| | | | The inevitable result, of course, is that all excellence | will ultimately centre in the American Republic. That, | with no less certainty, it will thence travel to the | Sandwich Islands and to China, is a consequence which | does not seem to have occurred to our author. His | prophetic eye only foresees

"that all the vitalities | successively developed and superseded through sixty | centuries will become resuscitated and harmonized on | this American continent."

He gives utterance to the | same idea, during a paroxysm of prophetic rapture, in | language which will explain doubtless to the world the | full meaning of a Christian symbol which has been | involved in some obscurity: ~~ | | We do not quite understand from this passage, as St. John | bears the eagle, and the eagle bears the banner, whether | or not he is to accompany the bird of power in his journey | across the zenith with the stars and stripes. St. John little | knew the full glory of his mission. But the words

| "supreme dominion"

are significant, | | and are pointed still more by the title of the book ~~ | Westward Empire. Throughout, it | proceeds on the assumption that

"the Republic in its | centre"

is to govern the whole of the American | continent. And in order to prove that such a result is a | decree of the

"Providence"

which has to bear a | multitude of human sins, our author proceeds to a general | investigation of history in support of his theory. He starts | by pointing out that the ; and he is exceedingly | indignant that Mr. Scott Russell's monster ship should | have received the name "Great Eastern," which he | denounces as an unnatural misnomer. Nothing Eastern | can ever be great. He then divides the history of the | world into four periods ~~ <1.> The Age of Pericles; | <2.> The Age of Augustus; <3.> The Age of Leo X., | which we are informed began in the fifth century after | Christ; and <4.> The Age of Washington. We are not to | imagine that the classification which has jumbled in one | two periods so far apart in religion, in time, in manners, | in civilization, as the time of the austere Gregory and the | profligate epoch of the Renaissance is a mere human | invention of the author's. , he tells us, . | The Age of Pericles seems to have begun considerably | before the Age of Shem. It appears that before that | patriarch's epoch there was a settlement of orientals living | together at the sources of the Indus, which have been | designated to our author as the situation of the first | civilized communities, by some peculiar revelation ~~ | possibly from St. John, in his aerial journey with the stars | and stripes. Anyhow, the revelation was a convenient | one, as it disposes of the difficulty of the early Hindoo | civilization, which otherwise must have travelled | eastward. Of the Chinese civilization, with a science, and | probably a literature, long in advance of Europe, he does | not attempt to give any account. These orientals were | expelled, previously to the flood, from their primeval | seats by a furious religious war, for the knowledge of | which history is indebted to Mr. Magoon. Taking a turn | through Abyssinia, they at last settled on the Morean | isthmus; and in proof of his wondrous story, the author | points out that Attica was so named from Attac, a town | upon the Indus, and Corinthus is only a Hindoo word for | the mouth of the Indus. The Acro-Corinthus must have | strikingly reminded the emigrants of the salt marshes of | the Runn of Cutch. Then we come to Noah, and his three | sons. . This is a truly American division. The | Japhatians of the West seem well content to abide by the | bargain. The descendants of Shem passed from Crete | into Greece, and the descendants of Japhet from Thrace | into Greece, and both migrations are adduced as striking | proofs of the westward tendency of civilization. Oriental | thought developed into Greek; or, in the chaste metaphor | of our author: ~~ | | Many pages of fustian, studded with proper names, | follow about Greek; and afterwards about Roman | literature. The composition is, in truth, an abridgment of | Lempriere in a setting of the purest American metaphor. | We recommend the following description of Tacitus to | the spasmodic school for versification: ~~ | | But, spite of the tendency of all literary excellence | towards the setting sun, our author admits that Roman | literature, even during the time that it lasted, was a | considerable falling off from the age of Pericles. | However, Rome was the means of preserving to future | ages the treasures of the Greek intellect ~~ which is | equally true of the Byzantine empire. The mode in which | these treasures were preserved and transmitted is | described with a fidelity which will go home to the hearts | of our agricultural friends: ~~ | | It was a new and striking thought to recognise the sticky | properties of blood, and to make the eagle rise from the | battlefield all covered with seeds, just as you see a | sportsman come out of a thicket all covered with burrs. | The next period is the

