Is passing on-it will ere long reveal vens! The watchmen of the night have caught the sign- CHARLES E. ARTHUR GAYARRE. CHARLES E. ARTHUR GAYARRE was born in Louisiana on the 3d of January, 1805. He is of mixed descent, Spanish and French. His father, Charles Anastase Gayarré, and his mother, Marie Elizabeth Boré, were natives of Louisiana. His family is one of the most ancient in the state, and historic in all its branches and roots. ancestors were the contemporaries of Bienville Some of his and Iberville, the founders of the colony. The subject of this notice was educated in New Orleans, at the college of the same name, where he pursued his studies with marked distinction. In 1825, when Mr. Edward Livingston laid before the Legislature of Louisiana the criminal code which he had prepared at the request of the state, Mr. Gayarré, then quite a youth, published a pamphlet, in which he opposed some of Mr. Livingston's views, and particularly the abolition of capital punishment, which Mr. Gayarré considered a premature innovation, and of dangerouz application to the State of Louisiana, for certain reasons which he discussed at length. The pamphlet produced great sensation at the time, and the adoption of the code was indefinitely postponed by the legislature. In 1826 Mr. Gayarré went to Philadelphia, and studied law in the office of William Rawle. In 1829 he was admitted to the bar of that city; and in 1830 returned home, and published in French An Historical Essay on Louisiana, which obtained great success. same year, only a few months after his return, he was elected, almost by a unanimous vote, one of the representatives of the city of New Orleans in the legislature, and was chosen by that body to write the "Address," which it sent to France, to compliment the French Chambers on the revolution of 1830. In 1831 he was appointed assistant or deputy attorney-general, in 1833 preVCL. 11--26 That 401 siding judge of the city court of New Orleans; and in 1835, when he had just attained the constitutional age, was elected to the Senate of the United States for a term of six years. Ill health prevented Mr. Gayarre from taking his seat, and compelled him to go to Europe, where he remained until October, 1843. In 1844, shortly after his return, Mr. Gayarré was elected by the city of New Orleans to the legislature of the state, where he advocated and carried several important measures, among which was a bill to provide for the liabilities of the state, and which in a short time effected a reduction of two millions and a half of dollars. In 1846 he was re-elected at the expiration of his term; but on the very day the legislature met he was appointed secretary of state by Governor Johnson. That office was then one of the most important and laborious in the state, the secretary being at that time, besides his ordinary functions as such, superintendent of public education, and constituting with the treasurer the "Board of Currency," whose province it is to exercise supreme control and supervision over all the banks of the state. Mr. Gayarré discharged his multifarious duties in a manner which will long be remembered, particularly in connexion. with the healthy condition in which he maintained the banks. At the expiration of his four years' term of office, he was re-appointed secretary of state by Governor Walker in 1850. Mr. Gayarré, during the seven years he was secretary of state, found time to publish in French a History of Loui siana, in two volumes, containing very curious documents, which he had collected from the archives of France. He also published in English, in one volume, the Romance of the History of Louisiana, and in English subsequently the History of Louisiana, in two volumes. This continuous work is not a translation of the one he wrote in French. It is cast in a different mould, and contains much matter not to be found in the French work. pended to it as an introduction. Mr. Redfield, of The Romance of the History of Louisiana is apNew York, has published Mr. Gayarre's history of the Spanish Domination in Louisiana, coming down to the 20th of December, 1803, when the United States took possession of the colony, in which work he makes some remarkable disclosures in relation to the Spanish intrigues in the West carried on with the co-operation of General Wilkinson and others, from 1786 to 1792, to dismember the Union, and gives a full account of the negotiations which led to the cession. As secretary of state, Mr. Gayarré made so dollars, which he had at his disposal for the purjudicious a use of the sum of seven thousand chase of books, that he may be said to be the father of the state library; and with the very limited sum of two thousand dollars, which, at his pressing request, was voted by the legislature for the purchase of historical documents, he succeeded, by dint of perseverance and after two years' negotiations, in obtaining very important documents from the archives of Spain, the substance of which he has embodied in his history of the Spanish Domination in Louisiana. Mr. Gayarre has lately given to the public two lectures on The Influence of the Mechanic Arts, and a dramatic novel, called the School for Politics, a humorous and satirical exhibition of the party Charks Gayarra frauds and relaxed political sentiment of the day, which may be presumed to have grown out of the writer's