Thus the Executive Committee, which directs the government, is composed of the leading members of the Provisional Government, while Louis Blanc and Albert were left out altogether.

The people were, however, by no means disposed to submit to this exclusion, and, possessed of the elements of power, a formidable attempt at counter-revolution was made on the 15th May, when the Assembly was forced, and the mob, taking possession of the hall, proclaimed a new provisional government, including Ledru Rollin and Louis Blanc; but on the arrival of the troops, dispersed, and the Chamber resumed its sitting. This attempt was followed by many arrests, Ledru Rollin and Louis Blanc included the former being bailed by Lamartine. The complicity of Louis Blanc with the conspiracy was subsequently established, but the Chamber refused to impeach him.

This event has given great stability to the new order of things, and the sittings progress amidst gradually increasing confidence.

The committee on the constitution is composed of much intellect and experience. Barrot and De Tocqueville are of the number. The favorite project thus far appears to be a President, one Chamber and a Council for the Government, to be chosen by universal and direct suffrage, every three years; that the Judges, Mayors, and their adjuncts, the general and municipal councils, and all the principal civil officers will be chosen for the same time and in the same manner; as also the officers of the National Guard. It will be the duty of the Council of State to prepare the laws to be submitted to the Chamber.

We have thus sketched the leading features of the French revolution, from its sudden outbreak down to its apparent establishment under an Assembly elected by the people, and firmly protected against any of those attempts at counter-revolution that formerly were so successful and so fraught with mischief.

The great safe-guard of the present republic, lies in the fact that the middle classes have made great progress since the first revolution. They now hold the balance of power, and rally promptly to the support of the government of the people against the attack of a mob, who have not yet learned the first rudiments of republicanism, viz., to respect the will of the majority.

The instrument by which reckless demagogues have sought to stir upon the unthinking portion of the people has been socialism. As far as there is anything practicable in the ideas engendered by any of the schools of what is called the new philosophy, there is nothing different from what has been carried in the United States politically to the greatest extent. The essential characteristics common to all these theories is "association, or mutual co-operation for the interests of all." This idea is by no means now inoperative; it is, in fact, the leading distinctive feature between society as it exists in the United States and in Europe. In this country every department of life and society is conducted on the principles of association. All the governments and magistrates are elected by the " association" of great political parties, co-operating and subscribing money to effect the object. The financial affairs have always been conducted by banking associations; manufactures, for the most part, are established in the same manner. Colleges, taverns, churches, roads, steamboats, tract societies, Bible societies, hospitals, prisons, schools all are founded and conducted on principles of association. If any great truth is to be promulgated or moral lesson inculcated, it is done by "association." Not only are all the great undertakings and every public matter conducted in this manner, but private families are organized upon it in a manner and to a degree utterly unknown in Europe. The Astor House, with its several hundred inmates, is entirely a socialist establishment for strangers and for wealthy families. From that concern down to the must humble boarding-house for apprentices and mechanics, the plan of association for families is carried out, by which mutual co-operation enables them to live well, for a sum that in an isolated state would scarcely allow them to subsist at all. Nearly all single people, and many married ones, probably half the whole population of our cities, live in this associated manner, utterly unknown to Europeans, and the result is, more enjoyment by those who labor for the same money. How many females that sew are boarded well for some $1 50 per week, a sum which, in the European manner of living, would scarcely keep them alive. The socialists of Europe have some vague notion that the condition of a people may be improved by some such plan. They have therefore built up fanciful theories of the "reorganization of society," that embrace the most disgusting immorality and licentiousness. As if, because a cooperation of means lightens the physical condition, that therefore a co-operation of vices would lessen the burden of iniquity.

Nothing so much astonishes the reflective foreigner as the wonderful results of the association principle in the United States. The remarks of that eminent man, De Tocqueville, who is happily associated on the committee for the new constitution of France, are most instructive upon this point.

"Those associations only which are formed in civil life, without reference to political objects, are here adverted to. The political associations which exist in the United States are only a single feature in the midst of the immense assemblage of associations in that country. Americans of all ages, all conditions and all dispositions, constantly form associations.

"I met with several kinds of associations in America, of which I confess I had no previous notion; and I have often admired the extreme skill with which the inhabitants of the United States succeed in proposing a common object to the exertions of a great many men, and in getting them voluntarily to pursue it.

"I have since travelled over England, whence the Americans have taken some of their laws and many of their customs; and it seemed to me that the principle of association was by no means so constantly or so adroitly used in that country. The English often perform great things singly; whereas the Americans form associations for the smallest undertakings. It is evident that the former people consider association as a powerful means of action, but the latter seem to regard it as the only means they have of acting.

