counterfeit thing--the _government of self_. It is not the conservative who is staying the true progress of mankind. A licentious press, a corrupt and gambling spirit of faction in our political parties, and, above all, frequent exhibitions of vulgar demagoguism in our legislative bodies, may do more to strengthen and perpetuate the European monarchies, than all the ignorance of their subjects, and all the power of their armies. Editor's Easy Chair. An Easy Chair for July, and specially for such hot July, as we doubt not is just now ripening over our readers' heads, should be a cool chair, with a lining of leather, rather than the soft plushes which beguile the winter of its iciness. Just so, we should be on the look-out in these hap-hazard pages, that close our monthly labors, for what may be cooling in the way of talk; and should make our periods wear such shadows as will be grateful to our sun-beaten readers. If by a touch of the pen, we could, for instance, build up a grove of leaf-covered trees, with some pebble-bottomed brook fretting below--idly, carelessly, impetuously--even as our pen goes fretting over this Paris _feuille_; and if we could steep our type in that summer fragrance which lends itself to the country groves of July; and if we could superadd--like so many fragmentary sparkles of verse--the songs of July birds--what a claimant of your thanks we should become? Much as a man may be street-ridden, after long city experience--even as the old and rheumatic become bed-ridden--yet the far-off shores of Hoboken, and the tree-whispers of St. John's and Grammercy Parks, do keep alive somewhat of the Eden longings, which are born into the world with us, and which can only die when our hearts are dead. And hence it is that we find it a loving duty to linger much and often as we may in this sunny season of the year (alas, that it should be only in imagination!) around rural haunts--plucking flowers with broad-bonneted girls--studying shadows with artist eye--brushing the dews away with farmers' boys--lolling in pools with sleek-limbed cattle--dropping worms or minnow with artist anglers, and humming to ourselves, in the soft and genial spirit of the scene, such old-time pleasant verses as these: The lofty woods, the forests wide and long, Adorned with leaves and branches fresh and green, In whose cool bowers the birds with many a song Do welcome with their quire the summer's queen; The meadows fair, where Flora's gifts among Are intermixed with verdant grass between; The silver-scaled fish that softly swim Within the sweet brook's crystal watery stream.