experiences, some of which are detailed, in a more matter of fact form, in an Address to the People of the State, which he published on the "late frauds perpetrated at the election held on the 7th of November, 1853, in the city of New Orleans." Mr. Gayarré was on that occasion an independent candidate for Congress, refusing to be controlled by the party organization, and was defeated, though he polled a large and influential vote. His undisguised sentiments, in regard to the political manoeuvres of the times, are freely expressed at the close of his pamphlet. He has since taken part in the "Know-Nothing" organization of his native state; and was one of the delegates excluded from the general council of the party at Philadelphia in June, 1855, on the ground of their position as Roman Catholics. This drew from him a privately printed address, in which, with animation and vigor, he handles the question of religious proscription. As a writer, the prose of Mr. Gayarré is marked by the French and Southern characteristics. It is warm, full, rhetorical, and constantly finds expression in poetical imagery. In his comedy, where the style is restrained by the conversational directness, there are many passages of firm, manly English. As an historian, though his narratives are highly colored, in a certain vein of poetical enthusiasm, they are based on the diligent study of origins' authorities, and are to be consulted with onfidence; the subjects of his early volumes are in themselves romantic, and the story is always of the highest interest. His last volume brings him to the discussion of a most important era in our political history. FATHER DAGOBERT. The conflict which had sprung up between the Jesuits and Capuchins, in 1755, as to the exercise of spiritual jurisdiction in Louisiana, may not have been From the History of the Spanish Domination in Louisiana. forgotten. The Bishop of Quebec had appointed a Jesuit his Vicar-General in New Orleans, but the Capuchins pretended that they had, according to a contract passed with the India company, obtained exclusive jurisdiction in Lower Louisiana, and therefore had opposed therein the exercise of any pastoral functions by the Jesuits. The question remained undecided by the Superior Council, which felt considerable reluctance to settle the controversy by some final action, from fear perhaps of turning against itself the hostility of both parties, although it leaned in favor of the Capuchins. From sheer lassitude there had ensued a sort of tacit truce, when father Hilaire de Géneveaux, the Superior of the Capuchins, who, for one of a religious order proverbially famed for its ignorance, was a man of no mean scholarship and of singular activity, quickened by a haughty and ambitious temper, went to visit Europe, without intimating what he was about, and returned with the title of Apostolic Prothonotary, under which he claimed, it seems, the power to lord it over the Jesuit who was the Vicar-General of the Bishop of Quebec. Hence an increase of wrath on the part of the Jesuits and a renewal of the old quarrel, which ceased only when the Jesuits were expelled from all the French dominions. But the triumph of father Géneveaux was not of long duration; for, in 1766, the Superior Council, finding that he was opposed to their scheme of insurrection, had expelled him as a perturber of the public peace, and father Dagobert had become Superior of the Capuchins. They lived altogether in a very fine house of their own, and there never had been a more harmonious community than this one was, under the rule of good father Dagobert. He had come very young in the colony, where he had christened and married almost everybody, so that he was looked upon as a sort of spiritual father and tutor to all. He was emphatically a man of peace, and if there was anything which father Dagobert hated in this world, if he could hate at all, it was trouble-trouble of any kind-but particularly of that sort which arises from intermeddling and contradiction. How could, indeed, father Dagobert not be popular with old and young, with both sexes, and with every class? Who could have complained of one whose breast harbored no ill feeling towards anybody, and whose lips never uttered a harsh word in reprimand or blame, of one who was satisfied with himself and the rest of mankind, provided he was allowed to look on with his arms folded, leaving angels and devils to follow the bent of their nature in their respective departments? Did not his ghostly subordinates do pretty much as they pleased? And if they erred at times-why-even holy men were known to be frail! And why should not their peccadilloes be overlooked or forgiven for the sake of the good they did? It was much better (we may fairly suppose him so to have thought, from the knowledge we have of his acts and character), for heaven and for the world, to let things run smooth and easy, than to make any noise. Was there not enough of unavoidable turmoil in this valley of tribulations and miseries? Besides, he knew that God was merciful, and that all would turn right in the end. Why should he not have been an indulgent shepherd for his flock, and have smiled on the prodigal son after repentance, and even before, in order not to frighten him away? If the extravagance of the sinning spendthrift could not be checked, why should not he, father Dagobert, be