but sickens at the bare contemplation of such despotic machinery. And whilst we peruse the eloquent recital of these internal throes and convulsions, which to-day would seem to break the empire into fragments and scatter them to the very winds of heaven,--but would cease on the morrow, by the elevation to the throne of perhaps some barbarian military chieftain from the banks of the Rhine or the Danube, binding again together in the rude embrace of military power the conquered parts of the empire,--we cannot but weep over the fearful immortality with which such a nation seems almost to be endowed. It reminds us but too strongly of that persecuted being, gifted with a cursed immortality, whom the fables of antiquity reported to have been bound down upon the mountain, with a vulture forever lacerating his liver, which grew as fast as it was destroyed. When contemplating the horrors of such a government, we almost hail with pleasure the advent of the Goth and the Vandal, whose barbarian power alone could break it into fragments. The death of such an empire is always hard--painfully, fearfully hard! Unless its destruction is prepared from without, there are no elements within that can achieve it. The gravity of the parts too towards the centre, is so wonderfully great, that disunion can never be effected. It is mournful to behold how the rights of man, and of nations, may be destroyed by the mere magnitude of empire. Humanity now weeps when wronged and injured Poland shows symptoms of a revolt,--we know that the blood of the patriotic Pole will be shed in vain, and that the Russian and the Cossack soldier will soon come to place the galling yoke again upon his neck; and yet if Poland were united to a nation no larger than herself--Poland would have rights, and what is better still, Poland would have the power to defend them. And when she should send her petitions to the throne and demand redress, the Autocrat would dare not answer her deputies by pointing them to his Marshal, and telling them that _he_ had his orders and would execute them. Let us then forever guard against the dangerous evil of consolidation. Let us foster and cherish and love our State institutions as the palladium of our liberties and the nursery of our real greatness. Let the motto {282} inscribed upon the banner of each patriot, in regard to his state, be that which was placed upon the urn that enclosed the heart of the philosopher of Ferney, "_Mon cœur est ici, mon esprit est partout_;" and sure we may be, that this elementary training of the affections will not destroy a proper love for the whole, but is absolutely necessary, to keep the State and Federal governments moving, in those distinct orbits which have been prescribed to them by the wisdom of our ancestors.