CHAPTER VIII

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Mrs. Meeker died the next week.

The funeral took place on the day which had been fixed for Hiram's marriage with Emma Tenant. After it was over, William Meeker removed with his wife from the small house to live with his father, and we will say here that both contributed much to make Mr. Meeker's latter days happy.

Hiram did not wait an hour, but took the stage the same afternoon, while Dr. Frank remained with his father over the next day.

One morning, two or three days after his return, Hiram presented himself at the house and inquired for _Mrs._ Tenant. On this occasion he was cased in a complete suit of the deepest black, with crape reaching to the very top of his hat. He was the picture of despairing grief.

It happened that Emma was not at home, so that Mrs. Tenant was not surprised that she should be sent for. She did not know Hiram had not inquired for her daughter. She came in with the impression that he was all that he should be; his failure to write often being thought quite excusable under the circumstances.

She had not, however, advanced three steps into the room before _feeling_ there was something wrong.

Hiram, regarded in a certain light, presented a most comical, though most lugubrious appearance. He was so completely acting a part that his very looks and gestures, and, in short, the minutest movements of his body, were manifestly 'got up.' One would think an automaton had been employed and set to work to do a certain amount of mourning, and furnish the requisite quantity of family grief.

Nevertheless Mrs. Tenant advanced and greeted Hiram cordially.

He put out the tips of his fingers, produced his pocket handkerchief, as if to be ready for an overflow, but uttered no word, no articulate sound.

This continued for at least five minutes, Mrs. Tenant endeavoring to say something the while by way of condolence.

'I shall never recover from the shock,' at last he ejaculated; 'never!'

He did not look Mrs. Tenant in the face, but kept his eyes fixed on vacancy.

'I am very sorry Emma is not in, but you will not have to wait long,' remarked Mrs. Tenant at last.

'I do not think I shall be able to see her,' said Hiram, with a groan.

'Not see her; not see Emma? Why, what do you mean?' exclaimed the mother, now fully roused.

'This is no period to devote myself to things of time and sense. I feel that all my thoughts should be centred on eternity.'

[You should have seen the activity Hiram had been displaying in his counting room since his return.]

This was enough for Mrs. Tenant. She understood him now, and determined to bring matters at once to a crisis.

'Mr. Meeker,' she said, 'will you be so kind as to step with me into the library a few moments?'

Hiram acquiesced.

She rang the bell, and said to the servant:

'When Miss Tenant comes in, request her to go to my room, and wait for me there.

'Now, Mr. Meeker,' she said, as soon as they were seated, 'let me ask you a plain question: Is it your intention to break your engagement with my daughter?'

'Really, ma'am, I do not wish to speak on the subject at present,' whispered Hiram, looking at the crape on his hat.

'But you must, you _shall_ speak. Do you think you can trifle with me, sir?'

Hiram was silent.

'SPEAK! I say. Do you intend to keep your engagement with my daughter?'

Thus invoked, Hiram murmured something about--'under the circumstances'--his 'great affliction'--'change in your own family'--'business troubles'--'not sure of his own situation'--'perhaps it would be best not to consider it a positive engagement'--'that is, for the present'--'after a season should'--

The street-door bell rang, and Mrs. Tenant heard not another word. Her heart scarcely beat as she listened to the footsteps of the old servant along the hall. Agitated by a rush of tumultuous emotions, she was unable to breathe during the short parley between Emma and the domestic.

At length she heard the welcome sound of Emma's step up the staircase, and she drew a long full breath of relief. Then she started up and rang the bell sharply, yes, furiously, and remained standing till the servant, with quickened pace, came in.

'William, show Mr. Meeker the door.'

Hiram sprang to his feet. He did not like the general _look_ matters were assuming.

'Go,' said Mrs. Tenant, pointing to the entrance.

In less than a quarter of a minute Hiram was walking down the street.

'It is over with me, anyhow,' he muttered.

But for once in his life he felt very small. 'To be turned out of doors by a woman; still, nobody will know it.' He was soon busy in his counting room, examining one of Hill's invoices.

Mrs. Tenant threw herself on the sofa, and was apparently lost in thought for several minutes. Then she rose and went to her daughter.

THE CHICAGO (ILLINOIS) AND OTHER CANALS.

CORK, Ireland, _April 18, 1863_. HON. ISAAC N. ARNOLD, M.C., _Chicago, Illinois_.

DEAR SIR:

Here I am in this beautiful city, in glorious old Ireland, so many of whose gallant sons have fallen in our defence, and thousands more of whom now fight the battles of our country. When I think of Shields, and Meagher, and Corcoran, and their brave associates, shedding their blood that the Union may live; when I feel myself surrounded here by friends of my country, and realize how fervently all Ireland desires our success, my heart swells with gratitude for this noble race, and my prayers are, that Providence would crown them with every blessing.

When you received my promise to attend as a delegate the Chicago Canal Convention, little was it then supposed by me, that duty would call me before that time to Europe. So much of my promise, however, as embraced the discussion of the question, will now be redeemed. The project of an enlarged _thorough-cut_ canal, uniting Chicago and the lakes with the Illinois river and Mississippi, has long attracted my attention. As a Senator of the United States, for many years, from a Southwestern State, then devoted to the Union, and elected to the Senate on that question, I have often passed near or over the contemplated route, always concluding, that this great work should be accomplished without delay. Every material interest of our whole country demands the construction of this canal, and the perpetuity of the Union is closely identified with its completion. It is for the nation's benefit, and should be the nation's work. It will give new outlets to the Mississippi, through the lakes, to the ocean, and neutralize that too exclusive attraction of Western commerce to the Gulf, which has so often menaced the integrity of the Union. We must make the access from the Mississippi, through the lakes, to the ocean, as cheap, and easy, and eventually as free from tar or toll, as to the Gulf, and the flag of disunion will never float again over an acre of the soil, or a drop of all the waters of the mighty West.

It is clear that, centuries ago, the lakes and Mississippi were united, through the Illinois and Wisconsin rivers, and we must remove the obstructions, now divorcing their waters, and restore their union, by thorough-cut canals. In a few years, the saving of transportation, in a single year, would more than pay the cost of the work. The increase of population, wealth, products, imports, exports, and revenue, which would follow the completion of this work, can scarcely now be estimated, and it should be accomplished if for no other reason, as a most profitable investment of capital for the benefit of the nation.

But, great as is the importance of these enlarged canals, uniting the Illinois and Wisconsin rivers with the lakes, other great works, connecting with the East, are indispensable. But great as is the importance of these are the enlarged locks of the Erie, Champlain, Black River, Syracuse, and Oswego, Cayuga, Seneca, Chemung, and Elmira to the Pennsylvania State line, Rochester, and Alleghany River. Nearly all of these are 70 feet wide and 7 feet deep, and require only an enlargement of the locks, whilst a few require to be widened and deepened. The Chemung canal connects the Susquehanna with the Erie canal, at Montezuma, and the Chenango is nearly completed to the north branch of the Susquehanna at the Pennsylvania State line, whence, the Susquehanna canal passes through Wilkesbarre, Northumberland, Middleton, and Wrightsville, to Havre de Grace, in Maryland, on tide water, at the head of Chesapeake Bay. The great canal, from the southern boundary of New York, down the Susquehanna to tide water, is now five feet deep, and from 40 to 50 feet wide, and can all be readily enlarged to the dimensions of the Erie canal. With these works thus enlarged, the connection of the lakes would not only be complete with the Hudson, and by the Delaware and Raritan canal with the Delaware, and by the Delaware and Chesapeake canal with the Chesapeake Bay, but also by the direct route, down the Susquehanna, to Baltimore, Norfolk, and Albemarle Sound. Is not this truly national, and is it not equally beneficial, to the East and the West, to open all these routes for large steamers? The system, however, would not be complete, without uniting Champlain with the St. Lawrence, Ontario with Erie, and Huron and Michigan with Superior.

The enlarged works should also be provided through Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, and western Pennsylvania, to the lakes, to the extent that these canals can be made of the dimensions of the Erie, and supplied with water. Nor should we forget the widening of the canal at Louisville, the removal of obstructions in the St. Clair flats and upper Mississippi, and the deepening of the mouth of this great river. The construction of these works would be costly, but as a mere investment of capital, for the increase of our wealth and revenue, they would pay the nation tenfold.

As the main object of these works is cheap transportation, the tolls should be diminished, as the works were completed, to the full extent that freight could be carried more cheaply in large boats, and provision should be made for an adequate sinking fund, so as gradually to liquidate the whole cost, and then to collect no more toll than would pay to keep the works in repair. Such is the true interest of the States and of the nation. If New York could collect a toll for navigating the Hudson, it would be against her interest, for the diminution and diversion of business, and tax on labor and products, would far exceed the net proceeds of any such toll. The same principle will apply to these canals. As some of them, unfortunately, are owned by private companies, adequate provision should be made, to prevent these aids from being perverted to purposes of individual speculation. The Erie and Ontario canal, at the falls of Niagara, and the Superior, Huron, and Michigan canal (less than a mile long), at the falls of St. Mary, should be made ship canals, much larger than those of Canada.

The cost of all these works may exceed $100,000,000, but the admirable financial system of Mr. Secretary Chase, would soon supply abundant means for their construction. Already the price of gold has fallen largely, our legal tenders are being funded, by millions, in the Secretary's favorite 5-20 sixes, and we shall soon have, under his system, a sound, uniform national currency, binding every State and citizen to the Union, and fraught ultimately with advantages to the nation, equal to the whole expense of the war.

In passing down the Susquehanna canal, at Middletown, commences the canal which, by way of Reading and the Schuylkill, connects Philadelphia with the Susquehanna and the lakes. Most of this work is already six feet deep, but the whole route, if practicable, should be enlarged to the dimensions of the Erie canal.

I have met in the British Museum some documents showing the original project (absurdly abandoned) for a large canal from the Schuylkill to the Susquehanna. A slight change will restore this work, and give to Philadelphia a complete seven-foot canal, via the Schuylkill and Susquehanna to the lakes, as short as from New York, and through a richer country, both mineral and agricultural. It appears that Washington and Franklin both favored this route.

1. Gunboats, and large commercial steamers, could then pass, without interruption, through all the lakes, to the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, the Delaware, Susquehanna, Chesapeake Bay, Albemarle Sound, the Ohio, and Mississippi.

2. In case of war, foreign or domestic, the saving to the Government in prices of articles they must buy, and in transportation of men, munitions of war, supplies, and coal, would be enormous. It is believed that the excess of cost in prices and transportation during this rebellion, occasioned by the want of these works, WOULD MORE THAN PAY FOR THEIR CONSTRUCTION. Nor is this the only loss, but victories no doubt have often been turned into defeats, for the want of proper facilities for the movement of gunboats, of supplies, and munitions, and the rapid concentration of troops and reënforcements.

3. The ability to obtain supplies, and coals, and vessels, from so many points, and especially gunboats, where the coal, iron, and fluxes are in justaposition, would hasten construction, and cheapen prices to the Government.

The enormous naval and military power, gained by such works, would tend greatly to prevent wars, foreign or domestic; or, if they did occur, would enable us to conduct them with more economy and success. It is said such vessels can be built on the lakes, and so they can, for lake defence, but they would be liable to capture or destruction there, before completed, by the enemy, and iron vessels, and iron-clads, could not be constructed so cheaply, where there is neither coal nor iron, as in regions like the Delaware, Susquehanna, Alleghany, and Ohio, where these great articles abound, and can be used on the spot, with so much economy.

It must be remembered, also, that, if these iron steamers and iron-clads are constructed on the seaboard or the lakes, still, the iron and coal for building them, and the coal for running them, could be supplied much more cheaply, if these enlarged canals were finished. Besides, events are now occurring, and may again, in our history, requiring the immediate construction of hundreds of iron vessels, rams, iron-clads, and mortar boats, calling for all the works on the seaboard, the lakes, the Western rivers, and enlarged canals, to furnish, in time, the requisite number. Rapid concentration of forces, naval and military, and prompt movements, are among the greatest elements of success in war. It will be conceded, that the ability to run gunboats, iron-clads, rams, and mortar boats, through all our lakes, to and from them to all our great rivers, and to connect from both, through such enlarged canals, with the seaboard, and the Gulf, would vastly increase our naval and military power.

Is it not clear, then, that if such a movement, with such resources and communications, had been made, in sufficient force, the first year of the war, so as to seize, or effectully blockade, all the rebel ports, to occupy, by an upward and downward movement, the whole Mississippi and all its tributaries, isolating and cutting rebeldom in two, and thus preventing supplies from Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas, that the contest must have been closed long ere this, and thus saved five or six times the cost of these works. As indicating the consequence of our occupation and command of the Mississippi and the Gulf, let us see its effect on the supply of the single indispensable article of _beef_ to the rebel army and people.