"A government might perform the part of some of the largest American companies: and several states, members of the Union, have already attempted it: but what political power could ever carry on the vast multitude of lesser undertakings which the American citizens perform every day, with the assistance of the principle of association? It is easy to foresee that the time is drawing near when man will be less and less able to produce, of himself alone, the commonest necessaries of life.

The first

"As soon as several of the inhabitants of the United States have taken up an opinion or a feeling which they wish to promote in the world, they look out for mutual assistance; and as soon as they have found each other out, they combine. From that moment they are no longer isolated men, but a power seen from afar, whose actions serve for an example, and whose language is listened to. time I heard in the United States that a hundred thousand men had bound themselves publicly to abstain from spirituous liquors, it appeared to me more like a joke than a serious engagement; and I did not at once perceive why these temperate citizens could not content themselves with drinking water by their own firesides. I at last understood that these hundred thousand Americans, alarmed by the progress of drunkenness around them, had made up their minds to patronise temperance. They acted just in the same way as a man of high rank who should dress very plainly, in order to inspire the humbler orders with a contempt of luxury. It is probable, that if these hundred thousand men had lived in France, each of them would singly have memorialized the government to watch the public houses all over the kingdom.

"Nothing, in my opinion, is more deserving of our attention than the intellectual and moral associations of America. The political and industrial associations of that country strike us forcibly; but the others elude our observation, or if we discover them, we understand them imperfectly, because we have hardly ever seen anything of the kind. It must, however, be acknowledged that they are as necessary to the American people as the former, and perhaps more so.

In democratic countries the science of association is the mother of science: the progress of all the rest depends upon the progress it has made."

This association which so astonished this profound thinker, has always existed in the United States, and has been the chief cause of our prosperity as a nation, and of our happiness as a people. That this "science of association," is making progress even in this country is undeniable-an evidence of it is in the progress of constitutional reform. The evils and corruptions that flow from the old plan of chartering associations, produced reform, and general laws now permit people to associate for any purpose whatsoever, without necessity of special legislation. This is a step in the progress of association. Yet while these great results are being produced and the whole community is influenced in a greater or less degree, by the operation of the association principle, a few licentious followers of the dreams of French theorists, talk of "association" as of some strange and heretofore unheard of discovery, of which they alone possess the secret. They so involve it in infidelity and lewdness, as to disguise, even from themselves, the fact, that while the principle was in active and successful operation on this continent, long before the theory was promulgated in Europe, they have neglected its practical teachings, and clung only to the dreamy imaginings of the theorists there. It is for this reason that all attempts to form associations on the plan of Fourier have failed; not one of his adherents understands the economical principles on which the only practical portion is based. As thus, a few mistaken persons in New-York subscribed a capital by which a Phalanx was formed in Roxbury, Massachusetts. This was peopled by persons without revenues, many of whom adopted occupations that produced none to the concern. A literary gentleman, as an instance, became a waiter in the establishment; as if persons, so situated, could not help themselves. As a matter of course, as soon as the contributed capital was expended, these persons who had isolated themselves from society, in order to carry out the principles of association, were compelled again to go into the general system of association, in order to get a living. It is obvious that they began at the wrong end. Had those persons each had a productive occupation, yielding him a revenue, and had clubbed those revenues in the establishing of a place of residence for all their families, something like the plan would have been commenced. This might then have been ultimately increased by the admission of new productive members, until the internal affairs of the concern would find mutual employment for its productive members. It then would become gradually isolated from the rest of the community, which is now becoming daily more associative. The establishments that most nearly approach the practical part of a Fourierite Phalanx, are the slave plantations of the south, in which cotton is produced by the association of several hundred blacks, living together in the promiscuous manner that the theorists allege conduces to the greatest happiness. Their rows of huts, their common nurseries, their common hospitals, are but a phalanx. Their general support from the proceeds of the common industry, the disregard of marital rights and family ties, are all Fourierite features; and the great increase of slaves, as compared with whites, would go to prove their beneficial effects.

In France there is nothing of all the associative action which so won the admiration of M. de Tocqueville in America; nor anything of the production of great staples by the combined industry of any class of people. The whole country is divided into small isolated parcels of land, while all industry is isolated under a government which has sought to do everthing for the people, and to allow none of them to act for themselves, collectively or singly. The first great association in France is that of the people at the late election. From that era political and social association will continue to increase, until the habit of association is acquired; and the social condition of the people, through its means, raised nearer to a level of that in the United States.

LOITERINGS IN EUROPE.*

In our juvenile years, we delighted to listen to tales of giants, who got over the ground wonderfully fast in their ten or twenty league boots. Since we have become adults, and have turned from the romantic to the actual, it has seemed to us, that the bustling and sketchy traveller, who gives us in a single volume the results of a tour on the continent, or elsewhere, with manifold observations upon things visible and contemplative, furnishes us with the winged heels of mercury, and enables us in a day, to scan the vast panorama over which he has toilsomely plodded.

