on the constitutionality of acts of Congress. Here then would be State authority superior to and controling that of the General Government. But if one State has the right to control the acts of the General Government, another has an equal right; and when States thus disagree, and refuse submission to the General Government, our Union is at an end—there is no law but that of force-our grand and glorious Confederation is resolved into its original elements, and the different States become but organized associations of lawless bandits. Secession, then, as Mr. Webster declares, " is a revolutionary right, but as a practical right under the Constitution, is an absurdity; for it supposes resistance to Government under the authority of Government; it supposes dismemberment, without violating the principles of union; it supposes opposition to law, without crime; it supposes the violation of oaths, without responsibility; it supposes the total overthrow of the Government, without revolution." STRAY REFLECTIONS. TRANQUILLITY is the proper atmosphere for the life of the soul. There never was formed a character, either intellectually or morally noble, the foundation of which was not laid in thoughtful seclusion. The vulgar notion, that the palpable agents in tumultuous revolutions only, are the truly great, is fallacious. These bustlers are no more to be compared with those who move great masses with the slow and silent lever, in their own retirement, than are actors to the writer of the play. Wisdom is very chary of her favored children, guarding them in the seclusion which she oftenest visits, and seldom sending them forth to chaffer and higgle in the market where honors and riches are bought and sold. Whoever carefully examines the history of any important crisis in human affairs, will often find that the reins of fortune have been held in the study of the philosopher and the cell of the recluse. Very few, we suspect, imagined that while Dante was wandering in poverty and exile he was to influence, more powerfully than any one else living, the destinies of his own and the generations immediately following. Fewer still, perhaps, four centuries later, were looking to the jail on Bedford Bridge for the mightiest moral influence which arose even in that age so fruitful in real genius. In the strong-hold of his friend the Elector, the Great Reformer accomplished more than half his work. The greatest ornaments to English Literature have (with perhaps the single exception of Lamb, who could find little pleasant scenery out of Fleet street) been devoted lovers of green retreats and contemplation. Milton exults amid the quiet fields :— "Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasure While the landscape round it measures." The poet of the Seasons begs of solitude : "Oh, let me pierce thy secret cell, And in thy deep recesses dwell." The "gentle dweller by the lilied Ouse" has dedicated no less than eight hundred verses to the praises of this his chief delight. Mrs. Barbauld, addressing the Common Father, declares, "With Thee in shady solitudes I walk." Coleridge sighs for "A green and silent spot amid the hills, A small and silent dell." Kirk White invites us to the fields : "We will seek the woody lane, By the hamlet on the plain ;" and Young seems to have devoted all his powers, both of contemptuous ridicule and soothing entreaty, to deter men from the meretricious glare of the bustling world. Fools Besides the testimony of so many worthy witnesses, retirement is itself so soul-soothing and palliative to the heat of the passions, that even the vicious are constrained to sound its praises, though few of such dare meet its solemn stillness. The reason is obvious. flee self; the wise court their own acquaintance; and self-examination can no more be prosecuted in a bustling activity, than Old Polypheme, whose mirror, as the poet tell us, was the ocean, could inspect his visage and make his toilet in a tempest. The value of thoughtful seclusion to the whole man, appears to be to that of active and vehement exertion, as the worth of the soul to the worth of the mind, the immortal to the ephemeral; and for the obvious reason, that the former can hardly be cultivated in busy scenes, while the latter may be as well quickened in acumen by the rough process of attrition, as firmly grounded in judgment by sober reflection. The interests and associations connected with the soul, are so exclusively connected with the shadowy future, that there can be no less favorable scene for reflection upon them, than the absorbing turmoil of the busy present. From the great ocean of light existing in the Divine Mind, there come to the darkness in which we groped, but a few faint and feeble rays; and these are soon extinguished in the midst of heated, selfish controversy, but gleam with new lustre when carefully cherished. The glowworm never shines on stormy nights. Our state in the future world shall doubtless be one of the most intense activity, and that this may be the beneficent and self-rewarding energy of the good and happy, instead of the writhings and convulsions of the lost, there must, doubtless be an activity