3l> MODERN HISTORY 



silently and steadily devoted, under so able a teacher, to the 

 study of natural history and comparative anatomy, has gained 

 a most extensive stock of information on these subjects 5 

 and displays his tliorough acquaintance both with their prin- 

 ciples and details, in numerous Memoirs, chiefly contained 

 in the Bulletin des Sciences, and other French collections. 



It is perhaps yet too soon to determine how these and 

 similar pursuits may be influenced by the recent political 

 clianges in France, Hitherto, however, Science has not 

 partaken in the triumph of Legitimacy. 



Le Sueur, the fellow-traveller of Peron, who had long 

 promised a natural history of the Medusae, to be illustrated 

 by those inimitable delineations which he brought back 

 from their voyage of discovery to the Austral regions, has 

 found himself unable to complete this undertaking, and is 

 gone, witli many others, to the New World. If we cannot 

 repress a sigh when we see men of peaceful pursuits thus 

 torn from their native soil and driven into foreign climes, 

 let us rejoice, not only for them, but for all mankind, that 

 such an asylum for the victims of power and oppression 

 exists ; that there is, not a spot, but a vast region of the 

 earth, lavishly endowed with Nature's fairest gifts, and ex- 

 hibiting at the same time the grand and animating spectacle 

 of a country sacred to civil liberty ; where man may walk 

 erect in the conscious dignity of independence, that 



" Lord of the lion heart and eagle eye," 



and enjoy full freedom of word and action, without the 

 permission of those combinations or conspiracies of the 

 mighty, which threaten to convert Europe into one great 

 state prison. The numerous people, whose happiness and 

 tranquillity are so eff'ectually secured by the simple forms 

 of a free government, are the growth of yesterday ; at the 

 same rate of progress, they may reach in our lives as gigantic 

 a superiority over the worn-out despotisms of the Old 

 World, as the physical features of America, her colossal 

 mountains, her mighty rivers, her forests, and her lakes, 

 exhibit in comparison with those of Europe. 



