Our literature has not, as yet, assumed any permanent form. Its features are just beginning to develope. What character it will take, we cannot judge with any degree of certainty. Now, it is a familiar principle, that in the formation of the mind, there is need of the most unceasing care and attention, to shape and direct its budding energies to virtue and excellence. Let the American mind have this attention, and we have a literature purer, nobler, and richer, than has ever illumined mankind. Do we desire a glorious immortality? And is not literary immortality--the mind set forth in visible, enchanting, and enduring forms--far more desirable, than political? How has the greatness and grandeur of all antiquity, been perpetuated? Who will compare the Pereclean age of Greece--an age, as we have seen, when literature shone purely, brightly--with those that followed, when political feuds rent every state? Who will compare the fame of Homer, the mirror-mind of the ancient world, with the most distinguished politician of antiquity? of Milton, with that of Cromwell? of Shakspeare, with that of the profoundest statesman of the Elizabethan age. Political glory, is as the short-lived plant--literary, as the majestic oak. Political glory, is as the flashing meteor--literary, as the splendor of the noon-day sun. H. J. G. From Mrs. Jamieson's Visits and Sketches. THE INDIAN MOTHER.[1] There is a comfort in the strength of love, Making that pang endurable, which else Would overset the brain--or break the heart. _Wordsworth_. [Footnote 1: This little tale (written in 1830) is founded on a striking incident related in Humboldt's narrative. The facts remain unaltered.] The monuments which human art has raised to human pride or power may decay with that power, or survive to mock that pride; but sooner or later they perish--their place knows them not. In the aspect of a ruin, however imposing in itself, and however magnificent or dear the associations connected with it, there is always something sad and humiliating, reminding us how poor and how frail are the works of man, how unstable his hopes, and how limited his capacity compared to his aspirations! But when man has made to himself monuments of the works of God; when the memory of human affections, human intellect, human power, is blended with the immutable features of nature, they consecrate each other, and both endure together to the end. In a state of high civilization, man trusts to the record of brick and marble--the pyramid, the column, the temple, the tomb: "Then the bust And altar rise--then sink again to dust."