By the census of 1860, table 36, the number of cattle that year in the loyal States was 7,674,000; in Texas alone, 2,733,267; in Louisiana, 329,855; and in Arkansas, 318,355;--in those parts of the rebel States east of the Mississippi, not commanded by our troops and gunboats, 2,558,000, and in the parts of those States thus commanded by us, 1,087,000. Thus it will be seen, that the cattle in Texas alone (whence the rebels, heretofore, have derived their main supplies), raised on their boundless prairies, and rich perennial grass, have largely exceeded all the cattle in those parts of the rebel States east of the Mississippi, commanded by them. But that commanded by us, of the Mississippi and its tributaries, and the Gulf, as is now the case, cuts off the above supplies from Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, west and north Mississippi, north Alabama, and west and middle Tennessee. Hence the cries of starvation from the South; hence, mainly, the rise there in the price of beef, from a few cents to a dollar a pound. Controlled, as the Gulf and Mississippi and its tributaries now are by us, so as to prevent any Western supplies of beef, and the desolation and inundation which have swept over so much of the rest of rebeldom since 1860, their army and people cannot be supplied with beef throughout this year. Nor would running the blockade help them in this respect, for Europe has no supplies of beef to spare, requiring large amounts from us every year. The revolt, then, is doomed this year by starvation, if not, as we believe, by victories. Indeed, I imagine, if our Secretaries of War and of the Navy were called on for official reports, they could clearly show, that with ample appropriations in July, 1861, and all these works _then_ completed, they could have crushed the revolt in the fall of 1861 and winter of 1862. All, then, that has been expended since of blood and treasure, and all the risks to which the Union may have been exposed, result from the want of these works. Surely, these are momentous considerations, appealing, with irresistible force, to the heart and judgment of every true American statesman, and patriot.

Great, however, as are the advantages in war to be derived from the construction of these works, it is still more in peace, and as arteries of trade, that the benefit would be greatest. If iron steamers are to control the commerce of the world, the cheap construction and running of such vessels may decide this great question in our favor. Now, whether these steamers are to be built on the seaboard or interior, the coal, and iron, and timber, with which to make them, and the coal and supplies with which to run them, could be furnished much more cheaply by these enlarged canals. And even if the vessels be of timber, the engines, boilers, anchors, &c., must be of iron, and they must be run with coal, all which would be furnished cheaper at our lakes and seaboard, by these enlarged canals. Nor is it only for the construction of engines and boilers for steamers, or coal to run them, that these works would be important, but the cheapening of transportation of coal, iron, timber, and supplies would be greatly beneficial in all industrial pursuits. It is, however, in cheapening the transportation of our immense agricultural products to the East, South, seaboard, and the return cargoes, that these works would confer the greatest benefits. The value of the freight transported on these canals, last year, was over $500,000,000; but, when all should be enlarged, as herein proposed, the value of their freight, in a few years, would exceed SEVERAL BILLIONS OF DOLLARS. They would draw from a vastly extended area, from augmented population and products, and with greater celerity and economy of movements, from the increased distances that freight could be carried, and additional articles. With these improvements, millions of bales of cotton would be carried annually on these enlarged canals. All of Missouri, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Kansas, and the Northwestern Territories, up the Missouri and its tributaries, with large portions of Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, and even of Texas, on the Red river, would be added to the region from which supplies would be sent, and return cargoes proceed by these works. Our exports abroad would soon reach a BILLION of dollars, of which at least one third would consist of breadstuffs and provisions. Corn was consumed, last year, in some of the Western States, as fuel, in consequence of high freights. But this could never recur with these enlarged canals. Indeed, the products to be carried on these canals would include the whole valley of the lakes, the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri; and many articles, thus reaching there, thence be carried, on our great imperial railway, to the Pacific, bringing back return cargoes for the same routes. Breadstuffs and provisions and cotton would be carried more cheaply through these canals to the manufacturing States, and their fabrics return, the same way, in vastly augmented amounts, to the West.

Last year, even during a war, breadstuffs and provisions, reaching $109,676,875 in value, were exported abroad, from the loyal States alone; but, with these enlarged canals, the amount could be more than tripled, the augmented exports bringing in increased imports, and vast additional revenue. Can we not realize the certainty of these great results, and have we not the energy and patriotism to insure their accomplishment? Assuredly we have.

Nor is it only our revenue from duties that would be increased to an extent sufficient of itself, in a few years, to pay the principal and interest of the debt incurred in the construction of these works, but our internal revenue, also, would be prodigiously augmented.

The census of 1860 shows our increase of wealth, from 1850 to 1860, to have been 126.45 per cent. (Table 35). Now, if we would increase our wealth only one tenth, in the next ten years, by the construction of these works, then (our wealth being now $16,159,616,068) such increase would make our wealth, in 1870, instead of $36,593,450,585, more than sixteen hundred millions _greater_, or more than _ten times_ the cost of these works; and, in 1880, instead of $82,865,868,849, over three billions six hundred millions more, or more than twenty times the cost of those works. The same percentage, then, of our present internal tax, on this augmented wealth, estimated at only one per cent., would be $16,000,000 (annually) in 1870, and $36,000,000 (annually) in 1880, and constantly increasing. Add this to the great increase of our revenue from duties, as the result of these works, and the addition would not only soon liquidate their cost, but yield a sum which, in a few years, would pay the principal and interest of our public debt.

With such works, we would certainly soon be the first military, naval, and commercial power of the world. The West, with these reduced freights, would secure immense additional markets for her products, and the East send a much larger amount of manufactures, in return cargoes, to the West.

A new and great impulse would be given to the coal and iron interest. If the Delaware, Susquehanna, and their tributaries, and the Ohio and its tributaries, especially the Youghiogheny, Monongahela, and Alleghany had the benefit of low freight, afforded by these canals, they could supply not only the seaboard at reduced rates, but also central and western New York, the Canadas, and the whole lake region, with coal and iron. Indeed, the increased demand, thus caused for these great articles, would soon bring our make of iron, and consumption of coal, up to that of England, and ultimately much larger. Freight is a much greater element in the cost of coal and iron, than of agricultural products, but the increased exchange would be mutually advantageous.

With this system completed, the Mississippi might communicate by large steamers with all the lakes, and eastward, by the enlarged canals, to Chicago or Green Bay, or pass up the Ohio, by the Wabash or from Lawrenceburg or Cincinnati to Toledo, or by Portsmouth or Bridgeport to Cleveland or by Bridgeport to Erie city, or by Pittsburg, up the Alleghany, to Olean and Rochester, on the Erie canal, or by ship canal, from Buffalo to Ontario, thence, by the St. Lawrence, to Lake Champlain and the Hudson, or by Oswego to Syracuse, or by the Erie canal from Buffalo to the Hudson, or by the Chenango or Chemung route, down the Susquehanna, to Philadelphia, or Baltimore, or down the Chesapeake to Norfolk, and on through Albemarle Sound south. Or, going from the East, or South, westward by these routes, the steamer could proceed west, and up the Missouri, to the points where they would meet the great railway leading to the Pacific. Indeed, if we do our duty now, the next generation may carry similar canals from the head of Lake Superior to the Mississippi and Missouri, and up the Kansas or Platte to the gold mines of Colorado, or, from the great falls of the Missouri, to the base of the Rocky mountains, with railroad connection thence to the mouth of the Oregon and Puget's sound. There would be connected with this system, the lakes, and all the Eastern waters, the Ohio and all its tributaries, including the Youghiogheny, Monongahela, Alleghany, Kanawa, Guyandotte, Big Sandy, Muskingum, Scioto, Miami, Wabash, Licking, Kentucky, Green river, Barren, Cumberland, and Tennessee, the upper Mississippi and its tributaries, especially the Illinois and Wisconsin, the Desmoines and St. Peter's, the lower Mississippi and all its vast tributaries, the St. Francis, White river, Arkansas, Red river, and Yazoo. These are no dreams of an enthusiast, but advancing realities, if _now_, _now_ we will only do our duty in crushing this rebellion, and exorcise the foul fiend of slavery, that called it into being. We may best judge of what we may do in the future, by what we have done in the past. We have constructed 4,650 miles of canals (including slackwater), at a cost of $132,000,000. We have constructed (including city roads) 31,898 miles of railroad, at a cost of $1,203,285,569, making an aggregate, for railroads and canals, of $1,335,285,569. Now, one tenth of this sum will probably make all the works proposed now to be executed, for they are all only enlargements of existing canals, except the ship canal round the falls of Niagara, and a similar canal from Lake Champlain to the St. Lawrence, a work of vast importance, but that can only be accomplished with the aid and consent of Canada, and is not now estimated.

These improvements would be truly national, especially as provision would be made for deepening the mouth of the Mississippi. We propose to make or enlarge no mere local works, but only such as connect the Atlantic and the Gulf with the lakes, Ohio, Mississippi, Missouri, Hudson, Delaware, Susquehanna, Chesapeake bay, and Albemarle sound. There local routes must be constructed or enlarged by local or State expenditures.

The canals in New York, constituting so large a portion of the system, have already (mostly) the requisite width and depth, and only need an enlargement of the locks. The great Delaware and Raritan canal, connecting New York with Philadelphia, has a depth of 8 feet, and the Delaware and Chesapeake, uniting them with the Susquehanna and the lakes, Baltimore, Norfolk, and Albemarle sound, has a depth of ten feet. No doubt the enlightened proprietors of the Delaware and Raritan canal would, on fair terms to themselves and the Government, enlarge that canal (if practicable) to the depth of the Delaware and Chesapeake, which would be of incalculable benefit to the whole country, but especially to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Norfolk.

The Pennsylvania canals proposed to be enlarged are the Schuylkill, leading by the Union from Philadelphia, through Reading to Middleton on the Susquehanna, and thence up that river to the Erie and the lakes. The Schuylkill canal, 70 miles to Reading, has a depth of 6 feet, and from Reading to Middleton, 4 feet. The Susquehanna canal, from Havre de Grace, Maryland, at the head of tidewater, and the Chesapeake bay to the New York line, and system, has a uniform depth of 5 feet, and is about 300 miles long. This canal, leading through Maryland and Pennsylvania along the Susquehanna, can readily and cheaply be enlarged to the dimensions of the Erie canal, and will then furnish Norfolk, Baltimore, and Philadelphia a direct route to the lakes by the enlarged system, fully equal to that of New York. Western Pennsylvania and Pittsburg would have the route, by the enlarged system, up the Alleghany and Olean to Rochester on the Erie canal, and thence to the Hudson or the lakes, and from Bridgeport to Cleveland or Erie city. Ohio would have the benefit of the routes (enlarged) to and from Cleveland to Bridgeport or Portsmouth on the Ohio, and to and from Toledo to the mouth of the Wabash or Miami or to Cincinnati. These canals are 40 feet wide and 4 feet deep. Indiana would have the benefit of the Wabash and Erie canal to Evansville, on the Ohio, from Toledo, and to and from the same point to the mouth of the Miami at Lawrenceburg and to Cincinnati, and would also largely participate in the benefit of the Chicago and Illinois canal of the whole system. Wisconsin would have the benefit of all these canals, but especially of that connecting the Wisconsin river with Green Bay, and the rest of the lakes with Lake Superior. Illinois would have the benefit of the Wabash and Erie, the Chicago and Illinois, and of the entire system. Indeed, with a thorough-cut canal from the Illinois river to Chicago, fact will outstrip fancy as regards the progress of that great city. And here a strong argument in favor of the whole of these works is presented to every true American, by the fact that the vast and increasing heavy and bulky products of the West demand the enlarged works, and if she cannot have them by the Hudson, the Delaware, and Susquehanna, she will have them by the Canada canals, and the St. Lawrence to its outlet in the Gulf. Minnesota would have the benefit of the improvement of the upper Mississippi, and of the canals uniting the Wisconsin with Green Bay, and Superior with the other lakes. Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and the whole Western Territories would have the benefit of the improvement of the Mississippi, of the routes by Chicago, Green Bay, the Ohio, and the whole system. The glorious new free State of Western Virginia would have the benefit of all the routes up and down the Ohio and Mississippi to the lakes, the Hudson, Delaware, Susquehanna, and the Gulf. So would Kentucky, and the enlargement of the Louisville canal would be within her own limits. When we reflect that Kentucky borders for nearly a thousand miles on the Ohio and Mississippi, with her streams, the Big Sandy, Licking, Kentucky, Green river, and Barren (which last four have 766 miles of slackwater navigation), Cumberland, and Tennessee, all tributaries of the Ohio, the benefits to her would be prodigious. The interest of the States of Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, North Alabama, on the Tennessee river, and Texas, on the Red river, would be greatly promoted. They would all have improved routes to and from the mouth of the Mississippi, and to and from the Ohio, the lakes, and the Atlantic. Eastern Virginia and North Carolina would derive great advantages by the enlarged routes, connecting Albemarle sound and the Chesapeake with New York, Philadelphia, the Hudson, the Delaware, the Susquehanna, and the lakes. Delaware and Maryland could avail themselves most beneficially of all these routes, and Baltimore would derive immense advantages from the enlarged route by the Susquehanna to the lakes, having then as good a route there as New York, and the difference of distance being only 30 miles. New Jersey, by her route from the Delaware and Raritan to the Hudson, and by her rising cities near or opposite Philadelphia and New York, and by the enlarged system to the lakes, would find all her interests greatly advanced, and the business on her canals and railroads vastly increased. Michigan, with a larger lake shore than any other State, fronting on Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, St. Clair, the connecting straits and rivers, and Lake Erie, would derive immense advantages. By her immediate connection with the whole New York and Eastern system, and by Toledo, Cleveland or Erie city, to the Ohio river, and by the Chicago or Green Bay routes to the Mississippi and the Gulf, her vast agricultural products in the peninsula would find new and augmented markets; while, with the ship canal to Lake Superior, her magnificent iron and copper mines on that immense inland sea, as well as those in Wisconsin, and the splendid pineries and fisheries of both States, would receive an immense development. Pennsylvania has no large available through route now from the Delaware and Susquehanna to the lakes, nor from Pittsburg. The proposed system would give her those routes, as well from the East as from the West. This would give to her coal and iron, her vast agricultural products, her immense manufactures, and all her industrial pursuits a new impulse, while her two great cities, Philadelphia and Pittsburg, would be greatly advanced in wealth and population. When we reflect that coal and iron have mainly contributed to make England what she is, and how superior, in this respect, are the natural advantages of Pennsylvania with her bituminous and anthracite coal and iron and fluxes in juxtaposition, with a _continent_ surrounding her to furnish a market, with her central location, fronting on the deep tidewater of the Delaware, and upon the lakes and the Ohio, with its two great confluents at Pittsburg, the Alleghany and Monongahela, we cannot fully realize the immense advantages which she would derive from these enlarged communications. But what of New York? With all her routes, as well as that of the Erie canal, enlarged as proposed, with her mighty system extending to the lakes and St. Lawrence, from Lake Champlain to Superior, south by the Delaware and Susquehanna, west by the Alleghany, Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi, and her great city with an unrivalled location, what an imperial destiny lies before her, with the Union preserved? Oh! if she would only fully realize these great truths, and spurn from her embrace the wretched traitors who, while falsely professing peace, mean the degradation of the North and the dissolution of this Union, who can assign limits to her wealth and commerce?

