We are no enemies to the discussion of the question concerning the comparative degree of honor in which the founders of the several states shall be allowed to stand in the estimation of the world. We shall always welcome the productions occasioned by this amiable controversy, when they are written with the ability which distinguishes the one before us; since they cause our history to be better studied and better understood, and furnish us with materials from which to form a true judgment both of the merits and the faults of our ancestors. It is well sometimes to leave dwelling upon our own virtues, in order to contemplate those of our fathers. What we have been influences what we are and what we shall be; the seeds of the future lie wrapped up in the past, and our early history is one of the best omens for our country.

MISCELLANY.

WHAT IS NATURE?

"His eye doth but open a window to his mind, to behold and admire his Creator in his works. His taste of the sweetness of the creatures is but a means by which the sweeter love of God doth pass directly to his heart. As God in the creating of us, made our senses but as the inlet and passage of himself into our minds (even as he made all the creatures to represent him to us by this passage) so [nature] doth restore our very senses to this their holy original use; that the goodness of God, through the goodness of the creature, may pass to our hearts, and be the effect and end of all." Richard Baxter.

We are all more or less affected by the seasons. The difference in this influence depends on the many circumstances which produce individual variety. The temperaments are among these; so are age and sex, the state of the body and the state of the mind. The mere power of perceiving vividly or faintly those operations that produce change, and the changes themselves, and the greater or lesser moral and intellectual growth, as well as mere differences of sensitiveness, all these give to the seasons their peculiar character, to the individual, making one of them the time of hope and exultation, and another the time of depression and despair. The events which may have happened to us in certain seasons, give these a character which is frequently abiding. The sadder experiences of life have most of this influence. He who has lost a friend, particularly if it have been in autumn, will find a character in this season, which it may never have had before. If he be a

contemplative man, and if he have always felt some sympathy with dying nature, this feeling will become deeper after such an event. The falling leaf will speak to him of a sadder fall; and as the grass fades and withers over the grave he looks on, he will think with a deeper truth of him who moulders there. To such a man the spring will be a joyous season, for in the renovation of nature, he finds a promise of a better renovation. It cannot be, he will say, that man alone, of all living things, shall live no more, that such a power as mind, which is active in and of itself, should lose this mysterious prerogative and be lost with the dying and the dead of what has only ministered to its growth and its activity, and in a high sense was created for it alone. The seasons in this way have a power to bring out and heighten the better feelings of our nature, and may give new strength to our highest hopes. This is giving a positive and independent influence to the seasons, which the man, who always controls impressions, or regulates their effects, does not understand, and, it may be, will not allow. But such men are rare. The mass of us yield with but a slight struggle, and some even go so far as to trust their happiness to the changing winds.

This influence of nature upon us in all the variety which it presents, was meant only for good. When its true purposes are accomplished in us, it is felt to be a power which comes in aid of our imperfect faculties, and fits us for the highest contemplations and the truest felicity. Nothing, in the first place, is so pure as this influence of nature upon us. There is no selfishness in it, for there is nothing in the vast variety through which it acts, that we could for a moment wish to appropriate to ourselves alone; and nothing, which, for the time it is felt, is looked on as belonging to another. It is truly the property of the mind alone. The deep blue sky; the living atmosphere, with its unobstructed torrents of light; the sober morning, and the blazing sunset; the remote and high mountain, which seems to belong to the distant heaven into which it so far reaches; the wide, deep ocean, now exhibiting its mighty energy in its mountain waves, and its tremendous roar, and now as eloquent of itself in the faint murmur which it sends up the naked beach; these are among the unappropriated agencies which minister to our purest emotions, and which we always love most, when they are felt in their full power by others along with ourselves.

Nothing, in the second place, is so well calculated to give variety and vigor to our whole moral and intellectual being as the proper influence of nature upon us. We put our children to

school, and shut them up from the vast and the beautiful; our young men change their task only, when they change from childhood; and our full grown men find their influences in books, and in the artificial business of the world. Far be it from me to object for a moment to all of good that is done in this way. Fill the mind with the best and the highest of all other minds. Give it steadiness by occupying it about the real and unchangeable of all exact science. Make it love itself by teaching it to what heights a common nature has carried other minds. Allure it to a like pursuit by examples of perfect success. Teach it especially in this way, early to understand, that the truest benevolence, and one of the noblest uses of intellect, are in the tribute which one mind pays to a kindred mind, and to the great and good qualities of all other minds. All this may be done, and much more too, and still there may be room for a love of nature, and for all the influences it may exert upon us. These uses of the mind do not diminish our capacity to be moved, and to be made happier and better by nature. No; what gives the mind true tone, and aids its reaches into the profound, and enlightens for it the obscure, makes it a better disciple of nature.