permitted, by sitting at the hospitable board, to give at least some dignity to the feast, and to exorcise away the ever lurking spirit of evil Did not Jesus sit at meal with publicans and sinners? Why then should not GEORGE W. BETHUNE. father Dagobert, when he went out to christen, or to marry at some private dwelling, participate in convivialities, taste the juice of the grape, take a hand in some innocent game, regale his nostrils with a luxurious pinch of snuff, and look with approbation at the merry feats of the dancers? Where was the harm? Could not a father sanctify by his presence the rejoicings of his children? Such were perhaps some of the secret reasonings of the reverend capuchin. By some pedantic minds father Dagobert might have been taxed with being illiterate, and with knowing very little beyond the litanies of the church. But is not ignorance bliss? Was it not to the want of knowledge, that was to be attributed the simplicity of heart, which was so edifying in one of his sacred mission, and that humility to which he was sworn? Is it not written; "Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Why should he understand Latin, or so many other musty inexplicable things? Was not the fruit of the tree of knowledge the cause of the perdition of man? Besides, who ever heard of a learned capuchin? Would it not have been a portentous anomaly? If his way of fasting, of keeping the holydays, of saying mass, of celebrating marriages, of christening, of singing prayers for the dead, and of hearing confessions, of inflicting penance, and of performing all his other sacerdotal functions, was contrary to the ritual and to the canons of the church-why-he knew no better. What soul had been thereby endangered? His parishioners were used to his ways? Was he, after fifty years of labor in the vineyard of the Lord, to change his manner of working, to admit that he had blundered all the time, to dig up what he had planted, and to undertake, when almost an octogenarian, the reform of himself and others? Thus, at least, argued many of his friends. They were sure that none could deny, that all the duties of religion were strictly performed by his parishioners. Were not the women in the daily habit of confessing their sins? And if he was so very mild in his admonitions, and so very sparing in the infliction of harsh peaance on them, why not suppose that it was because the Saviour himself had been very lenient towards the guiltiest of their sex? It was the belief of father Dagobert, that the faults of women proceeded from the head and not from the heart, because that was always kind. Why then hurl thunderbolts at beings so exquisitely delicate and so beautifully fragile the porcelain work of the creator-when they could be reclaimed by the mere scratch of a rose's thorn, and brought back into the bosom of righteousness by the mere pulling of a silken string? As to the men, it is true that they never haunted the confessional; but perhaps they had no sins to confess, and if they had, and did not choose to acknowledge them, what could he do? Would it have been sound policy to have annoyed them with fruitless exhortations, and threatened them with excommunication, when they would have laughed at the brutum fulmen? Was it not better to humor them a little, so as to make good grow out of evil? Was not their aversion to confession redeemed by manly virtues, by their charity to the Was not poor and their generosity to the church? his course of action subservient to the interest both of church and state, within the borders of which it was calculated to maintain order and tranquillity, by avoiding to produce discontents, and those disturbances which are their natural results? Had he not a right, in his turn, to expect that his reposé should never be interrupted, when he was so sedulously attentive to that of others, and so cheerfully complying with the exigencies of every flitting hour? When the colonists had thought proper to go into Such was the character of father Dagobert even GEORGE W. BETHUNE. DR. BETHUNE, the popular divine, poet, and wit, was born March, 1805, in the city of New York. After receiving a liberal education, he was ordained in 1826 a Presbyterian minister, but in the following year joined the Dutch Reformed communion. His clerical career was commenced at Rhinebeck on the Hudson, from whence he removed to Utica; and in 1834, to Philadelphia. In 1849, he again removed to Brooklyn, where he still remains, at the head of a large and influential congregation. Dr. Bethune is the author of The Fruit of the Spirit, Early Lost, Early Saved, The History of a Penitent; all popular works of a devotional character. In 1848, he published Lays of Love and Faith, and other Poems; and in 1850, a volume of Orations, and Occasional Discourses. He has also collected and published a portion of his Sermons. In 1847, he edited the first American edition: of Walton's Angler, a work which he performed in a careful and agreeable manner, befitting his own reputation as an enthusiastic and highly celebrated follower of the "contemplative man's recreation," and as a literary scholar. Gr. W. Bethund Dr. Bethune traces his family descent from the Huguenots, and has frequently spoken on the claims of that devout, industrious, and enterprising class of the early settlers of our country, to the national gratitude