"Leoine Age,"

which | includes Charlemagne and Queen Elizabeth. Unluckily, | during this period, literature not only did not travel | westward, but actually travelled eastward, for at the | commencement of it the Moors in Spain were certainly | the most cultivated nation in Europe. Mr. Magoon passes | with a light foot over Mediaeval history. The bead roll of | names ceases, for there was no Lempriere to be consulted, | and so he is sparing in the use of them. He does indeed | contrive to make a few blunders in spite of this salutary | discretion. Good old Archbishop Bradwardine is turned | into an early reformer ~~ Albertus Magnus is decked in | the plumes of Bonaventure, and called

"the Seraphic | Doctor"

~~ and the author seems to imagine that the | Romans came into England at the same time as the Danes, | and that Edward the Confessor was the successor of | Canute. But these are pardonable errors, which have | slipped in accidentally in the middle of cautiously vague | declamations about chivalry and monasticism. He is not | more fortunate in his geography; for in a disquisition on | architecture, in which he lays down that the western | architecture of England is superior to anything else in | Europe, he names as the three western most counties of | England, Devonshire, Hampshire, and Lincolnshire. In | another place, Liverpool is put upon a rock; and, still | further on, we are told that the system of pluralities in | England produces licentiousness and immorality among a | large proportion of the upper clerical ranks. Before he | writes much more about England, we must advise him to | violate his own principles by travelling eastward, to see it. | However, he hastens to the time of Shakspeare, where he | feels himself at home; and delivers himself of a critique | on that poet's literary position, which is worthy of the | attention of Mr. Sidney Dobell: ~~ | | Or rather, seeing there were two of them; it should be like | the clown at Astley's ~~ ! The Emersonian | school, with which Mr. Magoon seems to sympathise, is | very fond of prostituting the loftiest names for the | purpose of supplying the deficiencies of their barren | imagery. In respect to Art, we have already given one of | our author's doctrines. Another is, that the object of | orientation in architecture is ~~ we believe Magoon is an | Irish name ~~ to point

"the mediaeval front to the | setting sun."

We then pass on to the last two | hundred years, to which he gives the name of the

| "Age of Washington."

In this it is his task to prove | that America has inherited all that was excellent in | literature, art, science, philosophy, and religion, and has | improved upon them all. The grandeur of the era he | describes in language which we should admire, if we | could understand it: ~~ | | had passed from the old continent to the new. | Does Mr. Magoon recollect who were the

"selectest" |

inhabitants of the plantations? He speaks with just | pride of the Pilgrim Fathers. They have excited the | sympathy and claimed the homage of men of very | different hues of thought. All who venerate Christian | confessorship, all who admire resistance to tyranny, have | joined in recognising the grandeur of their characters. | But, among their many eulogists, we doubt if they have | found any to praise them with such copiousness of | metaphor as this: ~~ | | But when we come to inquire in detail how far America | has evidenced in fact this

"concentration of | antecedent rays,"

we find that in the answers there is | a melancholy preponderance of the future tense. The | literary triumphs seem to be confined to Mr. Squier and | Dr. Schoolcraft, whose

"effulgence"

has been | so

"buffeted"

that it scarcely twinkles on this | side of the Atlantic. Neither Bancroft, nor Prescott, nor | Longfellow, mentioned. Mr. Magoon will have nothing | that does not originate in the Far West; and he | contemptuously dismisses the productions of New York | as . In point of architecture, they intend to have | a beautiful native style, some day or other; but at present | they are content with asserting that Philadelphia contains | more true Roman and Corinthian than any three cities in | the Old World. So in painting, their present | performances seem to have been limited to the invention | of that great work of art, the moving panorama, and the | scraping off by R. H. Wilde of the whitewash from | Giotto's picture of "Dante at Florence;" but ~~ in the | future tense ~~ their achievements are far less narrowly | limited. . It may be so; but there is an old | proverb touching the premature enumeration of chickens. | It is one of the strangest anomalies of our mental | constitution, that a nation's mind and a nation's literature | should often stand in such startling contrast. The Italians, | who have been slaves for centuries because they could | not control their slightest impulse, will not suffer a shade | of bombast to mar the classic delicacy of their style. The | Yankee, whose life is one long calculation, appears to | have bombast for his mother tongue.