Men conceive that in actual speed, the magnetic telegraph is the acme of human achievement; and yet, the decision of the philosopher of old, (we think Thales,) will be found not less correct than in his own time. When asked what was the fleetest of human things, he replied, "thought, for that in an instant can traverse the bounds of the universe." Let the mechanism of science effect what it will, in aid of social development, still the winged thoughts of the poet, historian, and traveller, will bring remote places and people, with all their thoughts, fancies, and ideas, to every fireside. We enjoy "voyages at home," in the quiet of the study, free from hardships and peril. We measure the altitude of mountains. We revel amid venerable ruins, and do not shrink from the lizard and the serpent. We survey the Coliseum by moonlight, and feel the added sublimity of the poetry of Byron. We look down from Mount Blanc upon the vale of Chamouni, and sing, without shivering, the magnificent hymn of Coleridge.

There may be too much of fancy and too little of fact in these observations to restrain many who have a rover's disposition, from sea-sickness, leg-weariness, and a thousand impositions in the ordinary desire to see the world. Well, let them go; and yet, in nine cases out of ten, after all is over, they will like the narrative of their experiences better than the experiences themselves. Not to speak of the bitter trials, and tragical fate of the Cookes, Parkes, and Ledyards, did ever a traveller, from the days of Sterne, run the gauntlet of the continent, without feeling that he had a story to tell quite as bad as that of the black-a-vised Othello, who, upon the credit of having been a few hundred miles from Morocco, and of having read the Arabian nights, charmed Desdemona into love with his extravaganzas about

But this is all rather distantly pertinent to the traveller's book we desire to present to the reader's notice. It is full of picturesque descriptions of scenery, and faithful delineations of institutions, characters and objects, met with in a diversified journey, beginning at Havre, and compassing Paris, Rome, Vienna, Venice, Genoa, Florence, indeed, all the principal cities of attraction in Europe, ending with England, Scotland, and Ireland. The writer has the eye of a painter and the taste of a scholar; and we think those who peruse the extracts we present, will agree with us that cities, countries, and institutions, and people, have rarely been sketched by so skilful a draughtsman.

Dr. Corson is a practising physician, and this book furnishes evidence that he had a further and higher object in his travels, than that of furnishing merely an entertaining narrative. The papers on European charities and Medical Institutions, are full of profitable and philanthropic suggestions. The volume is no less a valuable offering to the medical profession than to literature. We freely commend it to the reading community, whose appetite may be sharpened by a few scraps from its ample stores of instruction and entertainment :

FROM THE PREFACE.

"The writer has, from the first, firmly resolved to be good-natured. The peace interests of the world, and the softening of national prejudices, seem to require that the foibles of every people should be dwelt upon and reproved rather by their own countrymen than by strangers. We justly complain of certain foreigners, who repaid our best hospitalities with libels on our political and social institutions. The writer prefers erring, if at all, on the side of charity. He is willing to forego the credit for patriotism gained by abusing our neighbors. He saw, everywhere, more to praise than to blame; and, in looking at things on the bright side, he only followed the golden rule."

A FRENCH DILIGENCE.

"An intelligent American Indian, who lately visited Paris, in describing a diligence to a friend in England, stated that it was a great animal that carried sixteen persons: three in the head, three in the breast, six in the body, and four in the tail, referring, in order, to the banquette, coupé, interior, and rotonde. The four wheels answering to feet, it should, of course, be classed among the quadrupeds. Just imagine an ordinary Broadway omnibus, somewhat lengthened, with the leather top and seat of a huge gig extending transversely across the roof, in front, for the banquette, and unequally divided below into three separate compartments, and you have the tamer representation of a deteriorated civilized citizen, Of the places above mentioned, the coupe, or lower front, is the dearest, and the rotonde, or rear, the cheapest. This apparently unwieldy affair is usually drawn by five or six horses, with three abreast in front, at the rate of from seven to nine miles an hour, The horses are changed about once an hour in the short space of three or four minutes, and away you rattle over hill and dale, to the constant crack of the whip."

THE SEΙΝΕ.

"The Seine is a thoroughly French river, full of beauties and full of capricious changes. Sometimes it flows as gently as the stream of a terrestrial paradise, restrained by the conservative banks into quite peaceable limits; and then, as below Quillebœuf, with an aqueous outbreak, it suddenly expands to four or five times its former width. Occasionally it glides in a straight direction, as if, like a perspicuous speaker, it were coming to a point, and then, with a circuit of miles, it returns to near the same spot, as though with national fondness it was determined on going back to Paris. Now it modestly courses along in a single channel, and anon, in showy Parisian taste, it takes a fancy to decorate itself with a