and reverence. His efforts as an after-dinner and off-hand extempore speaker, are marked by genial humor and appreciation of the subject before him. At the convivial meetings of the National Academy of Design, and of the St. Nicholas Society, he is always called out; and his response is usually among the most noticeable features of the evening. The volume of Dr. Bethune's orations comprises funeral discourses on the death of Stephen Van Rensselaer, the patroon, President Harrison and General Jackson; lectures and College addresses upon Genius, Leisure, its Uses and Abuses, the Age of Pericles, the Prospects of Art in the United States, the Eloquence of the Pulpit, the Duties of Educated Men, a Plea for Study, and the Claims of our Country upon its Literary Men. SONG. She's fresh as breath of summer morn, For joy like dew shines in her eye, She knows not of her loveliness, How welcome is the rustling breeze But O! how blest is he, THE FOURTH OF JULY. MAINE, from her farthest border, gives the first exulting shout, And from NEW HAMPSHIRE'S granite heights, the echoing peal rings out; The mountain farms of staunch VERMONT prolong the thundering call; MASSACHUSETTS answers: "Bunker Hill!" a watchword for us all. RHODE ISLAND shakes her sea-wet locks, acclaiming with the free, And staid CONNECTICUT breaks forth in sacred harmony. The giant joy of proud New York, loud as an earthquake's roar, Is heard from Hudson's crowded banks to Erie's crowded shore, NEW JERSEY, hallowed by their blood, who erst in battle fell, At Monmouth's, Princeton's, Trenton's fight, joins in the rapturous swell. Wide PENNSYLVANIA, strong as wide, and true as she is strong, From every hill to valley, pours the torrent tide along. Stand up, stout little DELAWARE, and bid thy volleys roll, Though least among the old Thirteen, we judge thee by thy soul! Hark to the voice of MARYLAND! Over the broad Chesapeake Her sons, as valiant as their sires, in cannonadings speak. VIRGINIA, nurse of Washington, and guardian of his grave, Now to thine ancient glories turn the faithful and the brave; We need not hear the bursting cheer this holy day inspires, To know that, in Columbia's cause, “Virginia never tires." Fresh as the evergreen that waves above her sunny soil, NORTH CAROLINA Shares the bliss, as oft the patriot's toil; And the land of Sumter, Marion, of Moultrie, Pinckney, must Respond the cry, or it will rise e'en from their sleeping dust. And GEORGIA, by the dead who lie along Savannah's bluff, Full well we love thee, but we ne'er can love thee well enough; From thy wild northern boundary, to thy green isles of the sea, Where beat on earth more gallant hearts than now throb high in thee? On, on, 'cross ALABAMA's plains, the ever-flowery glades, To where the Mississippi's flood the turbid Gulf invades; There, borne from many a mighty stream upon her mightier tide, Come down the swelling long huzzas from all that valley wide, As wood-crowned Alleghany's call, from all her summits high, Reverberates among the rocks that pierce the sunset sky, While on the shores and through the swales 'round the vast inland seas, The stars and stripes, 'midst freemen's songs, are flashing to the breeze, The woodsman, from the mother, takes his boy upon his knee, To tell him how their fathers fought and bled for liberty; The lonely hunter sits him down the forest spring beside, To think upon his country's worth, and feel his country's pride; While many a foreign accent, which our God can understand, Is blessing Him for home and bread in this free, fertile land. Yes! when upon the eastern coast we sink to happy rest, The Day of Independence rolls still onward to the west, Till dies on the Pacific shore the shout of jubilee, That woke the morning with its voice along the Atlantic sea. -O God! look down upon the land which thou hast loved so well, And grant that in unbroken truth her children still may dwell; Nor, while the grass grows on the hill and streams flow through the vale, May they forget their fathers' faith, or in their covenaut fail! God keep the fairest, noblest land that lies beneath the sun; "Our country, our whole country, and our country ever one!" NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS.* We are emphatically one people. The constant and expanding flood of emigrants from less favored lands gives in some sections a temporary, superficial diversity of customs, and even of language. Yet, as they come moved by an admiring wish to share our privileges, and a grateful respect for the nation which has made itself so prosperous, while it sets open its gates so hospitably wide, they readily adopt our usages, and soon become homogeneous with the mass through which they are distributed. Until they or their children are educated in free citizenship, they follow; but rarely, and then never successfully, attempt to lead. As the Anglo-Saxon tongue is the speech of the nation, so it is the AngloSaxon mind that rules. The sons of those who triumphed in the war of Independence have subdued the distant forest, making the wilderness to rejoice with the arts and virtues of their fathers. The patronymics borne by the most influential among them are most frequently such as are famihar and honorable among us. Summon together the dwellers in any town of our older, particularly of our more northern states, and you will find that there is scarcely