of good during our probation. But, as it is the spiritual part of our nature, by which we are allied to the future, we are not to imagine that physical exertion is alone or even perhaps mainly requisite. The soul is the life of the man; its sloth is his death, and the soul grows slothful from the neglect to which it is subjected in the crowd, but acts and exults in its native powers when the clamors of the body are silenced in seclusion. Nor have the advantages and delights of retirement appeared obvious to religious men only. The influence of worldly scenes is most exquisitely set forth by the oft-quoted simile in Shelley's Adonais :— "Life, like a dome with many-color'd glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity." The references to the delights of seclusion, in Childe Harold, are too numerous and well known to need mention here. The adaptedness of the scenes of nature to furnish rich delight to a contemplative disposition, unequivocally indicates the will of the Common Father, with regard to our occasional seclusion from the world. No mind is so constituted that there are not some scenes in Nature fitted to afford it delight. Akenside has beautifully referred to the subject: "One pursues The vast alone, the wonderful, the wild; In fact, the Universe is but a beautiful, variegated picture, drawn by the pencil of the Creator, to attract the contemplations of His children, that, by occasionally abstracting ourselves from mortal interests, and considering the sublime harmony of His works, we may be prepared for that absorbing study of Himself, which is doubtless to constitute, in great part, the beatitude of the Better World. We pray you, gentle Reader, don't look to the "Table" for smooth phrases, or accurate composition. We have labored too long in the endeavor to suit the various tastes for which we cater, to have any energy left to continue the wearisome office here. Besides, it is no small relief that, after the toil of obtaining some forty odd pages for the press, we may turn aside to hold a little familiar talk with you. The "blues" are not peculiar to " gentlemen who have recently entered college." We have enjoyed that delightful ailing, with all the "ecstacy of woe," more than once since we first saw South Middle. We shall not attempt to define the beatitude to which we refer; for they who have experienced it need no explanation, and they who have not, could not understand us. It will be much more intelligible to present an instance of the thing itself in propriâ personâ. If any reader inquires what the "blues' have to do with our Maga., let him know that we have scribbled long enough to please him, and now intend to scribble for our own personal satisfaction. We came across one of the Quintumvirate, the other day, (who, poor soul, is sadly subject to the disease in its very worst form,) just when the fit was on him. He was evidently a disheartened man. We had before seen him when he appeared as though he would have given the world for a stout string of hemp. But we had never seen in the lines of his phiz such a dogged and immovable resolution "henceforth to count hope his enemy." His arms were thrust into his indispensable pockets (though he could have dispensed with them as useless appendages) to the elbows. There was that resigned expression of utter despair about his countenance, which we have sometimes seen in the face of a sheep hemmed in between two mischievous boys, without much ground for hope of getting out. His eye-balls were rolling about in the bottoms of their sockets, like a bullet in a shot-bag, and with about the same lustre. His face was twisted into the shape of a scalene triangle; and, in fact, the tout ensemble of the poor fellow was decidedly wo-begone. We tried, as in duty bound, to cheer him up; told him that he was young, and had probably a long life before him, which he said he knew before. Then we suggested that as his fortune couldn't change for the worse, the next alteration would probably be in his favor. This last idea seened quite reviving, and we began to hope that reason was returning. But soon he relapsed into his old state, and commenced so dolorous a train of musings that we shall not be able to forget it for a month. "Ah, my friend," said he, while his visage began to lengthen, till it became an interminable straight line," you can but ill imagine the insatiable canker-worm of grief which is gnawing at my heart. I have often tried to put on a smooth face; but that terrible work is still going on within, and I cannot stop it. Many a stern old oak, that has braved storm after storm, has fallen at last through the ceaseless gnawing of the worm at its heart; and many a soul, that was never bowed by the weight of affliction, has failed at last through the cankering of inward grief. The young soul awakes to the struggle of life with all the energy of resolution and the vivacity of hope; but there are seasons when the strings of a man's heart are strained almost to the breaking, and the rough winds of adversity sweep strains of melancholy music from those quivering cords. Judge me not by your own lightsome heart. You are interested