In the United States the people are the sovereign, and all power either for good or evil emanates from them. If they allow their own passions, or the seductions of others, to lead them astray, it is but a weak evasion to cast the blame on those who were only enabled to perpetrate the offence by the power which they themselves delegated. Let them then set about retrieving the consequences of their adherence to mischievous maxims and habits, by returning to those which if firmly adopted and steadily pursued, will be speedily followed by returning prosperity. Let the contest be, not who is to blame for the evil, but who shall be foremost in proposing an effectual remedy and contributing all in his power to bring it about. In short, let them only save as much in the next, as they wasted in the last twenty years, instead of resorting for relief to the very measure which produced the disease, and place their affairs in the hands of clear-sighted honest men, instead of great financiers, whose only expedient for paying one debt is contracting another, and my life on it, they will redeem themselves in less time than it took to enthral them. But we who live in glass houses should never throw stones. _Illinois has enough of the sisterhood to keep her in countenance._ ----- [1] Charleroix, vol. ii. p. 102, 103. [2] Charleroix, vol. ii. p. 73. * * * * * A DREAM OF ITALY. BY CHARLES ALLEN. Land of Poets, Italy, As the rivers seek the sea, Floats my dreaming soul to thee; And I stand upon the soil, Where with never ceasing toil, Careless of the midnight oil, Poets say the noblest lays— Artists wrought for Heaven’s praise— Marking time by deeds, not days. And before my dreaming eyes, Temples, palaces arise, Less’ning, fading in the skies, ’Till upon their lifted spires, Sit the stars, those spirit fires, List’ning to thy minstrel lyres. Hark! their music sweeps along— Lightly dance the waves of song, Through the air a happy throng; Bearing on each foamy crest, Thoughts that wrap the human breast; Bidding care lie down to rest. List’ning to each beauteous strain, Ah! I am a child again, Full of childish joy and pain; All unwritten is life’s tome, And my spirit seeks its home, More beloved than gilded dome, And around the once loved stream, Revels free in Music’s dream— Yet, alas! this does but seem.