affluence, purchased with the blood and tears of their friends and countrymen, the hard task remains to them of chaining up and reducing to submission the many-headed monster, whom they have been forced to let loose and gorge with the spoils of the vanquished. Then, too, comes on the difficulty of dividing power where no one has a right, and every one a claim: of ruling those whom they have taught to despise authority; and of reviving that sentiment of patriotism, and that love of glory, which faction and self-interest have extinguished. When the white and red roses were the symbols of faction in England, and when the contest between Baliol and Bruce made way for invasion and tyranny in Scotland, the destruction of armies and of cities, public executions, plunder and confiscations, were the least evils that they occasioned. The annihilation of public virtue and private confidence; the exasperation of hereditary hatred; the corrupting the milk of human kindness, and breaking asunder every sacred tie by which man and man are held together: all these dreadful results of civil discord are the means of visiting the sins of civil war on the third and fourth generation of those who have kindled it. Yet the extinction of charity and kindness in dissensions like these, is not to be compared to that which is the consequence of an entire subversion of the accustomed form of government. Attachment to a monarch or line of royalty, aims only at a single object, and is at worst loyalty and fidelity misplaced: yet war once begun on such a motive, loosens the bands of society, and opens to the ambitious and the rapacious the way to power and plunder. Still, however, the laws, the customs, and the frame of government stand where they did. When the contest is decided, and the successful competitor established, if the monarch possesses ability, and courts popularity, he, or at any rate, his immediate successor, may rule happily, and reconcile those who were the enemies, not of his place, but of his person. The mighty image of sovereign power may change its “head of gold” for one of silver; but still it stands firm on its basis, supported by all those whom it protects: but when thrown from its pedestal by an entire subversion of government, the wreck is far more fatal and the traces indelible. Those who on each side support the heirs claiming a disputed crown, mean equally to be faithful and loyal to their rightful sovereign; and are thus, though in opposition to each other, actuated by the same sentiment. But when the spirit of extermination walks forth over prostrate thrones and altars, ages cannot efface the traces of its progress. A contest for sovereignty is a whirlwind, that rages fiercely while it continues, and deforms the face of external nature. New houses, however, replace those it has demolished; trees grow up in the place of those destroyed; the landscape laughs, the birds sing, and every thing returns to its accustomed course.