okening good for the
future.

It is encouraging, that the two rival systems, most boldly promising to
lead to perfection, both had their birth under political and mental
bondage. So evidently with Romanism, whether under its proper form and
name, or refined and disguised after the modern fashion. And the same
is true of the baptized infidelity imported from Germany. The German
mind is cramped and diseased by the bands which confine it. It is not
allowed to speculate freely on politics, and the many questions most
nearly touching present interests. Therefore, on the records and on
the doctrines which pertain to eternal interests, it falls with an
insane avidity for innovation, and runs into licentiousness a liberty
no where else enjoyed. Hence the levity, in dealing with things
sacred, in Germany often found in minds of the first and second orders,
here is taken up by those to the third and fourth--the copyists and
imitators; nay, by the buffoons who figure at the farces of mock
philanthropy. Now, though every folly must find minds whose caliber it
fits, we may hope the genuine American mind will not be extensively
beguiled by either of the misbegotten offspring of Europe's mental
servitude.

But, to the point--progress made in estimating life. A few centuries
ago, a torrent of enthusiasm set in the direction of bearing the cross
into Asia, to fight for glory, and the propagation of Christianity, on
the fields of Palestine. Already the old Roman military character was
greatly improved on. Virtue, (_manliness_, a` vir-_man_) was no longer
supposed to fulfil its highest office in

Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.

A delicate sense of honor, of the courtesy due to a foe and the
gallantry to the other sex, betoken a type of humanity in advance of
the brute ferocity of the best days of Rome.

But, notwithstanding Mr. Burke's eloquence, and the opinion sometimes
expressed, that the courtly knight of the middle age, realized the
perfection of humanity; we have no reason to regret that the age of
chivalry is gone by, and that the age of speculation, and money-making,
and industrial enterprize has succeeded. The materialism of this age,
with all its faults, is better than the chivalry of an age gone by.
It tends to keep the world at peace; _that_ tended to perpetual
turmoil. The supposition _all rich_, according to modern ideas, is not
so flat a contradiction as the supposition _all glorious_, in m