As to the American poets, their language has charm, but they rarely rise above the common-place. Still, the _Ode to the Evening Breeze_, the _Sunrise on the Mount_, the _Torrent_, and some other poems, deserve a passing glance. Halleck[538] has sung the death of Bozzaris, and George Hill[539] has wandered among the Ruins of Athens: Alas! for her, the beautiful, but lone, Dethroned queen[540]!... And again: There sits the queen of temples[541]--grey and lone. She, like the last of an imperial line, Has seen her sister structures, one by one, To time their gods and worshippers resign[542]. It pleases me, a traveller on the shores of Hellas and Atlantis, to hear the independent voice of a land unknown to antiquity lamenting the lost liberty of the old world. [Sidenote: American politics.] But will America preserve her form of government? Will the States not become divided? Has not a representative of Virginia already maintained the theory of ancient liberty with slaves, the result of paganism, against a representative of Massachusetts, defending the cause of modern liberty without slaves, as Christianity made it? Are not the Northern and Southern States opposed in mind and interests? Will not the Western States, so far removed from the Atlantic, wish to have a separate government? On the one hand, is the federal bond sufficiently powerful to maintain the union, and to compel each State to draw closer to it? On the other hand, if the presidential power be increased, will not despotism come with the guards and privileges of the dictator? The isolation of the United States has permitted them to spring into being and to increase: it is doubtful whether they would have been able to exist and grow in Europe. Federal Switzerland subsists in our midst; but why? Because she is small, poor, cantoned in the bosom of the mountains, a nursery of soldiers for kings, a goal for travellers. Separated from the old world, the population of the United States still inhabits the solitude: its deserts have been its liberty; but already the conditions of its existence are altering. The existence of the democracies of Mexico, Columbia, Peru, Chile, Buenos Ayres, always troubled as they are, constitute a danger. When the United States had nothing near them except the colonies of a Transatlantic kingdom, no serious war was probable; now, are there not rivalries to be dreaded? Let men on both sides have recourse to arms, let the military spirit seize upon the children of Washington, and a great captain may rise to the throne: glory loves crowns.