that may thus be set at nought and defied would be an absurdity. But the answer is, that a government based like that of the Union is an absurdity directly it attempts to assert its supremacy. Put it in the simple form of a supreme government existing by permission, and it is a manifest contradiction in terms. It is effective so long as all choose to submit, but no longer; long toleration may increase its confidence and stimulate its arrogance, but cannot augment its strength, nor knit more closely the ties which are but ropes of sand. The inevitable tendency of democracy is the oppression of a minority; and the result of oppression in such a system is dissolution. "Were we mistaken, my countrymen," asks the President, "in attaching this importance to the constitution of our country? Was our devotion paid to the wretched, inefficient, clumsy contrivance which this new doctrine would make it? Did we pledge ourselves to the support of an airy nothing -a bubble that must be blown away by the first breath of disaffection?" Most reflecting people would now give to these questions an answer quite opposite to that which the interrogator triumphantly anticipates.

Through the whole of his presidency, and through the years of retirement which succeeded it, he continued to be the idol of the American people. The fact is, that he came to the surface in a time and country whose characteristics he embodied; his faults and virtues were the faults and virtues of the American people. Theirs were his energy, self-dependence, and decision; theirs his arrogance, bigotry, and lawlessness. His disregard of the rights of foreign powers, his fearless assumption of responsibility in aggression, were high merits in the eyes of a filibustering populace. His boastfulness and vanity were more than tolerated, because they represented exactly the pretensions of his countrymen.

His theoretical republicanism and his arbitrary practices were the true reflection of the spirit of democracy. And he was the last man in whom the people saw a chief who followed his own ideas, right or wrong, uninfluenced by popular opinion, and who was in unison with the spirit of his age, not because he yielded to it, but because he controlled it.

The

Jackson's violent prejudices were in great measure caused, no doubt, by his ignorance, which was extreme. He appears to have had the faculty of believing exactly what he wished to believe, not in the ordinary limits, but to the extent of being actually possessed by a thorough conviction. People were angels or devils exactly as it suited him to endow them with celestial or infernal attributes; and no acts of theirs, except their submission to, or rebellion against, his will, could change their destiny. In his latter years he became religious, and desired to be publicly admitted into the church. divine who records this phase of his existence reports that the venerable convert or "candidate," as he terms him, answered the questions respecting doctrine and experience very satisfactorily; but that there was great difficulty in getting him to declare that he forgave his enemies. This obstacle, however, was at length surmounted, and he made public profession of his faith; but that did not at all prevent him from attacking anybody who differed from him, or censured him, with his customary virulence. He used to read at this time a great deal in the Prayer-book-principally, we suspect, the Commination, or Denouncing of God's anger against sinners, with special application to Clay and Calhoun. His latest moments appear to have been clouded by regrets that he had not caused this latter statesman to undergo the last penalty of the law.

We cannot, however, part from this sturdy character without doing justice to its better points.

We

have been judging him principally as the man selected for a great office; but we can well understand that no man had warmer friends than he, nor more devoted adherents. There was much that was amiable and lovable about him. If he was relentless in his animosity, he was equally constant in his friendships. In domestic life he was gentle and winning-in social life distinguished by a fine and antique courtesy; and success and popularity certainly developed in him no latent faults of disposition, but rather softened and refined him. The finest trait in his mixed character, and a very remarkable one, was his tender and chivalrous affection for his little old homely rustic wife. The illusory light in which he saw her must have emanated from some innate nobility of his own-it transfigured for him her whole life, and made her memory sacred. Heaven," said the old man, after she was dead, "will be no heaven for me, if I do not meet her there."

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Nor can we part from Mr Parton without acknowledging the various and considerable talent he has

shown in this biography. From the common fault of biographies it is free-it does not transmute the faults, nor exaggerate inordinately the merits, of its hero. It is voluminous, certainly, extending through three big volumes, each of six or seven hundred pages; yet we cannot say what portions we would have retrenched, for all have legitimate connection with the subject, and, even where that connection is slenderest, a vivid sidelight is generally thrown on events and topics and manners which interest the general reader. There is ample evidence of industry, hones ty, and humour; and the tangled questions of American politics are lucidly stated and sensibly discussed. The most amusing chapter is "the Successful Politician"

where the career of a youth who takes office under Jackson and Van Buren is told in a way that would have made it a very agreeable separate story or magazine paper. And the chapter that shows most weight and power of analysis is, as it should be, that which gives the summary of Jackson's character and

career.

