ments in Manchester, it is but to warn our countrymen of the necessity of moral and intellectual cultivation, and to teach them, that the final and certain prosperity of all institutions, will be found to have no other sure basis.

The hint contained in the following characteristic passage is not only wholesome but savoury, and we cannot but express our hope, that the owners of the soil, who are of course proprietors of the greater part of the sunshine, will make haste to profit by it.

Truly, I had almost forgotten the purpose for which I commenced this epistle; it was, however, to acknowledge the receipt of the French fruit trees, which you have been so good as to send me, and which I brought home on the top of the coach. The bark of the trees looks just like what I suppose the king means, when he talks of "beautiful France." Oh that we could make the fruits common here also among the people! what an increase of temperance would there be! The fruits were given for the labourers as well as others; they can afford to eat them; and as you once well observed, a man who has the industry and taste to raise a peach or a grape, in our latitude, and in our vallies, where they will often flourish, is fit to talk to a king. Was there ever a finer sun for ripening most of the fruits, than we have? In England the sun is not so hot; and when the peach is shown in the shops in the neighbourhood of the Royal Exchange, the Nantucket boys (as they tell me), who live upon a cold, bleak island, where it is not raised, and who go upon, and over the water, as naturally as young ducks, are sometimes asked half a crown for it. Carraccioli, the Venetian ambassador, swore that he had eaten no ripe fruit in England, but roasted apples. This, however, cannot be quite true, for we know that they have some fine fruits. Gentlemen who have lived at Paris, say that the peaches have not prettier blushes there, and that they are not more delicious than here. I cannot but think that the grapes, the peaches, and the other fruits, are the cause of there being so many laughing people in France; and, what is of great moment to us, so few drinking people there. The blush, what can that signify to a man working in the dirt? some will exclaim. The blush which comes and goes upon the labourer's chaste daughter, can he say that he does not admire that? Next to the blush that comes and goes, is that which stays upon the peach.

The account of the tame Irishmen kept in Boston, will amuse the reader. "The Bostonians," says our author, "are very quiet and orderly, soft in their speech, their voices low and gentle;" and in the passage which follows, he makes the Boston

Irish no less so. We hope there is no reason to suspect that they are any more so. We have heard of riots lately in Boston,— not of Irish riots,-but of riots among the peaceable Yankee population, who had taken it into their heads to pull down the houses of their equally peaceable Irish brethren,―a very innocent diversion, no doubt, but, we believe, contrary to statute.

The Irish in Boston! I looked at them too; there are said to be about sixteen hundred. Now an Irishman in New England is like a cock on a strange dunghill. A tame Irishman, that has been caged for a while, I love; he is even the more interesting for having once run wild; just as they say in the Circus, the best horses are made of those that at first were "clear devil." Then again, at home he is a persecuted man, and that is reason enough why an American should love him. He is obliged to say his prayers, as they are written in a book for him by strangers; and if he will not do that, he must live in a hovel, sleep on straw, feed upon potatoes, and be left out of the account when God's reasonable creatures are considered. Oh! the liberty of mind and action! how soon it furnishes a man with a good warm house, a clean bed, sound meat when he is well, good wholesome broths when he is sick; how soon it makes a Christian and a gentleman of him.

Could you have believed it? That softly way which the Boston people have of talking and walking, and doing every thing, the Irish have actually caught. They do not run about the streets at night, with a fiddler at their head, and a dozen base women at their heels, yelling and screaming like so many Indians at a war dance. During the whole time that I was there, I never stumbled over a drunken Irishman in the streets, nor saw one take a stake out of his cart, and knock down his horse for not drawing a load which was beyond his strength. Should he do so, I verily believe, that the Boston people would draw a horse-skin over him, with mane, tail, and hair all on, harness him in a cart, and put him on the road; indeed, I am not sure that they have not a law authorizing the magistrates to inflict such a punishment; if they have not, I am certain they ought to have.

I inquired particularly about the Irish, of your friend, who has the true spirit of American liberty about him, in thought and deed; thorough-going, and who does not hate any man, because he was born on the other side of the Neck-nor an Irishman, because he lights his candles when his father dies. "Sir," said he, "with the aid of their venerable pastor and friend, Bishop Cheverus, we have tamed the Irish in Boston; they are as well behaved as our own people of this class. In this country, we must instruct them, we must educate them; bring them into the Ameri

can fold, and not let them herd together, as is too often the case, in dens. We cannot afford here to support a single vicious man; for he eats as much as another, is always a dainty dog, that will refuse a crust; and then again, by theft and robbery, destroys what would support three of your country children, if they are only kept clean, and allowed to eat but three times a day after they, are two years old, which is the true way of bringing them up."

1. An Oration, delivered on the Fourth of July, 1826, at Boston. By JOSIAH QUINCY. 8vo. pp. 30.

2. An Oration, pronounced before the Republicans of Boston, the Fourth of July, 1826. By DAVID L. CHILD. 8vo. pp. 40. 3. An Oration, delivered at Cambridge, on the Fiftieth Anniversary of American Independence. By EDWARD EVERETT. 8vo. pp. 51.

