POLITICAL CHANGES.

Presumptuous was the wish so patriotically conceived, and so repeatedly extolled, of that pious churchman, who exclaimed, with reference to the constitution of his native country, now no more existing as an independent state, “Esto perpetua!” The ancients, indeed, to secure what might be humanely termed a perpetuity to their laws and edicts, had them graven on brass. But what is the perpetuity even of brass itself, when opposed to the irresistible advance of Time? Even in the very infancy of the world, this question might have been answered, as it was, some few thousand years after its creation, by Old Simonides:

“Who so bold

To uphold

What the Lindian sage [¹⁶] has told?

Who will dare

To compare

Works of man, that fleeting are,

With the smooth perennial flow

Of swift rivers, or the glow

Of the eternal sun, or light

Of the golden orb of night?

Spring renews

The floweret’s hues

With his sweet refreshing dews;

Ocean wide

Bids his tide

With returning current glide;

The sculptured tomb is but a toy

Man may fashion, man destroy—

Eternity in stone or brass?

Go, go! who said it was an ass.”

Fragm. 10. BRUNCK, _ Analect_, tom. i. p. 122.

(From a striking paper entitled “Correction, Melioration, Reformation, Revolution,” in Blackwood’s Magazine.)