Let us now examine the relations of New England to these proposed works. Vermont, upon Lake Champlain, by the enlarged system, connecting her with the Hudson, the St. Lawrence, and the lakes, would be greatly advanced in wealth and population. But with cheapened transportation to and from Lake Champlain or the Hudson, not only Vermont, but all New England, in receiving her coal and iron, and her supplies from the West, and in sending them her manufactures, will enjoy great advantages, and the business of her railroads be vastly increased. So, also, New England, on the Sound, and, in fact, the whole seaboard and all its cities. Bridgeport, New Haven, New London, Providence, Fall River, New Bedford, Boston, Portland, Bangor, Belfast, and Eastport will all transact an immense increased business with New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and the West. As the greatest American consumer of Western breadstuffs and provisions, and of our iron and coal, and the principal seat of domestic manufactures, the augmented reciprocal trade of New England with the South and West will be enormous. Her shipping and shipbuilding interests, her cotton, woollen, worsted, and textile fabrics, her machinery, engines, and agricultural implements, boots and shoes, hats and caps, her cabinet furniture, musical instruments, paper, clothing, fisheries, soap, candles, and chandlery, in which she has excelled since the days of Franklin, and, in fact, all her industrial pursuits, will be greatly benefited. The products of New England in 1860, exclusive of agriculture and the earnings of commerce, were of the value of $494,075,498. But, in a few years after the completion of these works, this amount will be doubled. Such is the skilled and educated industry of New England, and such the inventive genius of her people, that there is no limit to her products, except markets and consumers. As New York increases, the swelling tide of the great city will flow over to a vast extent into the adjacent shores of Connecticut and New Jersey, and Hoboken, West Hoboken, Weehawken, Hudson City, Jersey City, and Newark will meet in one vast metropolis. Philadelphia will also flow over in the same way into Camden and adjacent portions of New Jersey, whose farms already greatly exceed in value those of any other State. The farms of New Jersey in 1860 were of the average value of $60.38 per acre, while those of South Carolina, the great leader of the rebellion, with all her boasted cotton, rice, and tobacco, and her 402,406 slaves, were then of the average value of $8.61 per acre. (Census Table 36.) And yet there are those in New Jersey who would drag her into the rebel confederacy, cover her with the dismal pall of slavery, and who cry _Peace! peace!_ when there is no peace, except in crushing this wicked rebellion. The States of the Pacific, as the enlarged canals reached the Mississippi and Missouri, and ultimately the base of the Rocky mountains, would be greatly advanced in all their interests. Agricultural products and other bulky and heavy articles that could not bear transportation all the way by the great Pacific railroad, could be carried by such enlarged canals to the Mississippi and Missouri, and ultimately to the base of the Rocky mountains, and thence, by railroad, a comparatively short distance to the Pacific, and westward to China and Japan. In order to make New York and San Francisco great depots of interoceanic commerce for America, Europe, Asia, and the world, these enlarged canals, navigated by large steamers, and ultimately toll free, are indispensable.

We have named, then, all the Territories, and all the thirty-five States, except three, as deriving great and special advantages from this system. These three are Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida, with a white population, in 1860, of 843,338. These States, however, would not only participate in the increased prosperity of the whole country, and in augmented markets for their cotton, rice, sugar, tobacco, and timber, and in cheaper supplies of Eastern manufactures, coal, iron, and Western products, but they would derive, also, special advantages. They have a large trade with New Orleans, which they would reach more cheaply by deepening the mouth of the Mississippi. They could pass up Albemarle sound, by the interior route, to Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, or the West, and take back return cargoes by the same route. Georgia, also, by her location on the Tennessee river, together with South Carolina, connected with that river at Chattanooga, would derive great benefits from this connection with the enlarged canals and improved navigation of the West, sending their own and receiving Western products more cheaply.

Thus, every State and every Territory in the Union would be advanced in all their interests by these great weeks, and lands, farms, factories, town and city property, all be improved in value.

But there is another topic, connected with this subject, of vast importance, particularly at this juncture, to which I must now refer. It is our public lands, the homestead bill, and immigration. On reference to an article on this subject, published by me in the November number of THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY, it will be found that our unsold public lands embraced 1,649,861 square miles, being 1,055,911,288 acres, extending to fifteen States and all the Territories, and exceeding half the area of the whole Union. The area of New York, being 47,000 square miles, is less than a thirty-fifth of this public domain. England (proper), 50,922 square miles; France, 203,736; Prussia, 107,921; and Germany, 80,620 square miles. Our public domain, then, is more than eight times as large as France, more than fifteen times as large as Prussia, more than twenty times as large as Germany, more than thirty-two times as large as England, and larger (excluding Russia) than all Europe, containing more than 200,000,000 of people. As England proper contained, in 1861, 18,949,916 inhabitants, if our public domain were as densely settled, its population would exceed 606,000,000, and it would be 260,497,561, if numbering as many to the square mile as Massachusetts. These lands embrace every variety of soil, products, and climate, from that of St. Petersburg to the tropics.

After commenting on the provisions of our homestead bill, which gives to every settler, American or European, 160 acres of this land for ten dollars (the cost of survey, etc.), I then said:

'The homestead privilege will largely increase immigration. Now, besides the money brought here by immigrants, the Census proves that the average annual value of the labor of Massachusetts _per capita_ was, in 1860, $220 for each man, woman, and child, independent of the gains of commerce--very large, but not given. Assuming that of the immigrants at an average annual value of only $100 each, or less than thirty-three cents a day, it would make, in ten years, at the rate of 100,000 each year, the following aggregate:

1st year 100,000 = $10,000,000 2d " 200,000 = 20,000,000 3d " 300,000 = 30,000,000 4th " 400,000 = 40,000,000 5th " 500,000 = 50,000,000 6th " 600,000 = 60,000,000 7th " 700,000 = 70,000,000 8th " 800,000 = 80,000,000 9th " 900,000 = 90,000,000 10th " 1,000,000 = 100,000,000 ------------ Total, $550,000,000

'In this table the labor of all immigrants each year is properly added to those arriving the succeeding year, so as to make the aggregate the last year 1,000,000. This would make the value of the labor of this million of immigrants in ten years, $550,000,000, independent of the annual accumulation of capital, and the labor of the children of the immigrants (born here) after the first ten years, which, with their descendants, would go on constantly increasing.

'But, by the official returns (p. 14, Census), the number of alien immigrants to the United States, from December, 1850, to December, 1860, was 2,598,216, or an annual average of 260,000.

'The effect, then, of this immigration, on the basis of the last table, upon the increase of national wealth, was as follows:

1st year 260,000 = $26,000,000 2d " 520,000 = 52,000,000 3d " 780,000 = 78,000,000 4th " 1,040,000 = 104,000,000 5th " 1,300,000 = 130,000,000 6th " 1,560,000 = 156,000,000 7th " 1,820,000 = 182,000,000 8th " 2,080,000 = 208,000,000 9th " 2,340,000 = 234,000,000 10th " 2,600,000 = 260,000,000 -------------- Total, $1,430,000,000

'Thus, the value of the labor of the immigrants, from 1850 to 1860, was $1,430,000,000, making no allowance for the accumulation of capital, by annual reinvestment, nor for the natural increase of this population, amounting, by the Census, in ten years, to about twenty-four per cent. This addition to our wealth, by the labor of the children, in the first ten years, would be small; but in the second and each succeeding decade, when we count children, and their descendants, it would be large and constantly augmenting. But the Census shows that our wealth increases each ten years at the rate of 126.45 per cent. (Census Table 35.) Now, then, take our increase of wealth, in consequence of immigration, as before stated, and compound it at the rate of 126.45 per cent. every ten years, and the result is largely over $3,000,000,000 in 1870, and over $7,000,000,000 in 1880, independent of the effect of any immigration succeeding 1860. If these results are astonishing, we must remember that immigration here is augmented population, and that it is population and labor that create wealth. Capital, indeed, is but the accumulation of labor. Immigration, then, from 1850 to 1860, added to our national products a sum more than double our whole debt on the 1st of July last, and augmenting in a ratio much more rapid than its increase, and thus enabling us to bear the war expenses.'

As the homestead privilege must largely increase immigration, and add especially to the cultivation of our soil, it will contribute vastly to increase our population, wealth, and power, and augment our revenues from duties and taxes.

As this domain is extended over fifteen States and all the Territories, the completion of these enlarged canals, embracing so large a portion of them, would be most advantageous to all, and the inducement to immigration would greatly increase, and immigration must soon flow in from Europe in an augmented volume. Indeed, when these facts are generally known in Europe, the desire of small renters, and of the working classes, to own a farm, and cultivate their own lands here, must bring thousands to our shores, even during the war. But it will be mainly when the rebellion shall have been crushed, the power of the Government vindicated, its authority fully reëstablished, and slavery extinguished, so as to make labor honorable everywhere throughout our country, and freedom universal, that this immigration will surge upon our shores. When we shall have maintained the Union unbroken against foreign and domestic enemies, and proved that a republic is as powerful in war as it is benign in peace, and especially that the _people_ will rush to the ranks to crush even the most gigantic rebellion, and that they will not only bear arms, but taxes, for such a purpose, the prophets of evil, who have so often proclaimed our Government an _organised anarchy_, will lose their power to delude the people of Europe. And when that people learn the truth, and the vast privileges offered them by the Homestead Bill, there will be an exodus from Europe to our country, unprecedented since the discovery of America. The wounds inflicted by the war will then soon be healed, and European immigrants, cultivating here their own farms, and truly loyal to this free and paternal Government, from which they will have received this precious gift of a farm for each, will take the place of the rebels, who shall have fled the country. We have seen that the total cost of our railroads and canals, up to this date, was $1,335,285,569, and I have estimated the probable cost of these enlarged works as not exceeding one tenth of this sum, or $133,528,556. Let us now examine that question. We have seen that our 4,650 miles of canals cost $132,000,000, being $28,387 per mile, or less, by $8,395 per mile, than our railroads. It will be recollected that a large number of miles of these canals have already the requisite depth of seven feet, and width of seventy, and need only an enlargement of their locks. It appears, however, by the returns, that the Erie canal, the Grand Junction, Champlain canal, and the Black River, Chemung, Chenango, and Oswego, in all 528 miles, are all seven feet deep, and seventy feet wide, and cost $83,494 per mile, while the average cost of _all_ our canals, varying from forty to seventy-five feet in width, and from four to ten in depth, was $28,387 per mile. Assuming $28,000 per mile as the average cost of the canals requiring enlargement, and $83,000 that of those per mile having already the requisite dimensions, the difference would be $55,000 per mile, as the average cost of those needing increased dimensions.

