generalize, and, occasionally, takes too readily for granted, that the existing phenomena justify theories, which he has formed rather in the exercise of his own power of combination and inference, than on the basis of previously collected facts. These however are by no means the characteristics of the work, which, as a whole, cannot be read either in Europe or America, without awaking new and profitable trains of thought. To the European it is replete with instruction.

There is one subject, which M. de Tocqueville has placed in an entirely new light. A favorite topic of reproachful comment with the British tourists and journalists has been the subject of religion in America. Some exaggerated pictures of the state of religious observances in the thinly settled frontier portions of the country, taken in connexion with the European prejudice, that religion can have no substantial foothold, where it is not supported by law, have produced among the class of writers to which we allude, an impression, which they take great pains to propagate in the reading world, that the people of the United States are an irreligious people. The testimony of a French traveller, so intelligent as M. de Tocqueville, of the liberal school of politics, but far from being a blind and indiscriminate admirer of America, and a professed Roman Catholic, will be heard with attention and respect on this subject. We pass over a section, in which the author discusses, with an ingenuity which has not carried conviction to our minds, the proposition that the Roman Catholic religion is not unfriendly to the genius of republican democracy. M. de Tocqueville ascribes the influence of religion to the multiplicity of sects, uncontrolled by an establishment, which leaves every man to the enjoyment of such a form of belief and worship as suits his peculiar temper; and to the entire abstinence of all the sects from an interference in politics, and a rigid adherence to moral influence alone. We make a quotation from his remarks on this head. One of the most popular of the recent tourists, and not nominally of the masculine gender, loads with inexhaustible ridicule the prudery of the American women. Hear M. de Tocqueville;

"It cannot be said in the United States, that religion exercises an influence over the laws or the detail of political opinions; but it directs the morals, and, in regulating the family, labors to regulate the state.

"I do not doubt for a moment, that the great severity of

morals, which exists in the United States, has its origin in religious belief. Religion there is often powerless to restrain man in the midst of the numberless temptations which fortune presents him. It cannot moderate the constantly stimulated passion for gain; but it exercises a sovereign sway over the soul of woman, and it is woman that makes the morals. America is assuredly the country in the world where the marriage tie is most respected, and where the highest and truest idea has been formed of conjugal happiness.

"In Europe, almost all the disorders of society have their origin about the domestic hearth, and not far from the nuptial couch. It is there that men conceive a disgust for natural ties and lawful pleasures, and contract a taste for disorder, an anxiety of heart, a fickleness of passion. Agitated by the tumultuous desires, which have often troubled his own abode, the European submits not without a struggle to the legislative authority of the state. When the American retires from the agitations of the political world to the bosom of his family, he immediately finds there the image of order and peace. There all his pleasures are simple and natural; all his joys innocent and tranquil; and as he reaches happiness by regularity of life, he is easily accustomed to regulate his opinions as well as his tastes. While the Euro

pean seeks to escape his domestic cares in troubling society, the American finds in his home that love of order, which he afterwards carries into the affairs of state." - Vol. 11. pp. 216, 217.

The following fine remark will arrest the attention of the reader, when it is borne in mind that it comes from an intelligent French writer, fully imbued with the spirit of political reform;

"The philosophers of the eighteenth century had a very simple. explanation for the gradual decline of religious belief. Religious zeal, said they, must be extinguished, in proportion as liberty and knowledge increase. It is unfortunate that the facts do not accord with the theory.

"There shall be a European population whose incredulity is equalled only by its brutality and ignorance; while in America you shall see one of the freest and most enlightened nations of the world fulfil with ardor all the exterior duties of religion.

"On my arrival in the United States, it was the religious aspect of the country, which first arrested my attention. In proportion as I prolonged my stay, I saw the great political consequences, which flowed from these new facts.

"I had seen at home the spirit of religion and the spirit of liberty proceed almost always in an opposite direction. Here I

found them intimately united the one to the other; reigning together on the same soil." - pp. 223, 224.

M. de Tocqueville proceeds to observe, that he applied himself with great diligence to the solution of this problem, and found it in the fact of the entire separation of church and

state.

"To ascertain the cause," says he, "I interrogated the faithful of all communions. I sought particularly the society of the priests, the depositaries of the different forms of belief, and possessing a personal interest in their permanence. The religion which I profess brought me particularly into connexion with the Catholic clergy, and I hastened to form some kind of connexion with several of its members. To each of them I expressed my astonishment and unfolded my doubts; I found these persons differing only as to details, and all ascribing mainly to the complete separation of church and state, the peaceable empire which religion exercises in their country. I do not fear to assert, that during my residence in America, I did not find a single man, priest or layman, who did not agree in this.”— p. 224.