4. An Oration, delivered in Salem, on the Fourth of July, 1826. BY HENRY COLMAN. 8vo. pp. 23.

5. An Oration, delivered on the Fourth of July, 1826, at Northampton. By GEORGE BANCROFT. 8vo. pp. 26.

WHOEVER Considers the state of our literature, must perceive, that occasional addresses form one of its most important branches, This arises from the character of our people and of our institutions. We are young, engaged in active business, and not arrived at well defined divisions in the departments of intellectual labour. The men of talent, who are called upon to supply the intellectual wants of the community, are toiling like others in the bustle of life; they cannot devote themselves to long secluded study; they are obliged to condense their thoughts in haste, and throw them off in the shape of popular addresses. Moreover, our free institutions make the people the source of power. Rank and influence spring from their favour, and authority consists mainly in the direction of their will. Hence arises the necessity, which has been felt by men of talents in all free states, of coming directly before the people, to minister to their intellectual gratification. From these and similar causes, occasional addresses occupy a distinguished place among the departments of our literature, and contribute greatly to form the taste, guide the opinions, and increase the information of our people. Moreover, as their immediate object is the people's approbation, they are fair indications of the degree

of mental cultivation, which exists in the community. It becomes, therefore, the duty of our critical journals to bestow a share of attention on the principal productions of this class. Those which the late celebration of the anniversary of our Independence called forth, are superior to the common cast of Fourth of July orations, as befitted the occasion of our national jubilee.

The first on our list is that of Mr Quincy. This oration is written with spirit and a high tone of patriotic feeling. The literary execution, also, is very creditable to the author, considering that it was composed in haste, and amid the pressure of his numerous and arduous duties, as Mayor of Boston. Mr Quincy eloquently eulogizes the feelings which supported our ancestors at the period of the Revolution; shows that the same spirit had prevailed from the first settlement of the country, and vindicates the fathers of New England, of the first and second generations, from the charge of enthusiasm. The following extract will enable our readers to judge of the character of this performance.

Of a similar type is the self-denial, to which they submitted, and the hazards, which they voluntarily incurred, for the sake of that principle. By submission, they would, in their own time, have enjoyed peace, secured plenty, attained external protection under the shield of Great Britain, and in the gradual advance of society, they had reason to expect to arrive, even in the colonial state, at a very elevated and enviable condition of prosperity. On the other hand, what were the hazards of resistance? The untried and not to be estimated perils of civil war; "a people, in the gristle and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood," to rush on the thick bosses of the buckler of the most powerful state in Europe; the one most capable of annoying them; without arms or resources, to enter the lists with the best appointed nation on the globe; destitute of a sloop of war, to wage hostilities with a country whose navies commanded every sea, and even their own harbours. In case of success,-the chance of anarchy and the unknown casualties attending a new organization of society. In case of failure,— exile, confiscation, the scaffold, the fate of some; to bear the opprobrious names of rebel and traitor, and to transmit them to a disgraced posterity, the fate of all.

What appeals to selfishness! what to cupidity! what to love of ease, to fear, and to pusillanimity! But our fathers took counsel of a different spirit of the pure, ethereal spirit which glowed and burned in their own bosoms. In spite of the greatness of the temptation and the certainty of the hazard, they resisted; and the front ranks of opposition were filled, not by a needy, promiscuous, unknown, and irresponsible crowd, but by the heart, and mind, and strength, of the colony; by the calm and calculating merchant; by the cautious

capitalist; by the sedate and pious divine; by the far-looking, deep read lawyer; by the laborious and intelligent mechanic., We have no need to repeat names. The entire soul, and sense, and sinew,

of society were in action.

The spirit of our revolution is not to be sought in this, or that, individual; nor in this, or that, order of men. It was the mighty energy of the whole mass. It was the momentous heaving of the troubled ocean, roused, indeed, by the coming tempest, but propelled onward by the lashing of its own waters, and by the awful, irresistible impulse of deep seated passion and power.

In this movement, those, who were foremost, were not always those of most influence; nor were the exciting causes always the most obtrusive to the eye. All were pressed forward by the spirit, inherent in the community,-by the force of public opinion and sense of duty, which never fell behind, but was often in advance of those, who were called leaders.

The event has shown that our fathers judged rightly in this movement; that their conception was just concerning their means and their duties; that they were equal to the crisis, in which Providence had placed them; that, daring to be free, their power was equal to their daring. They vindicated liberty for themselves. They transmitted it to us, their posterity. There is no truer glory, no higher fame, known, or to be acquired among men.

How different would have been our lot, at this day, both as men and citizens, had the revolution failed of success, or had the great principle of liberty, on which it turned, been yielded! Instead of a people, free, enlightened, rejoicing in their strength, possessing a just consciousness of being the authors and arbiters of their own and their country's destinies, we should have been a multitude, without pride of independence, without sense of state or national sovereignty; looking across the ocean for our rulers; watching the Atlantic sky, as the cloud of court locusts, tempted by our greenness, came, "warping on the eastern wind;" waiting on the strand to catch the first glimpse of our descending master; some transatlantic chieftain; some royal favourite; some court sycophant; sent to govern a country, without knowing its interests; without sympathy in its prospects; resting, in another hemisphere, the hopes of his fame and fortune. Our judges coming from afar. Our merchants denied all commerce, except with the parent state. Our clergy sent us, like our clothes, ready made; and cut in the newest court fashion. None but conformists allowed to vote. None but churchmen eligible. Our civil rights subject to crown officers. Our religious, to a foreign hierarchy, cold, selfish, vindictive, distant, solicitous about glebes and tithes, but reckless, among us, of the spread of the light of learning, or the influence of the Gospel.