The estimated cost, then, would stand as follows:

598 miles New York canals, enlargement of locks $5,980,000

Enlarging dimensions, etc., of 1,696 miles, at $55,000 per mile 93,280,000 -----------

Total, $99,260,000

The conjectural estimate heretofore made by me was $133,528,556, or one tenth the cost of our existing railroads and canals, and exceeding, by $1,528,556, the cost of all our present 4,650 miles of canal. Deduct this from the above $133,528,556, leaves $34,268,556, to be applied to improving the St. Clair flats, the Mississippi river, deepening its mouth, and for the ship canal round the Falls of Niagara.

No estimate is now presented of the cost of the canal from Lake Champlain to the St. Lawrence, because that requires the coöperation of Canada.

The railroads of our country would increase their business, with our augmented wealth and population, especially in the transportation of passengers and merchandise. They would also obtain iron cheaper for rails, boilers, and engines, timber for cars, breadstuffs and provisions for supplies, and coal or wood for their locomotives.

Great, however, as would be the effect of these works in augmenting our commerce, wealth, and population, their results in consolidating and perpetuating our Union would be still more important. When the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri, and all their tributaries, arterializing the great valley, shall be united by the proposed routes with the lakes, the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, Delaware, Susquehanna, Chesapeake, and Albemarle, what sacrilegious hand could be raised against such a Union? We should have no more rebellions. We should hear no more of North, South, East, and West, for all would be linked together by a unity of commerce and interests. Our Union would become a social, moral, geographical, political, and commercial necessity, and no State would risk by secession the benefit of participating in its commerce. We should be a homogeneous people, and slavery would disappear before the march of civilization, and of free schools, free labor, free soil, free lakes, rivers, and canals. It is the absence of such a system (aided by slavery), _drawing the West and Southwest, by a supposed superior attraction, to the Gulf_, that has led the Southwest into this rebellion. But with slavery extinguished, with freedom strengthening labor's hand, with education elevating the soul and enlightening the understanding, and with such communications uniting all our great lakes and rivers, East and West, all crowned with nourishing towns and mighty cities, with cultured fields and smiling harvests, exchanging their own products and fabrics, and those of the world, by flying cars and rushing steamers, revolt or disunion would be impossible. Strike down every barrier that separates the business of the North and East from that of the South and West, and you render dissolution impossible. In commerce, we would be a unit, drawing to us, by the irresistible attraction of interest, intercourse, and trade, the whole valley of the lakes and St. Lawrence. Whom God had united by geography, by race, by language, commerce, and interest, political institutions could not long keep asunder. Of all foreign nations, those which would derive the greatest advantages from such an union would be England and France, the two governments which a wicked pro-slavery rebellion invites to attempt our destruction. With such a commerce, and with slavery extinguished, we would have the Union, not as it was, but as our fathers intended it should be, when they founded this great and free republic. We should soon attain the highest civilization, and enjoy the greatest happiness of which our race is capable. So long as slavery existed here, and we were divided into States cherishing, and States abhorring the institution, so long as free and forced labor were thus antagonized, we could scarcely be said to have a real Union, or to exist truly as a nation. Slavery loomed up like a black mountain, dividing us. Slavery kept us always on the verge of civil war, with hostility to liberty, education, and progress, and menacing for half a century the life of the republic. The question then was not, Will any measure, or any construction of the constitution, benefit the nation? but, Will it weaken or strengthen slavery? All that was good, or great, or national, was opposed by slavery--science, literature, the improvement of rivers and harbors, homesteads for the West, defences and navies for the East. American ocean steamers were sacrificed to foreign subsidies, and all aid was refused to canals or railroads, including that to the Pacific, although essential to the national unity. Slavery was attempted to be forced on Kansas, first by violence and invasion, and then by fraud, and the _forgery of a constitution_. Defeated in Kansas by the voice of the people, slavery then took the question from the people, and promulgated its last platform in 1860, by which all the Territories, nearly equal in area to the States, were to be subjected forever _as Territories_ to slavery, although opposed by the overwhelming voice of their people. Slavery was nationalized, and freedom limited and circumscribed with the evident intent soon to strangle it in all the States, and spread forced labor over the continent, from the North to Cape Horn. Failing in the election, slavery then assailed the vital principle of the republic, the rule of the majority, and inaugurated the rebellion. Slavery kept perjured traitors for months in the cabinet and the two Houses of Congress, to aid in the overthrow of the Government. Then was formed a constitution avowedly based on slavery, setting it up as an idol to be worshipped, and upon whose barbaric altars is now being poured out the sacrificial blood of freemen. But it will fail, for the curse of God and man is upon it. And when the rebellion is crushed, and slavery extinguished, we shall emerge from this contest strengthened, purified, exalted. We shall march to the step and music of a redeemed humanity, and a regenerated Union. We shall feel a new inspiration, and breathe an air in which slavery and every form of oppression must perish.

Standing upon these friendly shores, in a land which abolished slavery in the twelfth century, and surrounded by a people devoted to our welfare, looking westward, along the path of empire, across the Atlantic, to my own beloved country, these are my views of her glorious destiny, when the twin hydras of slavery and rebellion are crushed forever.

If our Irish adopted citizens could only hear, as I now do, the condemnation of slavery and of this revolt, by the Irish people; if they could hear them, as I do, quote the electric words of their renowned Curran against slavery, and in favor of _universal emancipation_; if they could listen, as they repeated the still bolder and scathing denunciations of their great orator, O'Connell, as he trampled on the dehumanizing system of chattel slavery, they would scorn the advice of the traitor leaders, who, under the false guise of Democracy, but in hostility to all its principles, would now lure them, by the syren cry of peace, into the destruction of the Union, which guards their rights, and protects their interests.

The convention now assembled at Chicago, can do much to inaugurate a new era of civilization, freedom, and progress, by aiding in giving to the nation these great interior routes of commerce and intercourse, in the centre of which your great city will hold the urn, as the long-divorced waters of the lakes and the Mississippi are again commingled, and the Union linked together by the imperishable bonds of commerce, interest, and affection.

WOMAN.

The ever-present phenomenon of revolution bears two forms. They may be discrete or concrete, but they are two--ideas, movement,--cause, result--force, effect. And progressive humanity marches upon its future with ideas for its centre, movement its right and left wings. Not a step is taken till the Great Field-Marshal has sent his orders along the lines.

Revolutions go by periods. Are they possibly controlled or influenced in these years by the stellar affinities of the north pole? Is that capricious functionary leading up to Casseopeia, in this cycle, or Andromeda, that we find ourselves turning from great Hercules, fiery Bootes, and even neglecting the shining majesty of belted, sworded Orion, to consider woman? I have not consulted the astronomers. The stars of the heavens are in their places. Male and female, the groups come to us in winter and retire in summer: their faint splendors fall down upon our harvest nights, and then give way to the more august retinue of the wintry solstice. The boreal pivot, whose journal is the awful, compact blue, may, for aught I know, be hobnobbing at this moment with the most masculine of starry masculinities. But if it be, it is in little sympathy with the magnetic pole of human thought, whose fine point turns unwaveringly in these days of many revolutions to woman as the centre and leader of the grandest of them all.

A great storm overtook an ancient navigator of the Ægean. He called on his gods, he importuned them, but the waves rolled and raged the more angrily the more he prayed. 'Neptune, wilt thou not save me?' 'Go below,' was the uncourteous answer, and, as with a great blow struck by the hand of the busy deity, the vessel was suddenly suspended midway between the surface and the depths of the waters. What a peaceful spot she had reached! The astonished mariner looked around him in wonder more than gratitude. 'Good deity,' said he, taking breath, 'I prayed not to be saved thus _from_ the storm, but _in_ it. Return me to the upper world, I beseech thee, and let me do my stroke in its battle.'

Storms have swept over the ages as winds over the blue Ægean, and woman, shrinking from their blasts and the agitations that have followed them, has prayed to her gods, and been suspended between the depths of man's depravity and the heights of his achievements, around whose wintry peaks winds of ambition have roared, storms of vaulting self-love have gathered, tempests of passion have contended in angry and fierce strife. To brighten the heights they assailed each one, to clear the lofty airs embracing them. They shine now where clouds were wont to hover; sunshine steeps the rugged declivities where mists of ages hung their impenetrable folds, paths invite where unknown, forbidding fastnesses repelled even daring feet, and thus the stormy career of conflict is vindicated in its results. The dove testifies a certain divinity in the Doing which has produced it.

But that still region where the more timid life has nestled undaring, unadventured, shrinking from the struggle and the strife above, recoiling from the seething foulness below--what have we in this dreamland inhabited by woman? And wherefore the earnest turning thitherward, in our day, of so many brave, so many earnest, so many sad, so many yearning, aspiring eyes? Wherefore the restlessness, wherefore the groans of imprisonment here, wherefore the passionate longings, the resolute, deep, inextinguishable purpose of escape? Make way, O propitious gods; I can no longer be saved _from_ this struggle of life, but _through_ it. This mariner must be brought to the surface, or the waters will be parted before her by the conquering power in her own soul, and she will present herself there unaided. But not in the fierce spirit of a combatant, not as a conqueror--only as one moved by divine purpose to reach and _take_ her place, to touch and accomplish her work.

What are the qualities of this new soldier in the field of human struggle? Whence comes and whither goes she?

These inquiries point us to the ideas of the Woman Revolution--its Movements will be deductions from them.

Man knows neither woman nor her whence or whither. He acknowledges her a Mystery from his earliest acquaintance with her to the present day. Whatever his conquests over the hidden and the mysterious elsewhere in nature, here is a mystery that confronts him whenever he turns hither--nay, that grows by his attempts at mastering it. The permanently mysterious is only that which exceeds us, and we study this but to learn how widely its embracing horizon can spread as we advance. Thus the woman of the nineteenth century is an incomparably greater mystery to man than was her sister of the ninth. Scientific conquests do but touch the periphery of her being; they explore her nature so far as it is of common quality and powers with the nature of man and of the feminine animals, and would perhaps do more wisely if they stopped dumb before what lies beyond and above these levels. For beyond, man reads but to misread--studies but to vex and confuse himself, and--shall I say it?--learns to sneer at rather than to reverence what baffles his inquiries. Does this statement seem harsh? Is it doubted? See its truth. The only science (so called) which undertakes a study of woman does not inspire its student with an increased respect for her. As a class, medical men, above that of other men, are perhaps less chivalrous than blacksmiths. Lucky is she and lucky are they if it be not diminished instead. For, assuming man as the standard, the corporeal functions, which absolutely elevate her in the scale of development, being added to all that he possesses, and constituting her corporeal womanhood, are seen by this student only as disabilities from which he is happily exempt (as if a disability could come into any life but through the door of an ability); and her larger measure of the divine attributes, faith, hope, and love--love, as compassion and as maternity--are seen as simple weaknesses to which he is happily superior.

The greatness of man's individuality lies in his power over the external; that of woman's is interior, central, as the sun to our planets, which roll through common fields of space, breathe a common ether, share a common light and warmth, but know not that ether, that light, that warmth, whence theirs flows out to them. Central, potent, commanding, superior to laws which alternately move and still their currents--nay, being in themselves those very laws--this hidden power is never touched by them, is shared by them only in fixed measure, beyond which drafts upon it are protested as inexorably as turn the wheels of fate in producing a midge or a mastodon.

The greater includes the less, said the first Mathematician. It is no more true of the geometer's space and the philosopher's matter than of the physiologist's functional power. Apply the axiom to the functional quantity of the feminine and masculine, and it will be seen which includes which, and why man, in all the pride of his highest achievements, is obliged to confess himself defeated, when, as an investigator, he addresses himself to the solution of the problem of womanhood. Her individualizing attributes make in her life a kingdom of her own. Possessing every function and power which man possesses, either in identity or equivalent--the faculties, capacities, and functions common to both differing only comparatively in each from their degree in the other, the masculine being confessedly the lighter side of the balance, when the higher and finer attributes are in the scale--woman has above them all her own unique life, which man can learn only as a student and spectator, the depths of which all his penetration does not enable him to explore, the secrets of which his consciousness can never report. From and through the powers and attributes which centre herein, come those experiences, perceptions--those faiths, hopes, trusts, yearnings, aspirations, loves, which ray out to man that purer and divine light without which he soon stumbles and falls--that warmth without which his life becomes a wintry waste--that harmony without which he is an instrument played at will by the cunning fiend of discord and selfishness--that purity without whose sweet, cleansing current flowing over and around him he is soon mired in the sloughs of appetite, or swamped in the unclean sinks of sensualism--that steadfast holding to things above, without which he soon drops down to grovel along the earth--that unwavering faith and that utter trust in good which keeps alive and warm in the heart of humanity its noblest ideals.

