At such a time Jefferson was led to the pursuit of politics.  He was not in the situation of one who, in disgust at the misery which surrounds him, retires to his study, and, from the impulses of a kind heart, the dreams of poets, and the speculations of philosophers, fashions a society in which there is neither envy, anger, ambition, nor avarice, but where, amid Arcadian joys, all men live in peace and happiness.  He was compelled to think because he had need to act, —­to make real laws for real societies.  To do this, he did not meditate upon human frailty and perfectibility; he did not attempt to frame institutions carefully graduated to suit the dissimilar dispositions, faculties, and desires of men.  In the spirit with which he had observed the phenomena of Nature in order to discover the laws which produced them, he inspected the social phenomena of his country to learn the laws by which it might be governed.  He studied the processes by which a few hamlets, hastily built upon a savage shore, had grown into powerful communities,—­by which the heirs to centuries of bitter recollections had been made to forget the jealousies of race, the enmities of party, the bad hatred of sect, and united into one brotherhood for the accomplishment of a common and noble purpose.  He took man as he found him, and believed he could govern himself because he had done so.  He endeavored to give symmetry to the system which was already established.  It is not strange that in this way he arrived at rules of policy, and assisted to put in operation a government, more perfectly adapted to our wants, more nicely adjusted to our strength and our weakness, giving freer opportunity to individual effort, and more firmly establishing national prosperity, better able to resist sedition or foreign assault, than any which painful toil has created, or the imaginations of the benevolent conceived, from the days of Plato to those of Fourier.

In our next number we shall allude to certain questions, raised by Mr. Randall’s book, connected with the early politics of the country; and we shall likewise undertake the more pleasing task of describing the domestic life and the character of Jefferson.

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A PRISONER OF WAR.

Ruegen is a small island, and its chief town is named Ruegen also.  They are both part of Prussia, as they were in 1807, when Prussia and France were at war.  At that time Herr Grosshet was burgomaster, and a very important burgomaster, it should be understood,—­taking in proof thereof Herr Grosshet’s own opinion on the subject.  According to the same high authority the burgomaster was also wondrously sharp; and the consequence of the burgomaster’s sharpness was, that an amount of smuggling went on in the town which was simply audacious.  None knew better than the burgomaster that the smuggling was audacious; scarcely a shopkeeper he knew, but laughed to his nose; but his dignity was so great, and he had made the central authority believe so strongly in him, that he could not lay a complaint; and the consequence of that was, that, though the townspeople laughed at their mayor, they would not have parted with him on any account.  Not a soul in the town but knew of the smuggling, —­not a soul who, publicly, was in the least aware of that illegality.