all this calm and conscientious study of nature he often reminds us of Goethe.  Balzac, however, is only an artist . . .  He is neither moral nor immoral, but a calm and profound observer of human society and human passions, and a minute, patient, and powerful delineator of scenes and characters in the world before his eyes.  His readers must moralize for themselves. . . .  It is, perhaps, his defective style more than anything else which will prevent his becoming a classic, for style above all other qualities seems to embalm for posterity.  As for his philosophy, his principles, moral, political, or social, we repeat that he seems to have none whatever.  He looks for the picturesque and the striking.  He studies sentiments and sensations from an artistic point of view.  He is a physiognomist, a physiologist, a bit of an anatomist, a bit of a mesmerist, a bit of a geologist, a Flemish painter, an upholsterer, a micrological, misanthropical, sceptical philosopher; but he is no moralist, and certainly no reformer.”

Another article contributed by Mr. Motley to “The North American Review” is to be found in the number for October, 1849.  It is nominally a review of Talvi’s (Mrs. Robinson’s) “Geschichte der Colonisation von New England,” but in reality an essay on the Polity of the Puritans,—­an historical disquisition on the principles of self-government evolved in New England, broad in its views, eloquent in its language.  Its spirit is thoroughly American, and its estimate of the Puritan character is not narrowed by the nearsighted liberalism which sees the past in the pitiless light of the present,—­which looks around at high noon and finds fault with early dawn for its long and dark shadows.  Here is a sentence or two from the article:—­

“With all the faults of the system devised by the Puritans, it was a practical system.  With all their foibles, with all their teasing, tyrannical, and arbitrary notions, the Pilgrims were lovers of liberty as well as sticklers for authority. . . .  Nowhere can a better description of liberty be found than that given by Winthrop, in his defence of himself before the General Court on a charge of arbitrary conduct.  ‘Nor would I have you mistake your own liberty,’ he says.  ’There is a freedom of doing what we list, without regard to law or justice; this liberty is indeed inconsistent with authority; but civil, moral, and federal liberty consists in every man’s enjoying his property and having the benefit of the laws of his country; which is very consistent with a due subjection to the civil magistrate.’ . . .

“We enjoy an inestimable advantage in America.  One can be a republican, a democrat, without being a radical.  A radical, one who would uproot, is a man whose trade is dangerous to society.  Here is but little to uproot.  The trade cannot flourish.  All classes are conservative by necessity, for none can wish to change the structure of our polity.