Thus the Cross of the feminine life embodies the idea of the revolution in its favor: revolution, which, above all its wars, national or civil, its struggles for or against freedom, above all its discoveries in the world of matter and of force, above all its inventions, its new arts and its improved old arts, its philanthropies, its religious agitations, is destined to command for the nineteenth century the respect of the coming ages. Dion's star upon its forehead, already the dim and distant future diaphaned in its light, comes up to cheer our waiting, wandering eyes.

It is only woman who can state woman. The unknown quantity falls not within the terms of any equation to which man can reduce her. Master, teacher of all other lessons in nature, here he must be the taught. Leader of all other movements, here he must be follower. Greater must not only include, it must conduct less.

Whence?

Out of the peaceful, still waters below: no longer stay possible there. The _vis vitæ_ overruling the _vis inertia_, we take up the line of march. Fold the napkin away from your eyes, O daughter of the ages, and behold, there lies your road--a throng already pressing their way where you thought you were alone. Upward, as well by the universal as by the special law of the case. Many a tearful eye turned backward to the land we are leaving--land beloved by woman, though stained with oppression, darkened by slavery, impoverished by lack of action, dwarfed in its proportions, devious in many of its loveliest lines--some of its sweetest paths leading those who set feet of innocent trust in them down to hell at last; beloved despite all, because the heart of the traveller is tender and loving; cherished, because her repressed soul is timid and doubting. We have lacked light, freedom, space for action and growth, yet are there pleasant places there. All these are now before us. Dry your tears, O tender souls, suppress your sighs, stifle your groans. Let us press forward in courage and hope. Forty years, it may be, in the wilderness, but deliverance at last. The gentle cloud will be over us by day, the path of duty will shine as a fire upon us by night.

Farewell, then, Africa, land of despot and victim; farewell, Asia, land of satrap and slave; farewell, Europe, land of monarch and subject: welcome, broad, varied, exhaustless New World, spreading inviting fields before longing eyes that falter while they gaze.

Whither?

Two thoughts naturally result from this new attitude: first, to go straight to the kingdom already laid out and well beaten into paths by man; second, to be so polite when arrived there as to accept him, his life, power, work, as standards to which it were wisest that we conform ourselves with all expedient haste, and thus blot out as speedily as may be the woman world--let its existence be remembered only as an evil escaped, a humiliation left behind forever. Has not its narrowness shamed us, its poverty of action cramped and starved the capacities we begin to feel unfolding in us--has not its peace made us seem cowards while we lingered in it, and will not its imperishable purity bear transplantation, and bloom in perennial beauty on the wider fields to which we are hastening?

We touch the borders of the promised land. Weary and spirit-sore, less from the travel than the bitter experiences which prompted it, we yearn for the hospitable welcome due to a stranger, a helper arrived in due season. We are come, O potentate. Open wide the glad gates that shall receive us. Is not this the Canaan which we but ask to divide with thee?--a goodly land, and a prosperous, which it were joyful to go in and possess. But the heathen inhabitant thereof turns his back upon us, shuts his gates, closes his doors, ascends his throne, takes up his sceptre, and waving it before our astonished eyes, says: 'This is my own kingdom. I have created it from a wilderness to suit my own life, not another. It cannot be shared; nobody, not you, my mother, my wife, sister, daughter--not even you, most beloved, cherished, worshipped woman, shall divide it with me. No admittance except on business.'

What to do in such an unexpected emergency!--such behavior, with all sorts of personal and external power to back it, to say nothing of those proverbial fractions of law, nine out of ten of which instantly convert themselves into an adamantine cement, binding his to him, so that indeed it were a critical piece of practice to essay their sundering, for _Nature is in the union_, and she is high to be overreached, deep to be undermined, strong to be defeated, compact and wary to be foiled.

Sit down, then, a beggar at the border of man's realm, craving permission to enter and share it with him? Essay to conquer an entrance? And when once within, whether by courtesy or conquest, what then? Competition with that stronger physique, that ruggeder life, that loves the wrestle with external hindrances which I love not, and am inferior for, did I love them? An equal part in that career with one who is exempt from the offices that absorb the half of my full lifetime, and require the best powers of every sort that I possess?

Surely, here, with this body and this constitution rivalling that body and that constitution, I am doomed to an inferiority more slavish and scarcely less painful than that I have left behind. For identity of career, identity of powers. Nature does nothing inductively; does not fit the parts of her scheme to each other experimentally; works at the centre, in the sublime repose of certainty, and lets facts, experiences, possibilities at the circumference take care of themselves. She has made man to dominate this kingdom which he calls his, else should I have had my share in it from the first. Wherein she has differed me from him, she has also differed my real kingdom from his. To stop him, I require as much and no more than man possesses. What is over in kind would place me in false relations with the objective; what is more in degree would imperil my subjective peace--what is less would try me by the measure another is made for, and leave me in the shadow projected by him. Nor would the standards which prevail here harmonize with my spiritual more happily than the activities with my corporeal nature. Could I work for outward success only, or chiefly, subordinating aspiration to what stifles aspiration? Would riches satisfy me? Would actual power over men, ecclesiastical, civil, or social? Could I live for ambition, and sit down unapproved of my better life to enjoy its achievements? Would the acquisition of knowledge and its employment as a means of worldly power, distinction, and advantage satisfy the inner hunger which longs for the truth, the light, the harmony of highest heavens? In short, would so much of the flesh as I could gratify, so much of the world as I could conquer, so much devil's service as I could cover up with any patched robe of decency, drawn tight, stretched to its utmost reach, satisfy me? Truly not. Not here then is Beulah, and I must journey on.

Again, whither? This time whither my own nature leads. I have learned this by experience, that leadership for me lies not without, but within myself. So much is gained, and now once more for movement. Gather up the effects--all that we have brought with us out of the past: it will find use. For woman has been woman so far as she has been anything, and the aromas of that high estate have hung and still hang about her. Bear them along. The finest effluence of her life in the first century of our era, as in this last, was love. Mary then bore the Christ; other Mary's loved him. Woman was first in his life, and last in it. When the bearded magi adored, she loved; she was the illustrator of his teachings, the repository of his hopes for their future realization. Bring all those memories, visions, yearnings, trusts, faiths--dreams of the good, never yet seen but by the inner sight of the woman-soul,--along, and let us set out for Beulah. Its blooming fields and fair mountains lie dim but sweet on the distant horizon. We will go over and possess them--a kingdom of our own. Why have we waited so long in bondage and darkness? Why submitted to the heaped-up wrongs of the ages? Patience very excellent: once admit the idea of a scheme, and some parts must necessarily arrive in the afternoon. Development presupposes the delay or withholding of things not yet developed. By the law of climax, these are not the unimportant parts. Woman's sovereignty has been long deferred, because of the preparation necessary for it. A John the Baptist must precede the Christ in the wilderness. Fiends robed and sceptred, once reigned over fiends clothed in skins and armed with broadsword and battle axe. To-day a _gentle_man, or _gentle_woman can sit secure on any throne of Christendom. While we congratulate ourselves, let us not deny that the Tamerlanes, the Alarics, the Napoleons have had their share in the intermediate work of preparation.

Not always, as it seems to us, do the swiftest and clearest methods find favor with these hard-pressed worthies, but rather such methods as they can employ; and in time, as we see, the work gets done.

Take our planet in the condition in which its first proprietor found it on his arrival, and you will see that the improvements would be a heavy item in transactions with a real-estate broker for it. Liberal governments established--Canton, Paris, London, New York built--grain fields, mills, patent offices, world's fairs, electric telegraphs, ocean steamers, iron-clads, Central Park, show a long road travelled, and much rough, terrible, fearful work done by the way--work which has developed a condition for the exercise of the fine sovereignty of woman's pure, gentle, loving, harmonious nature--road which leads by divine intention to her empire. If the hand which has opened it has been red at times, let us remember that no purer color could have been preserved in the Thermopylæ--if the heart has been hard, that a softer one would have been surely defeated and we disadvantaged. Well could we afford to abide in the twilight-land when such struggle was going forward in our behalf, when the sunshine was descending upon such seedtime of the ages--to whose harvest we are drawing nigh.

The sceptre of Supreme Use on the earth is to the hand that is sovereign for that use. In its day every other power is subordinate to that, for it is the nature of sovereignty to be unitary, whether lodged in an idea or a person. It is because of this that personal sovereignty has been indispensable to human progress. Nothing could reign over the strong, undeveloped, turbulent brute life of the early and middle ages but the tremendous will and self-love of a man great according to his time--Charlemagne, Peter of Russia, Henry of Navarre.

And shall we complain that a development is slow which began with a Soudanese, a Papuan, and gives us now a Ruskin and an Emerson--that a career is tedious which opened, if you please, on Ararat, and has trailed its waxing splendors up to the Free American States--the libraries, the art galleries, the penetrating humanities which characterize the nineteenth century? For one, I cannot. Beulah has stood adjourned from Eden till now--wisely, needfully adjourned; and woman will enter its boundaries gratefully and gracefully, as a queen waited for and desired: grateful for the gift to the One who gave it in the Great Distribution--graceful in the reception of a right from him whose ages of struggle have made smooth her road to it.

What will she be therein? What will her life be? I close my eyes to the Actual around me, and I see her in that high land whose plains spread above the mountain peaks that surround us here. I see a creature whom the poets have sung, the artists have painted and chiselled, and the common heart of mankind has longed for, prayed for, and, in its hours of high communion, has trusted and believed in with the utter faith of a child in its mother's love. I see a being whom the pure, divine Imagination, the eye of God dimmed in man, has foreseen.

I see her not a dream--not an airy form haunting the unreal walks of night, to vanish when cockcrow recalls us to the cares of household life, the fields of labor, the paths of effort. No, but an enduring, very real, very practical embodiment of the poet's ideal, with new powers and relations illustrating its harmony in and fitness for the world that is purified and sanctified by its presence. There to my eye

'Her shape arises: She less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever; The gross and soiled she moves among do not make her gross and soiled; She knows the thoughts as she passes--nothing is concealed from her; She is none the less considerate or friendly therefore; She is the best beloved--it is without exception--she has no reason to fear, and she does not fear; Oaths, quarrels, hiccupped songs, proposals, smutty expressions, are idle to her as she passes; She is silent--she is possessed of herself--they do not offend her; She receive them as the laws of nature receives them--she is strong; She, too, is a law of nature--there is no law stronger than she is.'

I look beneath, the ethereal drapery of qualities in which the prophetic imagination has clothed her, and central to them all I find a new phenomenon--the latest of the ages--TRUE WOMANHOOD. From this proceeds the veiled glory hitherto seen but by poet's eye--not far hence to be felt and known of all. For it is no longer the vision of a distant and dim land, separated from this actual present by a fathomless abyss. Out of the yawning chasm that has divided that from this there rise to-day, clear, shining, visible to open eyes, the everlasting pillars of truth, which will shortly bridge it and make broad the road thither, so that neither he who walks straight with exact step between the pales of science, nor he outside wending, heedless, with wide-wandering eyes and feet who stumbles along, shall miss it.

A being planted above man, taking root where he blooms, in the pure affections, flowering in the high airs which he dreams of but sees not, or sees only in moments of inspiration from her--a being, who, more complex on her physical side, is therefore more affluent on her spiritual--who, from the established premises of science, demands not new, but the very largest deductions to reach the borders of her life--a being whose support with the earth-life is widened and strengthened by each added organ, function, susceptibility--whose divine support is opened, established, confirmed in increased degrees over man's by each womanly inlet to the spiritual nature--I see such a being irradiating the future years and paths of my race, and my soul grows strong and glad at the sight. In her the self-love of man is replaced by love; ambition pales its ineffectual fires in the light of that pure, undying flame of aspiration which her soul feeds; patriotism, ashamed of its narrowness, unfolds shining pinions over humanity, and becomes philanthropy; pleasure retreats in her wornout, patched-up harlequin robes; and happiness, pure, clean, bright from the sweet inner chambers of the soul, takes her place.

Life acknowledges a higher fealty. With the new sovereign, new aims, new standards, new methods for the improvement of humanity.