THERE are some things which owe their success to repetition, and are never done full justice to without ample and frequent rehearsals. A new habit may be hard to form ; but, when once formed, it clings like iron; and a new part naturally gains finish and reality with every additional performance. The rule is all but infallible in art, where it is only after the machinery has ceased to creak, and the scenes glide smoothly, that perfection is attainable : and it is equally the case in all individual work which practice makes perfect. But the rule does not apply to events. Certain acts in life must be done but once to preserve their full force and dignity; and the repetition of an unusual effort, once brilliantly successful, is but too often an elaborate failure. We might claim credit for some wisdom in these observations, were it not that everybody will instantly divine what they refer to, and that most people will be conscious of certain suggestions to the same effect which have entered their own minds during the past month. It is not that we have entered for another grand industrial race against the world, with all its prizes and

VOL. XCI.-NO. DLX.

penalties-nor that we are bent on repeating on a larger scale a skilful effort of art, which once gained universal applause. It is that we have violated the order of nature to a certain extent, and aimed at the repetition of a great Event-a rash attempt, unknown to the usages of history. Ten years ago we did a great thing, which our neighbours imitated, with more and less success, as was natural. Now that the little circle of imitations is over, we have had the temerity to take our place again in the field, and boldly to repeat the grand experiment. The attempt was, under any circumstances, almost rash in its boldness. The first Industrial Palace took the world by storm, an unprecedented and almost inconceivable achievement; but other repetitions of the Exposition Universelle, in other places, have worn out all the freshness and much of the dignity of the idea. In face of that familiarity which breeds contempt, and of the natural exhaustion or satisfaction of curiosity which the Irish, French, and Italian shows might be expected to produce, we have once more pitched the mighty tent, and called together the nations. It is under a changed firmament that

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the new Palace of Art and Skill raises its shining roofs. Dark historic clouds are upon the sky, which, ten years ago, were of a serenity almost too intense to be human; and the deepest pathos of love and grief, sublimer elements than even Art, throw a certain shadow over the jubilee: but the fact is accomplished by this time beyond the reach of adverse prophecy or cautious doubt. There is a second Great Exhibition. We have repeated our Event, and have not made it a failure. Eleven years after, through utter revolution and change of almost everything around-through complete failure of all our hopes and prophecies-in a new world moved by other aims, and distracted by livelier passions,-the Crystal wonder of 1851 has found a mightier, more elaborate, costly, and splendid successor. Again, the peaceable London crowds, plentiful enough of themselves in all conscience, begin to be jostled off their own streets; and from all the corners of the earth the tide has set in towards that suburb, at other times so tranquil in mild respectability, where hitherto the Brompton Boilers, triumphant erection of modern art, have been the height of excitement. Nobody pauses at the Brompton Boilers now; but the world itself lounges in between the Park and the Opera to improve its mind before dinner, underneath the domes which are bigger than St Paul's and St Peter's, more grandiose and superb in size, if one could but realise it, than Brunelleschi's dome and where already the hum of many tongues proclaims a grand gathering-place and rendezvous for all civilised nations. So far the Repetition, perilous as it was, has vindicated itself.

The morning of this Mayday, breaking as it did in momentary tears, to be followed by that poetic radiance of a spring morning which is more delicious and exhilarating than any later sunshine, called to myriads of minds a gleam of retrospection so universal and involun

