the threshold, or exterminated to a man.' Here we were at issue, and our social intercourse terminated. "Soon after this, Talleyrand was swaying a potent influence in the councils of France. Whether these hostile sentiments were infused into the Directory, I have no knowledge; but it is certain, when our three Envoys were literally supplicating for peace, at the foot-stool of this power, they were received with an arrogance and intolerance that insulted the dignity, and trampled contemptuously upon the independence of a free nation. This, however, was the extreme point of our degradation. Adams was found a lion in the path of these aggressions. An open war ensued, in which our infant Navy, the child of his own creation, gloriously sustained the honor of our flag, and our national rights. Truxton, in the Constellation, captured a French frigate of equal size, and repelled the attack of a second. Truxton against France, was the language of the day; for he performed alone in his gallant ship, all the fighting. The French government retracted, and an honorable peace was consummated.'" Probably if Truxton had lived in 1856, he would have been put upon the retired list, fighting, at present, affording apparently very serious ground of complaint against naval gentlemen. We would advise them, under the rule adopted in the celebrated case of Rolando vs. the Chinese piratical junks, whenever they find themselves in such quarrelsome company, to clap their swords on the cabin-table, and, with Ancient Pistol, pray, that "Heaven may send them no need" of such unchristian and bloody-minded instruments. Apropos to naval affairs, we must be indulged in one more extract from this pleasing volume; it is about the battles on the Lakes. "After taking our leave of the Niagara, we proceeded to the shore to visit the arsenal, and were much gratified by the inspection of the shattered spars and cannon of both fleets. I can recall no event of my life more fraught with the luxury of national pride, in which purest and loftiest patriotism could so widely expatiate, as when I contemplated in the scene the rising glory of the Republic, and indulged the grateful and proud conviction, that the ships, or decaying hulks under my eyes, had done more to humble the arrogance of Britain than all the navies of France and Spain, through the long annals of naval warfare. We had often beaten her before, ship to ship, but the battle of Erie was our first trial in naval tactics, fleet against fleet. "I boldly challenge the history of England to unfold a nobler display of skill, decision, and bravery, than was evinced by Perry, a comparative boy of Rhode-Island, and his officers and tars, in every stage of this well-fought battle. The father of Perry I knew well in the Revolutionary war. He commanded a packet between Newport and Providence, and was called, I think, Kit Perry. "What incident in history is more noble and chivalric than that momentous and decisive crisis when Perry left his almost conquered and disabled ship, the Lawrence, in an open boat, exposed to the fire of the British fleet, and passed to the Niagara, a ship fresh and uninjured, thus deciding the fortunes of the day, and capturing every vessel of a superior enemy? "We were rowed back to town across the harbor, and inspected the public store-house, the spot where Perry built his ships, and the identical boat in which he passed to the Niagara, which was lying on the beach in good preservation. The officer who conducted us in the yawl, a true son of Neptune, not only declared, but swore to the fact, that the Lawrence had been sunk three times alongside the Queen Charlotte, that she could not be kept there, having each time fell off in the raking position in which we saw her, in spite of them. He appeared perfectly serious in the belief, that this was a preternatural affair. "In the year 1814 and during the late war, I had frequent, familiar, and unreserved conversations with a British officer high in rank and character, upon the subject of our successful naval encounters with British ships. He freely conceded the fact, and in elucidation, remarked, that he met his friend Gen. Hyslop in London after the capture of the frigate Java, who, with many officers and soldiers, was a passenger in her, en route to the East-Indies; that he inquired of Gen. Hyslop, how it happened, that the Java was captured by the Constitution, when it was admitted, that she was of about equal force, of superior equipment, and almost doubly manned. That Gen. Hyslop replied to him, 'They expected, on falling in with the Constitution, to make a short job of her capture.' He remained, he said, on the quarter-deck of the Java, through the engagement, and was astonished to see the superior gunnery of the Constitution, she discharging during the battle three broadsides to two of her antagonist, which added in effect one third to her weight of fire; and to this circumstance he imputed the victory of Bainbridge. My friend added, that Gen. Hyslop said to him, from his subsequent observation and inquiry he was convinced the American sailors were far more active and elastic in their habits and motions than the British. The same result which signalized the combat between the Constitution and Java, characterized the numerous battles in the Revolution, between American and British privateers, and still more marked and decisively those of the late war." We take leave of this volume with regret. It is a valuable contribution to American literature and history, and will, we hope, serve to bring to light many important facts connected with the past, which now lie hidden in MSS., letters, and memorandums, in private hands. Let us have in print all that remains of that glorious period. The influence exerted by every scrap and pen-mark of the patriot men of Revolutionary times, is happy and healthful. We need to learn the lesson which privation, war, oppression, and loss of this world's goods taught them. It was a noble lesson of self-reliance, of exalted patriotism, of dauntless courage-a whole school of virtue. We have more money nowadays, and more vanity than they had; scarcely, alas! as much principle. Let us have the intimate record of their daily life, which, also, had a daily beauty in it, that we may learn to live as they did; that we may feel and act as they did the great fact that, "Whether upon the scaffold high, Or in the battle's van, THE NEXT PRESIDENT. WHO will he be ? The question admits of but one answer. A Democrat. The