Under the masculine dynasty we have had force, organization, investigation, discovery, experiment--methods violent, harsh, selfish, slow, confused, chaotic: a magnanimous career at intervals spanning the wide weltering strife, as a bow the stormy heavens; noble deeds, not a few, shining out of the darkness here and there; real victory crowning the crests of the rolling sea now and then, and casting where they have shone long shadows over the waters darkened with selfish contention around them. Power under this reign has been applied to the multiplication of external resources, means, opportunities for the race. It has clothed the earth with them in forms so numerous, so varied--so good, so bad, so indifferent--so noble, so mean--so rich, so poor--so high, so low, that the most active memory of the longest life fails to furnish the catalogue of them. It professes human good; it cultivates personal good, family good, community good, or, at the largest, national good. But whatever the stature it attains, its methods are through external appeals to the soul--influences from without. Its common theology steadily refused for eighteen hundred years to credit the union of the divine with the human in the soul of mankind. Its deductive intellect is blind to truth till her presence is proved by facts--as if we would hale an archangel, with the shining light of the upper world yet flowing adown him, before the police magistrate, and swear the butchers and the newsboys on the question of identity. Its Art is timid, thin, and self-distrusting, because the Ideal is flouted as worthy only of women, dreamers, and liberal ministers--the silver wing of imagination is rarely loosed but to be soon folded in humiliation before the reproof of the exacting senses. Its statesmanship is smart, crafty, treacherous, because it cherishes a state, a nation, rather than humanity. Its jurisprudence is a gigantic, vigilant detective, dealing with a population of suspects. Its physical methods only are uniformly clear, honorable, straight-forward though. Even these in times and places might be nobler, more open; but it fights well, labors well, cultivates well, invents well, manufactures well, because in these it is dealing chiefly between its native elements, force and matter;--but being characteristically inductive, it cannot deal liberally with human nature, lacking the ideal of it, the faith in it, the reverence for it which are the only sustaining root of such behavior toward it.

Under the new sovereignty, the methods, like the power employing them, will have their nearest relations with the interior life. They will draw helps from the outward; and here the glory of man as a creator of conditions and opportunities, will be first measured and fully appreciated, for it is the woman only who can penetrate his works, draw thence their full significance and value, transmute their evils to goods, and incorporate their best spirit in humanity. It is a great thing to create that which helps any human soul to be diviner than without such help it would be. It is greater to develop conditions which establish and confirm true relations between the soul and its helps. It is greatest to create the soul to be divine--with helps, or in spite of hindrances. The first is eminently the office of the masculine. The second is shared between it and the feminine, with a preponderance to the latter; and the last belongs so exclusively to woman, that the day of its doing is necessarily the day of her sovereignty.

The divine, artistic, harmonious creation of the human spirit in the divine, artistic, harmonious human body, this is the grand function of the feminine era. For this it is that woman has those special finer endowments which in all ages have distinguished her from man, and foreshown a higher life for her in some future--some Beulah, visible to eyes that could o'ershoot the bounds of the passing age. Wanting this power, preparing the day of its advent, John Baptist has toiled, sweated, groaned, fumed, devastated in his wilderness, to touch its hither border at last in this pregnant nineteenth century. Age of revolution--age of wonders!--of which the very greatest are, I think, the beginnings we already see of settlement here. As a question, that of woman is not an old one. There can be no Woman Question among any people till it is advanced enough to ask for better methods than man's. When this stage is reached, life is ripe for the advent of woman--it appeals to her to come forward. It prepares better conditions, that it may invite her--opens fields, that it may engage her powers--seeks to clothe her in a real dignity, of which she has before worn rather the semblance than itself. Society, obeying the higher view of her, enacts new laws for her enlargement, modifies or sets aside social canons which restricted and warped and suppressed her, and begins with these movements to find itself enriched by the presence of finer influences; led upward to more exalted standards, penetrated with a subtler humane sentiment than it before knew.

Yet with all these movements in her favor, woman, bone of man's bone, remains a bone of contention to him, till nature, read truly and trusted reverently, is allowed to lead him as a little child by the hand and show him woman's real kingdom. He must not look on it with a timid or a grudging eye. A Chinese mandarin in California, becoming acquainted with the fact that American women could read and write and be trusted with accounts, replied, with a warning shake of the head, 'If he readee, writee, by and by he lickee all the men.' Does this apprehension possibly extend beyond the Celestial Empire? It will not be expressed, I know, but there is much unexpressed feeling which is none the less real for its silence.

'Every woman is an embodied revolution, now-a-days,' said a lank, grumbling dyspeptic, while the autumn leaves of '62 yet hung in bright profusion on the bordering forests of the Hudson. 'If you had said every woman is in these days an embodied revelation,' was the superb reply, 'you would have done both truth and my sex more even justice.' Man must not fear woman, for whatever nature designed for her is not only inevitable, but is his only means of salvation. He need not fear her, for she is the daughter of nature, so full of loyalty and filial devotion to her mother, that no wide or continued departure from her designs is possible. He will not fear her when he is religious enough to feel that each natural revolution is a step in the march upward, ordered in its season as calmly and inexorably as were the secondary rocks laid down when the primary had been prepared for receiving them, as the nebulous vapor is consolidated into a planet or sun, or the morning-glory brought forth of its sown seed. He will be comforted, too, by remembering that natural revolution does never dethrone. It only enthrones above the present ruler. Work out your kingdom. Define and fill its bounds and metes, and never will usurper's foot print its soil. No invasion of your sovereignty is possible. The magnetisms of the universe hold you there, and every other being outside--an infallible police, bent on the protection of your rights, charged to secure them to you without so much as a flaw in their finest edges. Nature knows your kingdom, and charges all yet unsettled parties to go aside. But in the coming cycles she will develop others above it.

The wheel revolves. You can only remain at the summit by its standing still. It is not your degradation, but another's glory, that is sought. Open your eyes to the scheme: look adown its vistas of grandeur, and at every step taken above you, you will sing, Hosanna! We also rise by your ascent.

LITERARY NOTICES

MYSTERIES OF LIFE, DEATH, AND FUTURITY. By HORACE WELBY. New York: James S. Gregory.

A very suggestive book, full of manifold and curious research. The author, in his preface, says: 'It has been undertaken with the view of concentrating within its focus the views and opinions of some of the leading writers of the present day, and, by placing them before the reader in a popular form and setting, adapt them for a larger class than would be likely to consult the authorities themselves whence the substance of this volume has been derived. In virtue of the Scriptural character of the subjects, the rewards will be a special blessing on those who read and understand them; the interpretations and inferences, in many instances, being the deductions of men venerated for their piety and learning in ministering the most precious of all knowledge--the inestimable comfort of the hope that is in us.'

The work which the author proposed to himself has been well done. A single glance at the index would be sufficient to assure the reader of the great variety of subjects embraced in these carefully selected extracts. Although from so many different sources, a unity of subject gives them unity of interest. The book contains a valuable array of the best thoughts, impressions, and beliefs of the most distinguished minds on the phenomena of life, death, and futurity.

THE FAIRY BOOK. The best Popular Fairy Stories selected and rendered anew. By the Author of 'John Halifax, Gentleman,' &c. &c. New York: Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square. 1863.

The name of Miss Mulock is sufficient guarantee that the little ones will find abundance of entertainment, and no harmful matter in the pretty 'Fairy Book' published by Harper & Brothers. The tales are well selected and well told. Bits of quaint humor are interspersed through the narratives, increasing their interest to both old and young, and lightening the labor of the 'reader out' by many a pleasant smile. Mothers cannot fail to find this judicious collection an assistance in their labors, and an agreeable addition to the library of their young people.

LETTERS FROM ITALY AND SWITZERLAND. By FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY. Translated from the German by LADY WALLACE, with a Biographical Notice by JULIE DE MARGUERITTES. Published by Frederick Leypoldt, Philadelphia. 1863. For sale by F. W. Christern, 763 Broadway, New York, and A. K. Loring, 319 Washington Street, Boston.

Again are we indebted to Mr. Leypoldt for a delightful book, a truthful record of feeling from the hand of a man noted for purity of life, scholarship, and an enviable reputation in the world of music. The letters are such as we should expect from the character of Mendelssohn's compositions--pure, elegant, fanciful, flowing, serious, and dignified, but without the passionate intensity, the soul-searching pathos and energy characterizing spirits deeply acquainted with the bitterest griefs incident to humanity, griefs arising either from without or within. Rich, handsome, and happily married, he was not exposed to the many privations and trials generally pertaining to artist life; his amiable character drew round him many friends, and his wealth enabled him to bring out his works during his own lifetime, and thus make them known under the most favorable auspices. He was indeed, as Goethe said of him, 'born on a lucky day.' The translation is beautifully executed, and we hope the tasteful little volume may receive a substantial welcome from our reading public.

LILIAN. Published by Ticknor & Fields, Boston. For sale by D. Appleton & Co., New York.

This is a novel of considerable ability. The story is exciting and interesting, the scenes varied, the descriptions vivid, and the denouement well imagined and sustained. There are no dull pages in the book. There is much to praise, but something also to regret. There is a want of calm, of continuity in the style. The sentences are short and closely cut, falling upon the ear more like the broken rattling of hailstones than the full flowing music of a strong deep river. Such a style, introduced at proper intervals and in appropriate positions, is frequently very effective; but, when long continued, it grows wearisome and monotonous. As our late writers are much given to it, they should be on their guard lest it become a _national_ characteristic.

OUT-DOOR PAPERS. By THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. For sale by D. Appleton & Co., New York.

The articles contained in this book are: Saints and their Bodies; Physical Courage; A Letter to a Dyspeptic; The Murder of the Innocents; Barbarism and Civilization; Gymnastics; A New Counterblast; The Health of Our Girls; April Days; My Out-Door Study; Water Lilies; The Life of Birds; The Procession of the Flowers; Snow.

This work was received by us too late to give it, in our July number, that meed of attention and praise so justly its due. Fortunately it requires no words from us to introduce it to notice; some of its articles, having been already published in the _Atlantic Monthly_, are already known to and valued by some of the highest minds among us. The

## book is written by an ardent admirer but close observer of nature, and

is full of tender traceries, of rainbow-hued fancies, and marked by the keen insight of a glowing and far-reaching imagination. The chapter on 'Snow' is one of the most exquisite things ever written, pure, chaste, and delicately cut as the starry crystals it so lovingly commemorates. Nor is the 'Procession of the Flowers' less admirable. In all their simple loveliness they rise from earth, and bloom before us as we read. Writers of such high finish, such delicate perceptions of beauty as T. W. Higginson, are seldom characterized by great originality--his expletives and imagery are as original as tender and beautiful. His illustrations are never morbid, but ever strong and healthful. If he be, as we have been informed he is, the Colonel Higginson now acting in the service of his country, Heaven preserve the life of the patriot, poet, and scholar--for such men are jewels in our national crown of glory!

Mr. Higginson says: 'If, in the simple process of writing, one could physically impart to his page the fragrance of this spray of azalea beside me, what a wonder it would seem!--and yet one ought to be able, by the mere use of language, to supply to every reader the total of that white, honeyed, trailing sweetness which summer insects haunt and the Spirit of the Universe loves. The defect is not in language, but in men. There is no conceivable beauty of blossom so beautiful as words--none so graceful, none so perfumed. It is possible to dream of combinations of syllables so delicious that all the dawning and decay of summer cannot rival their perfection, nor winter's stainless white and azure match their purity and their charm. To write them, were it possible, would be to take rank with nature; nor is there any other method, even by music, for human art to reach so high.'

To this very height of human art has Mr. Higginson, in the article from which the above is a quotation, himself attained!

IN THE TROPICS. By a Settler in Santo Domingo. With an Introductory Notice by RICHARD B. KIMBALL, Author of 'St. Leger,' 'Undercurrents,' &c. Carleton, publisher. 1863.

A 'Settler in Santo Domingo' has given us a good book--a fresh, wholesome, and evidently truthful narrative of his every-day experience in the tropics. It is a book eminently _sui generis_, reminding one of Robinson Crusoe or Dana's 'Two Years before the Mast.' There is a gentle earnestness, a mild yet positive concentration of purpose about it, that enlists our sympathies from the start. The young farmer's mind is on his work. We suspect he has capacities outside of his cornfield and yuca patch, but to this point in the record before us he gives no clue. He is a farmer, and nothing else. The bright-winged birds flit and gleam and twitter in the evergreen woods about him, but his hand is on the plough and his ear drinks in only the music of his panting team. From his window, looking eastward, he sees the advance beams of the sun flung across the savanna: he takes the hint, and hurries out to look after his young plantains. At night the sea keeps up its everlasting chant by the side of his _palenca_, and the pure stars watch over his humble roof; yet, unconscious of both, he sleeps on the calm deep sleep appointed as the best recompense of honest toil.

The author of 'In the Tropics' is a young man born and reared on a farm in the interior of the State of New York, who was afterward condemned to what seemed to him the perpetual servitude of a clerk's life in the city. Weary and heart-sick he yearns for a better existence. Not little Nell beseeching her grandfather to leave the dark rooms and melancholy houses of her abhorrence, and go out into the open country and sleep in fields and under trees and have the sun and wind upon their faces, has a more intense loathing of the dull, artificial routine of town life than he. His escape is easily managed, and his transition to the cheerful freedom of a widely different career is so speedy and so satisfying that he is in no mood to dwell upon the monotonous past. We get an estimate of the bondage from which he has fled by the tone of pleasant surprise and buoyant gratitude with which he welcomes the commonest gifts of mother nature. He is as impressible as a schoolboy let loose for the long vacation.