tary, that it is impossible to approach the gates of the new Pa lace without giving expression to that inevitable thought. Though the earth is fixed and does not alter, is this the same world we are living in nowadays? Ten years is often a period as distinct in its smaller sphere as a century; and what human creature can contemplate without emotion the course of these, which have taken so much off every man's life, and added so much to most men's experience? Few periods are so clearly rounded into identity. It would be vain to scrutinise the private memories which rise in many hearts gazing over these ten years, and the one melancholy additional twelvemonth which has intervened, as they proceed in the wake of the crowd to the new celebration. For here and there a placid soul which has lived through them unmoved, how many climaxes and agonies of life throb in the remembrance of those smiling men and women who give no sign! Thank Heaven for those who are happier and better; but how many a soul has gone down in the battle since then-how many an existence has been shorn of all things that make life sweet! One cannot take off one's hat to answer the gracious salutation from that passing carriage, without thinking of the other carriageful of girls one saw that other Mayday, just as fearless and fair and unforeboding of evil. Within the boundaries of these two holidays, how many an entire life has concentrated its history! Just beginning then in its blossom, its orange flower, its bridal promise; and now, with all its little epic, wrought out and left behind! But more emphatic still is the universal story. It was not that we feared nothing that last Mayday. It was that we persuaded ourselves to believe that henceforward there could be nothing to fear. It was the grand millennium of convenience and safety which we were inaugurating. Under the crystal roof all the European sisters, and all the wilder nymphs

beyond the seas, exchanged the kiss of peace; and we had it all our own way that one hour in our lives. Nobody in earth or heaven contradicted the confident prophecy. The pitiful skies showed no portents, but gave us sunshine and plenty for our jubilee; and not a cloud disturbed the rising or the setting of that day of peace. It was Happiness, all crowned and radiant, that gazed on the joyful nation with her Queen's eyes of royal blue; and Reason, founded on a world of arguments, promised endless perpetuity to the calm. Just then the calm was deepening into that intensest thrill of silence which precedes the storm, had we but known it, but we did not know; and the pipings of peace went on till a quite different kind of utterance-sharp laconic droppings of distant inconceivable guns-thrust off the trumpeters, with conclusive distinct speech, into tremulous shrills of fear and wonder. Our grandfathers, a century ago, had no more favourite topic than the vanity of human expectations, a theme most fruitful in morals. This time the lesson has been on a grander scale. Since we first let our garlands drop from our hands, and recognised the new influence which had come upon the earth, what a stormy, splendid succession has been upon the lurid skies! Sebastopol; and that charge, which was not war, but more splendid—a dutiful unconscious martyrdom. India; with martyrdoms all conscious, heroic hope, despair, and constancy. Then the loud echoes rolling nearer, deluges of blood and tears upon the smiling Lombard plains, our nearest neighbours' sons falling, like our own, upon the bat tle-field. What a tempestuous sequel to the happy augury! Scarcely any other ten years of the world's history has scored its record so deep upon the mortal soil, or upon the hearts of men. In 1851 we were all safe, and safety was divine. In 1862, we cannot tell what new horror, what new danger, may arise at any moment. Then a soldier

was a necessary evil, gradually to be done away with and superseded, as the world grew wiser. Now, nothing stirs the popular heart with a warmer delight than to reckon the thousands of our boys who know how to handle their weapons, and to hear that they pleased the practised eye of the great soldier of our day. It is Peace who is superseded in the second grand festival of the nations. We may believe in her disconsolate presence, as our clever caricaturist depicts her, seated on an Armstrong gun; but she is at best but a spectrum of her former selfa shadowy and distant hope. It is by making war carnage, by taking from it all those personal emergencies which develop heroes, by converting it into a murderous duel between iron and iron, cruel skill against skill, that we now hope to win back again the frightened Angel. The Warrior and Black Prince are her arks of refuge: she has no place in the procession this May morning. While we creep along through the sunshiny Park, with its radiant lines of carriages, and all its spring foliage bursting into tender fulness, the same assured sweet sunshine falls upon bloody fields of actual war; upon brooding discontents that bide their time; upon science busy all over the world in maturing the art of massacre. Such is the present aspect of the world to which, ten years ago, every wind of heaven and voice of earth whispered, " Peace, peace!"

Another difference still more distinct, because individual, makes the occasion memorable. The heart of the holiday has been taken out of it by a hand which no man can gainsay. For twice ten years the Queen--for whose comfort it is safe to say there is not a subject she has, who would not willingly resign a part of his own-was as happy and prosperous as her people's wishes could have made her. Trouble never seemed to breathe upon that serene royal firmament. Health, love, and peace made the palaces of England a joy in the