M. de Tocqueville engages in a philosophical analysis of the idea of a separation of church and state, in the course of which we meet with several judicious and profound remarks.

"As long," says he, "as a religion derives its power from the sentiments, the instincts, the passions, which are reproduced in the same manner in all periods of history, it braves the efforts of time, or at least it cannot be destroyed but by another religion. But when religion seeks to rest on the interests of this world, it becomes almost as frail as the powers of this earth. Alone, it may hope for immortality; connected with ephemeral powers, it follows their fortune, and falls often with the passions of the day which sustain it. In uniting itself to the different political powers, religion can but contract an onerous alliance. It has not need of their aid to live, and in serving them it may die." - p. 228.

But we have no time to pursue these extracts. The chapter is full of instruction, which our readers must seek in the volume of M. de Tocqueville himself. His remarks are made for the meridian of Europe and particularly of France; but they rest on a correct estimate of the facts of the case as existing in this country.

Perhaps there is nothing in which the guiding hand of a Superior Wisdom is more plainly traced in the affairs of this country, than in the general adoption and the unanimous ap

proval of the principle, to which our author ascribes so much importance. One might have expected from the fathers of New England, at least, the foundation of an ecclesiastical establishment. Their notions of personal rights did not forbid it, the doctrine of toleration was not well understood by them, and their practice naturally, not to say necessarily, led for the time to the erection of one of the most rigid church systems ever known, not so much a state religion as a theocracy. But many happy conspiring causes prevented its taking root in the state, and not the least curious was the relation of the colonies to the mother country, as a settlement of Dissenters watched with jealousy by the hierarchy at home, and compelled to purchase toleration by toleration. From the moment the colonies became important enough to attract the notice of the government of the mother country, every attempt to invest their own opinions with legal preference must have proved abortive. Meantime the austere fathers were compelled to fight the hard battles of liberty. They felt every day, that freedom was but one idea; that it must be embraced or repudiated; and that conscience could not be shackled and unrestrained at the same time. They were satisfied with a moral influence, in matters of faith, which was as absolute as they wished, and wisely forbore to grasp at a shadow of legal strength, which they could not have obtained, and the struggle for which would have sown bitterness among themselves. Thus the doctrine of liberty of conscience silently grew up and ripened, till, when the revolution conferred the power of creating a church establishment, a unanimous opinion was found existing, that it would be madness to attempt it.

ART. IX. A Narrative of the Shipwreck, Captivity, and Sufferings of Horace Holden and Benjamin H. Nute, who were cast away in the American Ship Mentor, on the Pelew Islands, in the Year 1832; and for two Years afterwards were subjected to unheard-of Sufferings among the barbarous Inhabitants of Lord North's Island. By HORACE HOLDEN. Boston. Russell, Shattuck, & Co. 1836. 18mo. pp. 133.

A VERY peculiar interest attaches to this little volume, both as it is a narrative of extreme and otherwise extraordinary

individual suffering, and as it introduces us to a condition of life, in some respects without a parallel in the annals of nautical discovery. The account of what its author saw and learned must be owned to be not so copious and detailed as could be wished. That it has not, as yet, been made so, is no matter of surprise. He is an intelligent young man, but modest, and not sufficiently aware of the importance of many particulars of information, which it is likely a judicious questioning would draw from him, to produce them of his own accord. He has not had the habit of composition, nor advantages for becoming trained to the power of generalization, or even of exact expression in speech; nor has he means which would authorize a large speculation on the fearful uncertainties of the book-market. We intend no reflection upon his present editor, who has executed the task very commendably, on the limited scale which was proposed; but now that repeated editions of the work are called for, we cannot but hope that he will place himself in the hands of some one who is qualified, and who will take pains, to extract from him many more of the curious particulars which cannot but be stored in his memory, while as yet it may be fully trusted. The following statements embrace a few facts obtained from him in conversation, along with others recorded in his work.

Horace Holden, a native of the town of Hillsborough, in New Hampshire, and now about twenty-six years old, entered for his first voyage, in the year 1831, on board the whaleship Mentor, of New Bedford; Edward C. Barnard, master. The ship's company, officers and men, consisted of twentytwo persons. The Mentor doubled the Cape of Good Hope, traversed the Indian Ocean, was prevented by adverse winds and currents from touching at Ternate, and on the twenty-first night of May, 1832, having been three days without an observation, and laboring with a violent storm, while running for the Ladrones, struck on a coral reef, which afterwards proved to make off from one of the Pelew Islands.

Here was the beginning of sorrows. Ten of the crew took to a boat, and were never heard of more. Another was drowned before morning by the swamping of a boat in which the captain with three hands was attempting to leave the wreck. At daybreak, land was seen at the distance of twenty or thirty miles; and this the eleven survivors, with a few arms and a small stock of provisions, in their only remain