the force of a deep hidden sympathy and affinity, on the part of the old world, with the political tendency which has come to such successful experiment in the new. This is well understood by European statesmen and princes generally. The bent and effort of all these agitations and throes, is not in any way towards what has been hitherto the life of Europe, as such, but only and altogether towards the new form which life is found to be assuming in America. This