The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 | Page 2

Ionia, and to have announced to him the
cessation of oracles, comes to us from all the remains of pagan
antiquity, warning us that the spirit of that ancient civilization has
departed with its forms: and while it bids us look forward to a new
destiny for the human race, it teaches us that the maxims and the
oracles by which that destiny must be guided, are to be sought
elsewhere than in the Republic of Plato and the grottos of Egeria.

Compared, then, with the monuments of classic antiquity, those of
England claim the distinction of being associated with an order of
things which is still existing and still in process of development:
compared with those of the rest of christian Europe, they recall a
progress, which, much more consistently than in other countries, has
tended in the direction of popular rights and constitutional liberty. The
reader of English history indeed has too often occasion to blush for the
vices or mourn for the madness of his species, as the spectator who
looks upon the grim fastnesses of the Tower, or into the gloomy
purlieus of St. Giles', will need but little else to remind him of the
despotism and inequality which have pursued liberty into this her
boasted and sea-girt retreat. But the Bastile, certainly, did not look in
its day upon scenes of less flagrant atrocity than the 'towers of Julius;'
while this advantage has always obtained in favor of the latter, that he
who turned with disgust or terror from that image of despotic pride and
violence, might behold at no great distance the piles of Westminster,
the seats of law and legislation, where the irrepressible spirit of
freedom in the bosom of the Commons was still nursing its resentment
or muttering its remonstrances at seasons of the deepest gloom and
depression. Henry VIII. might have heard that voice mingling with the
groans of his victims; Charles II. could not altogether shut it out from
the scenes of his midnight revel and debauchery. But no such hopeful
contrast meets us in the features or the history of the neighboring
continent. Democracy, it is true, the rough and hardy growth of the
German forests, struck an earlier root and flourished at first with better
promise there than in England. But this different fortune awaited it on
the continent and the island; that in the former it was soon rooted out,
and required in modern times the most violent and sanguinary efforts to
reproduce it; in the latter it has constantly survived and struggled
through every disaster toward a hopeful development. Such has been
the different political fate of two branches of the great Teutonic family;
let us observe whether some corresponding difference does not make
itself manifest in the aspect of their respective countries.
It might have been readily anticipated that the maintenance of the
popular right as a constitutional principle, operating through a long
course of ages, would have produced not only a sturdy independence

among the bulk of the English nation, but to some extent also, a local
independence of the country as regards the capital and the court. It
might have been foreseen, that instead of concentrating every separate
ray of genius and renown into one grand halo around the throne, this
habitual effort of the popular mind would have had a tendency to
scatter those rays more equally over the land, making the green valley
and the sequestered hamlet rejoice, each in the memory of its bard or
hero. Such might have been our prognostic from the political condition
of England as compared with that of the continent, and such will be
found upon observation to have been the result. A French poet aptly
describes the centralizing influences of his own capital as regards
France, when he tells us that 'at Paris people live, elsewhere they only
vegetate.' One great holocaust of talents, reputations and fortunes
forever ascends there to the glory of the Grand Nation, absorbing every
thing, assimilating every thing to itself, and leaving the country
widowed of its interest and shorn of its appropriate graces. The poet,
whose footsteps on the sunny plains of Provence would have long
brightened in the traditions of its peasantry; the hero, whose name
would have sufficed to confer undying interest on some old château of
the Jura; the orator, whose leisure hours might have made some French
Tusculum on the banks of the Loire forever fresh with the memory of
associated honors; all these have alike hastened to Paris, identified
themselves once for all with its crowds, and added whatever prestige
might attend their own names through future ages to the already
overshadowing prestige of that wonderful city. They point you there to
the house where the great Corneille breathed his last; it is hard by