AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 47 



think you would Louis Philip have been compelled, in his old 

 age and after so much good fortune, to style himself Mr. Smith, 

 and escape in an open boat, but for the madness which impelled 

 and determined his ambitious grasp at the succession for his family 

 to the Spanish crown ? On the contrary, what has kept Switzer- 

 land free 1 Assuredly not her Alpine bastions. These have 

 been crossed as often as they have been attempted.* The tide of 

 aggression has oft swept over her icy walls; why has it not re- 

 mained ? Is it because her people are all of one mind in habits, 

 customs, opinions, religion ? The same diversities exist there as 

 here. No population in the old world is so divided in creed, 

 dialect and local institutions. But they have one national faith, 

 it is the inextinguishable Icve of their country, and, next to this, 

 they love because they understand and enjoy that freedom which 

 springs out of a rational and cultivated intelligence. Knowing 

 not the aristocratic distinctions which in other countries obtain 

 among privileged classes; having never sought to make a slave, 

 they are therefore never doomed to recognize a master. And, I 

 would ask, appealing to tlie proud and ennobling nationality of 

 the American, is the name of William Tell more sacred to hu- 

 manity than that of George Washington ? Is there a spot among 

 the snow clad peaks of Switzerland more holy than that where 

 repose the martyrs of the prison ships; or that where sleep the 

 brave spirits that fell" at Bunker's Hill ? Well did the great his- 

 toric antiquarian say, " Not only in the divine Tyrol, but on moor 

 or heath I could live happy and feel no want of the arts, among 

 a people who had a history." 



Enough of the traditions of ancient nations remain to justify 

 the conclusion that the character and unchanging political and 

 social degradation of these countless millions, this immense 

 majority of our race, is traceable to the perpetuation of a system 

 inimical to the free exercise of the faculties of the human mind. 

 How the ancient mythological traditions of the Hindoos originated 

 is not within the range of our present inquiry. It is enough now, 

 if we can trace in close connection the perpetuation, of legendary 

 fictions, and the establishment of privileged classes, through the 

 organization of caste, the domination of a priestly class confining 