a state of the Union where they have not relatives. The representative in Congress from the farthest west laughs over their school-boy frolics with the representative of the farthest east. The woodsman on the Aroostook talks of his brother on the Rio Grande; the tradesman in the seaport, of his son, a judge, in Missouri. The true-hearted girl, who has left her mountain birth-place to earn her modest paraphernalia amidst the ponderous din of a factory near the Atlantic coast, dreams sweetly on her toil-blest pillow of him who, for her dear sake, is clearing a home in the wilds of Iowa, or sifting the sands of some Californian Pactolus. We all claim a common history, and, whatever be our immediate parentage, are proud to own ourselves the grateful children of the mighty men who declared our country's independence, framed the bond of our Union, and bought with their sacred blood the liberties we enjoy. Nor is it an insincere compliment to assert, that, go where you will, New England is represented by the shrewdest, the most enlightened, the most successful, and the most religious of our young population. Nearly all our teachers, with the authors of our school-books, and a very large proportion of our preachers, ns well as of our editors (the classes which have the greatest control over the growing character of our youth), come from or receive their education in New England. Wherever the New Englander goes, he carries New England with him. New England is his boast, his standard of perfection, and 64 So they do in New England!" his confident answer to * From the Harvard Address, "Claims of our Country on its Literary Men." all objectors. Great as is our reverence for those venerable men, he rather wearies us with his inexhaustible eulogy on the Pilgrim Fathers, who, he seems to think, have begotten the whole United States. Nay, enlarging upon the somewhat complacent notion of his ancestors, that God designed for them, "his chosen people," this Canaan of the aboriginal heathen, he looks upon the continent as his rightful heritage, and upon the rest of us as Hittites, Jebusites, or people of a like termination, whom he is commissioned to root out, acquiring our money, squatting on our wild lands, monopolizing our votes, and marrying our heiresses. Whence, or how justly, he derived his popular sobriquet, passes the guess of an antiquary; but certain it is, that if he meets with a David, the son of Jesse has often to take up the lament in a different sense from the ori ginal, "I am distressed for thee, my Brother Jonathan!" Better still, his sisters, nieces, female cousins, flock on various honorable pretexts to visit him amidst his new possessions, where they own with no Sabine reluctance the constraining ardor of our un sophisticated chivalry; and happy is the household over which a New England wife presides! blessed the child whose cradle is rocked by the hand, whose slumber is hallowed by the prayers of a New Eng land mother! The order of the Roman policy is reversed. He conquered, and then inhabited; the New Englander inhabits, then gains the mastery, not by force of arms, but by mother-wit, steadiness, and thrift. That there should be, among us of the other races, a little occasional petulance, is not to be wondered at; but it is only superficial. The New Eng. lander goes forth not as a spy or an enemy, and the gifts which he carries excite gratitude, not fear. He soon becomes identified with his neighbors, their interests are soon his, and the benefits of his entermunity where he has planted himself, thus tending prising cleverness swell the advantage of the comconfederacy. Yet let it be remembered that this to produce a moral homogeneousness throughout the New England influence, diffusing itself, like noiseless but transforming leaven, through the recent and future states, while it makes them precious as allies, would also make them formidable as rivals, terrible as enemies. The New Englander loses little of his main characteristics by migration. He is as shrewd, though not necessarily as economical, a calculator in the valley of the Mississippi, as his brethren in the east, and as brave as his fathers were at Lexington or Charlestown. It were the height of suicidal folly for the people of the maritime states to attempt holding as subjects or tributaries, directly or indirectly, the people between the Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains; but those who have not travelled among our prairie and forest settlements can have only a faint idea of the filial reverence, the deferential respect, the yearning love, with which they turn to the land where their fathers sleep, and to you who guard their sepulchres. The soul knows nothing of distance, and, in their twilight musings, they can scarcely tell which is dearer to their hearts -the home of the kindred they have left behind them, or the home they have won for their off. spring. Be it your anxious care, intelligent gentlemen of New England, that so strong a bond is never strained to rupture! To your Pilgrim Fathers the highest place may well be accorded; but forget not, that, about the time of their landing on the Rock, there came to the mouth of the Hudson men of kindred faith and descent-men equally loving freedom-men from the sea-washed cradle of modern constitutional freedom, whose union of free-burgher-cities taught us |