There is a vein of loving trustfulness pervading his narrative that is really touching. Our young, vigorous, and hearty settler, glorying in his privilege to struggle, achieve, and conquer difficulties, is too proud to be ashamed of his dependence on Him who appointed the planets to their courses, and is not unmindful of a sparrow's fall. How fine and delicately tender is this retrospective glance at the close of his monthly record for April!

'Four months have fled away like a busy though pleasant dream since I laid myself down to my first night's repose in my homestead. The Giver of all good gifts has crowned my poor efforts with his tender mercies, and as I look up from these pages through the arcade of fruit-bearing trees and onward to the gentle hill-slope now green with springing corn, and beautiful in the promise of future abundance, I feel a perfect and grateful trust--far, far too deep for my weak powers of utterance--that He will never forsake the humble laborer in this fair field of His creation.'

And he is instructive withal. His book is a perfect _vade mecum_ for beginners in tropical farming. To such it is literally 'guide, counsellor, and friend.' Colonists going out to Santo Domingo will do well to include a copy in their outfit, and, as far as practicable, follow in the footsteps of their sturdy and genial predecessor.

The reader need not expect to find in this work a sensation story. It is anything but that. Neither, being exclusively descriptive of the beneficent arts of peace, can it in any sense come under the head of what is termed war literature. Yet it is safe to affirm that without the great rebellion this book had never been written. It is full of novel, picturesque, and widely suggestive ideas. Some of its statements tear away old fallacies as by a cannon ball. For instance, where the young settler states as matter of experience:

'Those who say the treasures of the tropics are to be best won by the brute force of ignorant labor, cannot have studied with sufficient patience the march of invention. Intelligent laborers, men who know how to make wood and iron do their harvest work to the sparing of human sinews, men who can work steam in harness, these are what is wanted here. Those, too, are mistaken who fancy that no skin but a black one can cover the firm muscle and vigorous endurance of a perfect and hardy manhood. The most manly workers I have seen in this country are _white men_. They know how to obtain and use the best class of labor-saving machines, and they trust no one but themselves to manage them, for they know that superior implements and the recklessness of brute force don't work well together. Under the warm sun of the tropics white men and machinery will yet open the grandest field of civilization.'

This goes to confirm us in the opinion we have long entertained and advanced in these pages, that the result of the great political change we are now undergoing will be for the benefit of white men. It has been so often asserted that only black men can work in the tropics, that people have come to acquiesce in the statement without investigation. The record of this work is to the point in helping to dispel so widespread a delusion.

Whoever, at this delightful season, wishes to enjoy a book written in pure, gushing English, attuned to the gentle harmonies of nature, and be refreshed by sympathy with its kind and grateful spirit, will not fail to read 'In the Tropics.'

HARPER'S PICTORIAL HISTORY OF THE GREAT REBELLION IN THE UNITED STATES.

This work is issued in semi-monthly numbers, at twenty-five cents per number, appearing about the first and fifteenth of each month. The introduction contains a succinct account of the formation of the Confederacy of the States; the formation and adoption of the Constitution of the United States, and the establishment of the National Government; the origin, development, and progress of the doctrines of nullification and secession, and the various phases which they assumed until their final culmination in the Great Rebellion.

The illustrations comprise portraits of those who have borne a prominent

## part in the struggle; maps of the different localities; plans of the

leading actions; views of scenes of interest and of the most important battles.

The work is profusely and graphically illustrated, and we think this serial cannot fail to become popular. We learn much and readily through the eye, and the importance of faithfully executed pictures can scarcely be overestimated. The portraits given in the work are _portraits_, and not _caricatures_. It contains a careful, comprehensive, and minute record of the progress of the war, and is written with ability and spirit. It promises to be impartial, accurate, and artistic.

THE NORTH PACIFIC REVIEW. A Journal of Literature, History, Science, Correspondence, and Fine Arts. San Francisco: Dalgleish & Co., publishers and proprietors.

The Continental extends a warm greeting to her sister of the West, feeling not only the strong bonds of the literary amenities, but the far stronger ties of patriotism and loyalty, so ably defined in the opening article of the _North Pacific_. Loyalty is indeed something more than fidelity to one's country and Government, based upon a sense of interest or of obligation: it is _fidelity based upon love_.

Young and glorious West! May such loyalty ever distinguish you, and such feelings link in close and ever closer union the children of the Atlantic and Pacific shores! On the maintenance of such love hangs the whole future of humanity!

SANDERS' UNION FOURTH READER; embracing a full Exposition of the Principles of Rhetorical Reading, with numerous exercises for practice, both in prose and poetry, various in style, and carefully adapted to the purposes of teaching in schools of every grade. By CHARLES W. SANDERS, A.M. New York: Ivison, Phinney & Co.

A valuable aid to scholar and teacher. The selections have been made with great care, and give evidence of refined taste, and, while perfectly adapted for practice in rhetorical reading, are admirably calculated to quicken the moral perceptions and awaken the finer sensibilities of the scholar.

RECEIVED.

A HISTORY OF THE INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPE. By JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER, M.D., LL.D., Prof. of Chemistry and Physiology in the University of New York, author of a 'Treatise on Human Physiology,' &c., &c. Harper and Brother, publishers, Franklin Square, New York.

A book apparently of great erudition and research. Being received too late for reading, and reviewing in the July number of THE CONTINENTAL, it is our intention to return to it in our August issue.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

MATTER AND SPIRIT.

We do not ordinarily feel disposed to criticize the articles of our contributors; nor do we feel disposed now to do more than to offer a brief suggestion in reference to a philosophical position assumed by the author of an interesting article in our last number, entitled, 'TOUCHING THE SOUL.' The writer assumes that matter and spirit are so utterly opposite in their respective natures that they cannot be made to act together in any way. For instance, he says: 'Here again the argument is clinched by the mere distinction between matter and spirit, the one being the very antipodes of, and incapable of acting upon the other.' And again: 'To sum up the whole argument in a single sentence, the physical senses are dependent for their perceptions upon the action of matter, and hence spirit, which is not matter, can in no way affect them.'

Unquestionably this statement is contradictory in itself, and, at all events, cannot possibly be sustained to the extent of the assertion. The actual existence of the soul in the body, and the perception of physical objects and effects by the senses, are proofs undeniable that in this instance, at least, there are mutual action and reaction between matter and spirit. If it be said that this connection of the soul with the organized frame is the only condition in which the material and immaterial are known to be capable of acting upon each other, it is yet wholly inaccurate and unphilosophical to say that this mutual action is impossible.

But, in truth, the assertion is unphilosophical and incorrect in a far wider sense, and in reference to a much more extensive range of phenomena than those which concern the mysterious relations of the soul with the human body. Throughout all nature are to be seen the plainest indications of the influence and operation of spirit on the material world. It is spirit only which animates, informs, and shapes the whole universe. Wherever law prevails (and where does it not?) there is intelligence, spirit, soul, acting to sustain it, during every moment of its operation. Indeed it is doubtful whether any other than spiritual power is to be found anywhere in nature. It seems to be too obvious a truth to admit of any doubt or question, that matter, if it be of a nature opposite to that of spirit, has been created as the instrument of soul, having properties suited to the harmonious coöperation of the two, in their respective purposes in nature. To represent matter as something wholly antagonistic to spirit and incapable of any relations with it, is to ignore all our own experience, and the significance of all the grand phenomena of nature.

However great may be the distinction between matter and spirit, the Creator has evidently established the closest relationship between them. All that we can ever know of matter arises from its power to affect the soul,--through the senses while we remain in the body, whatever may be its relations to the spirit in another state of existence. If we take, for instance, the inertia of matter, and consider it philosophically, we can make of it nothing more than a power of resistance, or persistence, residing in certain points, which we call particles of matter. The same is true of attraction and repulsion. These are forces residing in the same points; and these forces are all we know, or can know, about them. So of the sensible qualities of matter; color, for instance. This is merely the power of the same points, to cause vibrations in an elastic medium; and these, acting on the sensorium, communicate sensations, and become the basis of ideas in the soul. Who can say this subtile power, residing in the points which we call particles of matter, is not spiritual in its nature? Or, indeed, who can affirm, with absolute certainty, that there is anything else known to us in the universe, except that which is kindred to the soul by its power to communicate with and inform it. From the very dawn of our existence we have been encased in what we call matter, and have derived all our education from it. It is the only medium by which we communicate with each other; nor have we any other means of climbing up to a knowledge of GOD himself. We do not mean to say that the spirit of man has no faculties for a direct perception of divine influences; but simply that the material world is the appointed instrument for educating the human soul, through the senses, to the consciousness and intelligent use of its highest and noblest faculties.

By human means, and, also, by all the tremendous operations of nature, so far as they are known to man, matter is wholly indestructible. No instance is known, from the beginning of creation, in which a single

## particle of matter has been annihilated. Can anything more be said of

the soul? Or should we not rather feel relieved, and freed from much doubt, if we had an equal assurance of the continued existence of the soul after the great change which separates it from the body? May we not, at least, without any humiliation, admit our kindred to the dust in which we dwell, and recognize in it a creation, coeval with the soul and intended for its use, with points of contact and mutual coöperation, which render matter and spirit not wholly at war with each other, but united in a common destiny, to be continued at least as long as the duration of the human race on the surface of the earth?

As to the singular phenomena to which our author intends to apply his argument, we can only say that they cannot be disproved in the mode attempted. We have no such knowledge of the facts as would enable us to form any opinion on the subject. But if many good men have not been egregiously deceived, the phenomena in question indicate the speedy discovery of relations not hitherto suspected to exist between matter and spirit. We do not anticipate the development of any other than natural laws. We are not credulous as to the interference of supernatural agencies; but we are fully prepared for almost any discoveries in the department of psychology, unveiling the mysterious but unquestionable relations of harmony--of action and reaction--existing between the soul of man and the universe of GOD.

ON HORSEBACK.

Those who have scanned with critical eye the cavalry regiments that have lately trooped through our cities from various States of the Union, on their way to the banks of the Potomac, must in candor, if with reluctance, acknowledge that we are not just yet a nation of horsemen. That our troopers have got a knack of 'sticking on' we will admit; but there are ways of fulfilling that necessary condition with more ease to the horse, more grace in the action, and more certainty of being able to use the weapons with precision, than the present very unartistic method common to horsemen generally in most parts of the country. Within a quarter of a century much improvement has taken place in the system of equestrianism under which the cavalry riders of Europe are instructed. Years ago, the long stirrups, such as our dragoons for the most part ride with, were taken up some inches by the riding masters of the British and other foreign services. It was the superior horsemanship of riders brought up in that best of all riding schools, the fox-hunting field, that first drew the attention of cavalry teachers to the necessity of affording a firmer _appui_ to the horseman than he can obtain from stirrups, to keep his feet in contact with which he is obliged to point his toes downward with painful perseverance. All the good 'hunting horsemen,' as they are termed, of England and Ireland, ride with short stirrups. So do the Cossack cavalry, the best troop horsemen, perhaps, in the world. The Arab rides with very short stirrups, which makes him look, when mounted, as if he were sitting on a low chair. But the seat thus obtained by the Arab is not one for men who have to gallop across a country intersected with fences and other obstacles. In stirrups, as in most other things, there is a _juste milieu_; and if the American dragoon is on one side of that, so is the Arab of the Desert on the other. The late Capt. Nolan, who fell in the famous charge of the Six Hundred at Balaklava, did much to introduce a perfect system of horsemanship into cavalry regiments. He published a work upon the subject, in which he advocates the short stirrup, and bases his system, generally, upon the hunting style of horsemanship. We have seen some very bad riders among British cavalry officers, brought up in the old-school method of seat and band. Indeed, some satirical writer or another has said there are two professional classes to whom it is impossible to impart the art of horsemanship--sailors and cavalry officers: but that was going a trifle too far, as we have seen specimens of both the one and the other capable of acquitting themselves very well 'across country,' which is the test, _par excellence_, of good riding. That was in later days, however, and since the reforms of the riding master.

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In spite of some repulsive features, we insert the accompanying picture. The subject chosen is not of that character which the highest genius loves to depict; yet it is vigorously drawn, and doubtless true to nature. At the present time it may be useful as a fair representation of many specimens of the boasted Southern cavalier.--F. P. S.

THE SOUTHERN COLONEL.

Strolling, one morning in 1847, into a Virginia barroom, I accosted a little, puffy-looking man with "Major, can you"--whereupon, drawing up like a bantam, he snapped out, "You're mistaken; I am a colonel;" the colonel being in those days as peculiar to Southern society as the cross to southern constellations. I proceeded to anatomize this representative specimen.