in the world and its vanities; but I-I (we wish, dear reader, you could have seen his face just then) am often terrified with visions too horrible to be described. I will, however, reveal to you something of one which (and he looked tremblingly back over first one shoulder and then the other) lately appeared to me. It was evening. I was sitting in my room, in just the mood in which I generally receive these spiritual mssengers. The embers in the fireplace had nearly died out. You remember that sweet verse in the Footsteps of Angels "When the evening lamps are faded, And, like giants grim and tall, 66 don't you?" "Yes," said we, "but you needn't undertake to compare any of your visions with Longfellow's." Longfellow is nothing to me," he exclaimed, with as much indignation as he could express with that interminable straight line for a face; "but I only quoted his words to describe the appearance of my room on that memorable evening. But to proceed; every thing about the room combined to remind me of the transitory nature of earthly things. The dying embers, the flickering light, the fading outlines of the furniture, brought sombre reflections to my mind. But, as is usual with me, my reflections were not only melancholy but frightful. My room seemed filled with horrid shapes of Evil, with fiery-balls glaring horribly upon me from all directions through the thickening gloom. I shuddered and seemed about to sink upon the floor, when a long bony finger was laid upon my shoulder. By a spasmodic effort I mustered just strength enough to turn my head, (and he began again to twitch his head wildly and convulsively over his shoulder,) when, O horrors! what a countenance returned my gaze! It were utterly vain to attempt a description; but all the terrors of all the hideous shapes which ever visited me in my night-visions seemed collected in horrible countenance. But, not to keep you longer in suspense, (and his voice grew solemn with every word,) the Shape drew nearer, and, with a malignant grin, whispered its appalling accents in my ear, 'Any more copy? the forms are nearly all set up, and we want three pages of Table.' Mercy! bless me !' exclaimed I, this is -'s number, not mine.' The exertion partly dispelled my terror, and before I had fairly awakened from my reverie, the Devil had vanished." Matters about College seem to be progressing very much as usually. The new Catalogue shows a smaller number of undergraduates by nearly fifty, than the last, a circumstance which materially affects our subscription-list. But these temporary fluctuations have nothing to do with the prosperity of our venerable University. The appearance of "Scholars of the House" on the Catalogue occasions some gossip: this title is, we are informed by one of those in authority, the original one given to this Foundation by Dean Berkely, and is revived from respect to his memory. There has been but little severe sickness in College this term ; but we have not been altogether privileged above the common lot of humanity. Last vacation, while we were enjoying the delightful pleasures of rest from study and of intercourse with friends, a member of the Class of '48, unable to reach his home, sank gradually down to his grave, within sight of the College walls. He had not been long with us, for he entered at an advanced standing, and Death cut him down almost as soon as he commenced his course. But we had seen him enough to learn to value his many excellent qualities, and to confidently cherish the belief, that his career would be honorable to himself and useful to the world. Before he was removed from his room to one in town, with the few comforts which a College room can possibly afford a sick man, he exhibited a patience and a resignation which we have seldom seen equaled. We had not the privilege of standing by his death-bed; but there is substantial evidence that his meek and gentle spirit has escaped from the wearisome cares of the world to eternal security and joy. As a tribute of respect to his memory, the following resolutions were passed by the Class: "Whereas, in the dealings of an all-wise Providence, our classmate, PHILANDER S. SEELEY, has been taken from us by death; therefore, Resolved, That we sincerely sympathize with the friends, and above all, with the widowed mother of the deceased, in this their deep affliction. Resolved, That we mourn this loss to our class, of one who, as a thorough and ready scholar, and a pleasant and generous companion, endeared himself to all who knew him. Resolved, That we present a copy of these resolutions to the mother and friends of the deceased, and that they be published in each of the three following papers, viz: The New Haven Palladium, the Bridgeport Standard, and the New York Observer." We have a couple of morceaux, which our readers can swallow at their leisure. The first is old, but would be excellent if it was not spoiled in the translation: THE PRAISES OF NOTHING. FROM THE LATIN OF PASSERET. Whatever regions, from her heavenly throne, Than the secret influence of heaven's blest light; Than are the vernal hours; Nothing more sweet Nor ever wrangles for his rights in courts. |