ought, much attention. But the discovery of Hudson's River, within the same period, was of such trivial estimation as to occupy no space in public annals.

"O man! how short thy sight. To pierce the cloud which overhangs futurity, how feeble. But why be surprised that European statesmen, two centuries ago, were indifferent to what passed on the savage coast of Ameriea; when, at the same time, the existence of Russia was unnoticed and almost unknown.

"Little more than a century has elapsed since the decisive victory of Pultowa introduced the empire of the Czars to the society of European nations; an empire which stretched out from Germany to Kamschatska, from the Black Sea to the Frozen Ocean, contains a greater extent than was ever traversed by the Roman eagle in its boldest flight. That vast empire, so lately known, and so little understood, resisted, unshaken, the shock of embattled Europe, poured the rapid current of conquest back from the ruins of Moscow to the walls of Paris, and stands a proud arbiter of human destiny.

"A mission of no common sort was lately about te proceed from the New World to the Old. From that which in one thousand six hundred was a dreary wilderness, to that which in one thousand seven hundred was a cold morass. It was contemplated that a vessel of novel invention, leaving this harbour, should display American genius and hardihood in the port of St. Petersburgh. If this expedition be suspended or laid aside, it is not from any doubt as to its practicability.

"There are persons of some eminence, in Europe, who look contemptuously at our country, in the persuasion that all creatures, not excepting man, degenerate here. They triumphantly call on us to exhibit a list of our scholars, poets, heroes, and statesmen. Be this the care of posterity. But admitting we had no proud names to show, is it reasonable to make such heavy demand on so recent a people. Could the culture of science be expected from those who, in cultivating the earth, were obliged, while they held a plough in one hand, to grasp a sword in the other? Let those who depreciate their brethren of the West, remember that our forests, though widely spread, gave ne academic shade,

"In the century succeeding Hudson's voyage, the great poets of England flourished, while we were compelled to earn our daily bread by our daily labour. The ground, therefore, was occupied before we had leisure to make our approach. The various chords of our mother tongue have, long since, been touched to all their tones by minstrels, beneath whose master-hand it has resounded every sound, from the roar of thunder, rolling along the vault of Heaven, to the "lascivious pleasings of a lute." British genius and taste have, already, given to all "the ideal forms that imagination can body forth," a "local habitation and a name." Nothing then remains, for the present age, but to repeat their just thoughts in their pure style. Those who, on either side of the Atlantic, are too proud to perform this plagiary task, must convey false thoughts, in the old classic diction, or clothe in frippery phrase the correct conceptions of their predecessors. Poetry is the splendid effect of genius moulding into language a barbarous dialect. When the great bards have written, the language is formed; and by those who succeed it is disfigured. The reason is evident. New authors would write something new, when there is nothing new. All which they can do, therefore, is to fill new moulds with old metal, and exhibit novelty of expressions, since they cannot produce novelty of thought. But these novel expressions must vary from that elegance and force in which the power and harmony of language have been already displayed.

"Let us not, then, attempt to marshal, against each other, infernal and celestial spirits, to describe the various seasons, to condense divine and moral truth in mellifluent verse, or to imitate, in our native speech, the melody of ancient song. Other paths remain to be trodden, other fields to be cultivated, other regions to be explored. The fertile earth is not yet wholly peopled. The raging ocean is not yet quite subdued. If the learned leisure of European wealth can gain applause or emolument for meting out, by syllables reluctantly drawn together, unharmonious hexameters, far be it from us to rival the manufacture. Be it ours to boast that the first vessel successfully propelled by steam was launched on the bosom of Hudson's River. It was here that American genius, seizing the arm of European science, bent to the purpose of our favourite parent art the wildest and most devouring element.

"The patron-the inventor are no more. But the names of Livingston and of Fulton, dear to fame, shall be engraven on a monument sacred to the benefactors of mankind. There generations yet unborn shall read,

"Godfrey taught seamen to interrogate,

With steady gaze, though tempest-tost, the sun,
And from his beam true oracle obtain.
Franklin, dread thunder-bolts, with daring hand,
Seized, and averted their destructive stroke
From the protected dwellings of mankind.
Fulton by flame compell'd the angry sea,
To vapour rarified, his bark to drive

In triumph proud thro' the loud sounding surge.

"This invention is spreading fast in the civilized world; and though excluded as yet from Russia, will, ere long, be extended to that vast empire. A bird hatched on the Hudson will soon people the floods of the Wolga, and cygnets descended from an American swan glide along the surface of the Caspian Sea. Then the hoary genius of Asia, high throned on the peaks of Caucasus, his moist eye glistening while it glances over the ruins of Babylon, Persepolis, Jerusalem, and Palmyra, shall bow with grateful reverence to the inventive spirit of this western world.

"Hail Columbia! child of science, parent of useful arts; dear country, hail! Be it thine to meliorate the condition of man. Too many thrones have been reared by arms, cemented by blood, and reduced again to dust by the sanguinary conflict of arms. Let mankind enjoy at last the consolatory spectacle of thy throne, built by industry on the basis of peace and sheltered under the wings of justice. May it be secured by a pious obedience to that divine will, which prescribes the moral orbit of empire with the same precision that his wisdom and power have displayed, in whirling millions of planets round millions of suns through the vastness of infinite space."