Where he obtained his title no one knew. Some thought it hereditary, his grandfather having been a colonel in the Revolution; others supposed it to have been won by conducting the Mexican campaign in the columns of the _Warrior_, after the manner of modern editors; and a few ignorant souls believed he had been born with it in his mouth, instead of a silver spoon. As to the man himself, his great-great-grandmother was a Huguenot; his grandissimo-grandfather came over with Lafayette, and when he made affirmation on "my stars and garters," he was supposed to have reference to certain insignia of nobility, heirlooms in the family from the time of Charlemagne. He had not stature enough for tallness, nor bulk enough for breadth, in his figure resembled the wooden soldiers in the panorama of Bunker Hill, who ran down hill at every fire without moving their legs, and, like a kangaroo, had small feet and head in proportion. He made his front hair into a curl, hanging over his nose, like an index finger, and signed his initials with astonishing flourish, G. B. A., usually rendered by the boys "Great Big Ayres." He spent the winter dormant, like a polar bear, and, in summer, like chaste Diana, followed the hunt, took his morals from Tom Paine, and was, as he said of himself, neither a good Christian nor a bad infidel. He entered Government service in his youth, got drunk, and had been in that condition ever since, varied by occasionally getting gloriously drunk. The only difference between him and a sot was drinking his liquors genteelly from his own cellar, and lying in bed when a sot lies in the gutter. When he was beastliest, he made frequent allusions to the cooling board, referring to a revel, in which, having covered himself with glory, he awoke from a dead drunk to find himself arrayed in his shroud, since which he has been in the habit of designating himself a resurrectionist. He sported an immense diamond, represented to be one of the honors awarded him by Government, and loaded himself with rings, chains, and charms, which gave him resemblance to the show figure in a jeweller's window. He had a passion for the drama, was forever posting to the city to inspect debutantes and prima donnas, was a connoisseur of women, and considered a young girl, who knew "the times that try men's souls" to be a quotation from Tom Paine, the most astonishing specimen that had ever come under his observation. He was the victim of scandal, and usually finished his anathemas on the village gossips by wishing that they were in "Father Abraham's bosom or some other old gentleman's." He attended all the fashionable soirees, and might generally be heard informing his friends that the next piece on the programme "is brandy smash and cocktails." He had a habit of mistaking his quotations, and had been known to declare, in his fits of drunken aberration, that he could say with John Quincy Adams, "I still live." At last accounts he had joined a rebel company, which mustered twelve guns and an officer for every private. A. JACK STONE.

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The Continental Monthly.

The readers of the CONTINENTAL are aware of the important position it has assumed, of the influence which it exerts, and of the brilliant array of political and literary talent of the highest order which supports it. No publication of the kind has, in this country, so successfully combined the energy and freedom of the daily newspaper with the higher literary tone of the first-class monthly; and it is very certain that no magazine has given wider range to its contributors, or preserved itself so completely from the narrow influences of party or of faction. In times like the present, such a journal is either a power in the land or it is nothing. That the CONTINENTAL is not the latter is abundantly evidenced _by what it has done_--by the reflection of its counsels in many important public events, and in the character and power of those who are its staunchest supporters.

Though but little more than a year has elapsed since the CONTINENTAL was first established, it has during that time acquired a strength and a political significance elevating it to a position far above that previously occupied by any publication of the kind in America. In proof of which assertion we call attention to the following facts:

1. Of its POLITICAL articles republished in pamphlet form, a single one has had, thus far, a circulation of _one hundred and six thousand_ copies.

2. From its LITERARY department, a single serial novel, "Among the Pines," has, within a very few months, sold nearly _thirty-five thousand_ copies. Two other series of its literary articles have also been republished in book form, while the first portion of a third is already in press.

No more conclusive facts need be alleged to prove the excellence of the contributions to the CONTINENTAL, or their _extraordinary popularity;_ and its conductors are determined that it shall not fall behind. Preserving all "the boldness, vigor, and ability" which a thousand journals have attributed to it, it will greatly enlarge its circle of action, and discuss, fearlessly and frankly, every principle involved in the great questions of the day. The first minds of the country, embracing the men most familiar with its diplomacy and most distinguished for ability, are among its contributors; and it is no mere "flattering promise of a prospectus" to say that this "magazine for the times" will employ the first intellect in America, under auspices which no publication ever enjoyed before in this country.

While the CONTINENTAL will express decided opinions on the great questions of the day, it will not be a mere political journal: much the larger portion of its columns will be enlivened, as heretofore, by tales, poetry, and humor. In a word, the CONTINENTAL will be found, under its new staff of Editors, occupying a position and presenting attractions never before found in a magazine.

TERMS TO CLUBS.

Two copies for one year, Five dollars. Three copies for one year, Six dollars. Six copies for one year, Eleven dollars. Eleven copies for one year, Twenty dollars. Twenty copies for one year, Thirty-six dollars. PAID IN ADVANCE

_Postage, Thirty-six cents a year_, to be paid BY THE SUBSCRIBER.

SINGLE COPIES.

Three dollars a year, IN ADVANCE. _Postage paid by the Publisher_.

JOHN F. TROW, 50 Greene St., N. Y., PUBLISHER FOR THE PROPRIETORS.

[Illustration: pointing finger] As an Inducement to new subscribers, the Publisher offers the following liberal premiums:

[Illustration: pointing finger] Any person remitting $3, in advance, will receive the magazine from July, 1862, to January, 1864, thus securing the whole of Mr. KIMBALL'S and Mr. KIRKE'S new serials, which are alone worth the price of subscription. Or, if preferred, a subscriber can take the magazine for 1863 and a copy of "Among the Pines," or of "Undercurrents of Wall Street," by R. B. KIMBALL, bound in cloth, or of "Sunshine in Thought," by CHARLES GODFREY LELAND (retail price, $1. 25.) The book to be sent postage paid.

[Illustration: pointing finger] Any person remitting $4.50, will receive the magazine from its commencement, January, 1862, to January, 1864, thus securing Mr. KIMBALL'S "Was He Successful?" and Mr. KIRKE'S "Among the Pines," and "Merchant's Story," and nearly 3,000 octavo pages of the best literature in the world. Premium subscribers to pay their own postage.

* * * * *

[Illustration: THE FINEST FARMING LANDS WHEAT CORN COTTON FRUITS & VEGETABLES]

~EQUAL TO ANY IN THE WORLD!!!~

MAY BE PROCURED

~At FROM $8 to $12 PER ACRE,~

Near Markets, Schools, Railroads, Churches, and all the blessings of Civilization.

1,200,000 Acres, in Farms of 40, 80, 120, 160 Acres and upwards, in ILLINOIS, the Garden State of America.

* * * * *

The Illinois Central Railroad Company offer, ON LONG CREDIT, the beautiful and fertile PRAIRIE LANDS lying along the whole line of their Railroad. 700 MILES IN LENGTH, upon the most Favorable Terms for enabling Farmers, Manufacturers, Mechanics and Workingmen to make for themselves and their families a competency, and a HOME they can call THEIR OWN, as will appear from the following statements:

ILLINOIS.

Is about equal in extent to England, with a population of 1,722,666, and a soil capable of supporting 20,000,000. No State in the Valley of the Mississippi offers so great an inducement to the settler as the State of Illinois. There is no part of the world where all the conditions of climate and soil so admirably combine to produce those two great staples, CORN and WHEAT.

CLIMATE.

Nowhere can the Industrious farmer secure such immediate results from his labor as on these deep, rich, loamy soils, cultivated with so much ease. The climate from the extreme southern part of the State to the Terre Haute, Alton and St. Louis Railroad, a distance of nearly 200 miles, is well adapted to Winter.

WHEAT, CORN, COTTON, TOBACCO.

Peaches, Pears, Tomatoes, and every variety of fruit and vegetables is grown in great abundance, from which Chicago and other Northern markets are furnished from four to six weeks earlier than their immediate vicinity. Between the Terre Haute, Alton & St. Louis Railway and the Kankakee and Illinois Rivers, (a distance of 115 miles on the Branch, and 136 miles on the Main Trunk,) lies the great Corn and Stock raising portion of the State.

THE ORDINARY YIELD

of Corn is from 60 to 80 bushels per acre. Cattle, Horses, Mules, Sheep and Hogs are raised here at a small cost, and yield large profits. It is believed that no section of country presents greater inducements for Dairy Farming than the Prairies of Illinois, a branch of farming to which but little attention has been paid, and which must yield sure profitable results. Between the Kankakee and Illinois Rivers, and Chicago and Dunleith, (a distance of 56 miles on the Branch and 147 miles by the Main Trunk,) Timothy Hay, Spring Wheat, Corn, &c., are produced in great abundance.

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS.

The Agricultural products of Illinois are greater than those of any other State. The Wheat crop of 1861 was estimated at 35,000,000 bushels, while the Corn crop yields not less than 140,000,000 bushels besides the crop of Oats, Barley, Rye, Buckwheat, Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, Pumpkins, Squashes, Flax, Hemp, Peas, Clover, Cabbage, Beets, Tobacco, Sorgheim, Grapes, Peaches, Apples, &c., which go to swell the vast aggregate of production in this fertile region. Over Four Million tons of produce were sent out the State of Illinois during the past year.

STOCK RAISING.

In Central and Southern Illinois uncommon advantages are presented for the extension of Stock raising. All kinds of Cattle, Horses, Mules, Sheep, Hogs, &c., of the best breeds, yield handsome profits; large fortunes have already been made, and the field is open for others to enter with the fairest prospects of like results. Dairy Farming also presents its inducements to many.

CULTIVATION OF COTTON.

The experiments in Cotton culture are of very great promise. Commencing in latitude 39 deg. 30 min. (see Mattoon on the Branch, and Assumption on the Main Line), the Company owns thousands of acres well adapted to the perfection of this fibre. A settler having a family of young children, can turn their youthful labor to a most profitable account in the growth and perfection of this plant.

THE ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD

Traverses the whole length of the State, from the banks of the Mississippi and Lake Michigan to the Ohio. As its name imports, the Railroad runs through the centre of the State, and on either side of the road along its whole length lie the lands offered for sale.

CITIES, TOWNS, MARKETS, DEPOTS.

There are Ninety-eight Depots on the Company's Railway, giving about one every seven miles. Cities, Towns and Villages are situated at convenient distances throughout the whole route, where every desirable commodity may be found as readily as in the oldest cities of the Union, and where buyers are to be met for all kinds of farm produce.

EDUCATION.

Mechanics and working-men will find the free school system encouraged by the State, and endowed with a large revenue for the support of the schools. Children can live in sight of the school, the college, the church, and grow up with the prosperity of the leading State in the Great Western Empire.

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PRICES AND TERMS OF PAYMENT--ON LONG CREDIT.

80 acres at $10 per acre, with interest at 6 per ct. annually on the following terms:

Cash payment $48 00

Payment in one year 48 00 " in two years 48 00 " in three years 48 00 " in four years 236 00 " in five years 224 00 " in six years 212 00

40 acres, at $10 00 per acre:

Cash payment $24 00

Payment in one year 24 00 " in two years 24 00 " in three years 24 00 " in four years 118 00 " in five years 112 00 " in six years 106 00

* * * * *

Number 20. 25 Cents.

THE

CONTINENTAL

MONTHLY.

DEVOTED TO

Literature and National Policy.

AUGUST, 1863.

NEW YORK: JOHN F. TROW 50 GREENE STREET (FOR THE PROPRIETORS).

HENRY DEXTER AND SINCLAIR TOUSEY. WASHINGTON, D.-C.: FRANCK TAYLOR.

CONTENTS.--No. XX.

Our Future. By Lieut. Egbert Phelps, U.S.A., 121 Autumn Leaves. By Mrs. M. W. Cook, 136 Across Maine in Mid-Winter, 138 Diary of Frances Krasinska, 150 The Sleeping Peri, 159 My Lost Darling, 160 Reason, Rhyme, and Rhythm. Compiled and written by Mrs. M. W. Cook, 168 The Buccaneers of America. By W. L. Stone, 175 Under the Palmetto. By H. G. Spaulding, 188 The Spirit's Reproach. By Mrs. M. W. Cook, 204 Jefferson Davis and Repudiation. A Letter from Hon. Robert J. Walker, 207 Evergreen Beauty. By Major Samuel H. Hurst, 227 Dying in the Hospital. By Mary E. Nealy, Louisville, Ky., 229 Literary Notices, 231 Editor's Table, 237

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND and EDMUND KIRKE have withdrawn from the editorial management of this Magazine.

All communications, whether concerning MSS. or on business, should be addressed to

JOHN F. TROW, Publisher, 50 GREENE STREET, NEW YORK.

ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by JOHN F. TROW, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.

JOHN F. TROW, PRINTER.