There are many ways, however, in which devotion to learning, and the more common business of the world, may become unfriendly to the best influences of nature upon the mind and the heart. They impair this influence when they enslave the mind to detail, and teach the exclusive importance of particulars. Much time, in fact all disposable time comes at length to be allotted to these, and a wide view is felt to be an alarming one, because, in the rapidity of full and ardent thought, the mind does not stop at the parts over which it really passes in an unbroken succession, but arrives suddenly, and, as if by an intuition, at a general truth. Such a process is confused or incomprehensible to the man of detail, and he rarely, if ever, sympathizes with the more comprehensive thinker. It is to this sort of mind that nature addresses itself in vain. In nature there is massiveness in what seems most in detail. Its minuteness in particulars is lost in the amount. The small insect, or a single blade of grass, is but a tiny wonder. But the peopled atmosphere, the living fields, are a vast and multitudinous exhibition of power, wisdom, and beauty, and will have their true effect upon the mind that is rightly constituted. This illustration is from the smallest, and seemingly contemptible, if such a word may be reverently used. Take another from the acknowledged vast, the universal atmosphere, the ocean, the inaccessible mountain, these act at once as a whole; not a moment

is allowed for their detail; the mind that apprehends them, is filled with them, and at once stirred by an incommunicable emotion.

The unity of the mind is disturbed by endless devotedness to detail. Or if this be not the case, something as unfavorable to a love of nature is produced by this habitual surrender of the whole mind to particulars. It is so principally in this way. Such individuals have always had in view, in their labors, some practical effect out of themselves. A mere emotion, ending in the individual, however exalted it may be, is deemed of little worth, for the finger cannot be laid upon it, and "Here is something to count; something useful may be made out of this," cannot be asserted concerning it. Emotions are indeed internal and invisible things. They are in these respects like that which produces them; that power in nature, which acts through visible objects, being itself unseen; and that power of mind, which is manifested in all the appropriate acts of man. These are all secret agencies; but they are not on this account the less real, the less true; or the less to be sought for and cherished. Shall we call that unreal or useless, which makes that mind purer which possesses it, more active to good, and more capable of deep contemplation on all that comes before it? Is that mind, which is alive and filled with all possible truth that relates to man both as to condition and character, uselessly employed, when the truth of the vast creation, an apprehension of its beauty and grandeur, and a deep delight in both are sought after as an abiding possession; and this, because it is felt to be enlarging its capacity for an eternal and perfect good? But without this prospective operation, a true feeling of nature exerts an influence, which in itself is of the highest value. It has just been said, that it enlarged and strengthened all the active powers. But its chiefest excellence is in this. It reveals truth to him on whom it acts, and aids him in the apprehension and pursuit of all other truth. It is a certain influence, for that which exerts it is either unchangeable, or the changes are produced by fixed causes. This character of the agencies we are considering, is perhaps to us their most important one. What may become of our labors, what the correspondence shall be between our efforts and their consequences, is, of all things, the most uncertain. Our best purposes, or what we regard as such, are frequently defeated; our fairest hopes are not realized; our whole moral and intellectual influence, as ordinarily exerted for practical ends, is uncertain. We then exert the strongest and best, when we act most after the manner of nature,-I might say, when we most nearly resemble nature.

We are all this most nearly, when we exhibit

to others an example of truth, which is unchangeable, in all that we do; when our motives are as questionless, as are the principles of action of perfect rectitude; when we move among men in an atmosphere which the best influences of nature, the truths of religion, and the highest human excellence, have purified, and which becomes a living and pure principle to all who are within its reach. It is thus when we have the least in view, that we frequently accomplish most. The influence is secret, and those who may be benefitted by it, are so by a progress so gentle that they are hardly sensible of the change. We minister, in short, to the moral growth of others, and this, like the increase of living nature around us, is so imperceptible as to be known only by its effects; and the agency of him who produces it, is as silent as are the operations of nature itself.

To give, then, to man a power over others, like that of nature over himself, is to call forth his highest attributes. It is in the chain of creation his mind now acts, and it becomes the nearest link to this great cause. This view teaches us something of the nature of mind, and at the same time shows its resemblance to the governing principle of the universe. This is the highest alliance we can seek for it. It will increase with the growth of moral purity, and with the progress of the whole mind. It makes us happier by its own growth, for it multiplies the means of happiness, and adds to their power.

The love of nature is an exercise of the affections, and its operation is to strengthen and to refine them. It comes in this way in aid of the religious principle and sentiment. Give the affections to nature; love it in the degree, and after the manner it should be loved, and their other exercises, the love of man, and his noblest works, and above all the love of God, come at length to be natural movements of the mind and heart. Can that man regard the happiness of another mind as a trifling concern, who has found his own in these exercises? Can he be cruel in his influences, and injurious in his acts to any human being, who has felt and acknowledged the unabated goodness which has been exercised through all nature toward himself? Can he contemn the human intellect, who feels that it is to this he owes his own dignity, and all of good he hopes for or enjoys?

I may be now asked, what is this nature, about which so much is said, and which so few truly feel? To define is not always to instruct; still it will not be difficult to show what is meant by this A difficulty of comprehending it has been created by the manner of considering it. The term has been very much con

term.