answer however, like the text of a sermon, may be divided into several heads. Who will he be ? In the first place, he will be the nominee selected by the National Democratic Convention to be held at Cincinnati, in the month of June, 1856. That man will be the next President of the United States of America, and for that man, be he who he may, this Review will go heart and hand. Loyalty to the regu lar nominations of the Democratic Party is one of the prime articles in its political creed. We could never understand how a sane man could claim to be a Democrat; could pretend to see in the continued ascendency of that party the chief security, under God, of our continued union and prosperity as a nation; and yet aid to distract that party, and imperil that union and prosperity, by suffering selfish motives or sectional considerations to array him against its regular organization. Organization is strength. The best principles, the finest enthusiasm, exhale in fruitless wishes, in unsuccessful struggles against wrongs most patent, if supported by merely isolated effort. Arm an hundred thousand men with the most approved weapons of war, and put them in the field without drill or discipline, and what are they? A mere mob, a crowd of frightened fools, through which a regiment or two of veterans cut their way wherever they please. A political party is the same. Party organization is as necessary to the success of principles, as truth is to their usefulness and vitality. Therefore we say, there will never be a good time again in the Democratic Party till the good old Jackson collar is worn upon their necks, and every man is proud to wear it, not as the badge of servitude, but as an insignia prouder than the jewelled collar of an order of aristocratic knighthood, as the badge of unshrinking loyalty to the Democratic Party, and the principles it maintains. It was our father's boast, and a more thorough-going Democrat or conscientious man never lived, that for fifty years he had voted the regular Democratic ticket; and that however he might personally dislike a nominee, he must vote for him, his conscience compelled him, because the principle included the man, and it was better to vote for a questionable man, and an unquestionable principle, than for the best of men if his election would afford a questionable principle opportunity of development. Up to this hour we can make the same boast, and a great change must take place in our mode of thought and feeling if we do not continue so to the end. Arguing, therefore, as well from the sentiments of our own hearts, as from the deductions of reason and logic, we do not feel that we are doing any thing but a natural and most necessary thing in pledging ourselves to the nominees of the National Democratic Convention of 1856. We trust that every honest Democrat in the United States will recognize the wisdom and propriety of making the same resolution. Who will he be? With as free a soul as we make the pledge to vote for him, be he who he may, we say, that is a matter of the most perfect indifference to us. We ask only that he shall be a first rate man, and a sound National Democrat. A very prominent aspirant for the Presidency, and a very large bone of contention in the State of New-York-the more's the pity-ordered us a month or two since to stop his Review. We felt very much ashamed of him; because when a man sets himself up as the kind of material to make a President out of, he ought to be a large-minded, large-souled man. We are a hero-people, and want hero-men to lead us. Pettiness of thought is as much out of place in an aspirant to the Presidency, as sectionalism of principle. Perhaps, however, that distinguished gentleman allowed himself to be misled by the reports so industriously propagated by many persons of narrow intellect and envious souls, that this Review was busying itself with forwarding the designs and advocating the claims of some particular man upon the Convention, and that that man was not himself. As to the latter, he and they were undoubtedly right. As to the former, they were never more mistaken in their lives, except when they fancied that any man could be forced upon the Democratic Party. The personal friends of Mr. Van Buren tried the forcing process once upon a time, and we should think the result of that trial ought to admonish gentlemen of the success likely to attend any future "bolt" from the decision of the National Convention. It has been widely charged that we are the partisans of Franklin Pierce; and that our purpose is to procure if possible his renomination. The charge is a weak invention of the enemy. We believe that the last thing our President-a Democratic President-would do himself, or desire others to do, would be to endeavor to compass such a design by any indirection. If the Cincinnati Convention nominate him, his flag shall be nailed to our mast-head, and our best efforts used in his behalf. If they do not, we have no fault to find with them. The delegates to that Convention are supposed to represent the wisdom of the Democratic Party, and if they decide that they know a better man, he whom they choose is the best man for us. We never stood face to face with President Pierce but once in our lives, nor heard the sound of his voice but once. That time he spoke like a statesman and an orator. With the exception of that time, we have never laid eyes upon him. Nor have we ever had the scratch of a pen from him. In fact, if the General should run against us under a forty-light gas chandelier, with all the burners blazing at once, he would not probably know us from our first male parent, commonly called "Adam." We never received and never asked either aid or comfort from the Administration in the conduct of this Review. We mean the Democratic Party to support us, because we support themthat obligation is mutual-and that is the only obligation we desire to lie under. And we can tell our friends, and our enemies, that the Democratic Party always does support whatever is true to it, and worth supporting. We have sustained, and we mean to sustain the Administration in every act done by it in accordance with National Democratic principles. We make no war for men. We never saw the man, outside the circle of our private friendships, for whom we would peril so much as the nail upon our little finger. For man and his rights; for the Union and its destinies; for the faith of Democracy, which next to our belief in God we cherish; for truth, in any strait, |