of English money, had inspired into their minds that selfishness which now I fear has taken too deep a root in their affections. Uncorrupted as the French Canadians are by the vices of a highly artificial state of society, as that which exists in Europe; blessed with a happy competency, that supplies their few and unexaggerated wants; and removed by their comparative seclusion from the seductive and fatal influence of fashion and extravagance; they live in a state of pastoral and patriarchal purity of manners, sedulously attending to all the ordinances of their religion, that strongly engage in their favour the feelings and regard of all those who come in contact with them. With respect to manners, they possess all the grace and courtesy of their European

progenitors; and I must frankly acknowledge that on this point I could not avoid being affected by the striking difference existing between them and the more unbending republicans of the adjoining country. A Canadian peasant pauses in his work, in order to pull off his hat as you pass; and frequently, while journeying along the road, I have been thus saluted by the master, as well as the servant, though 20 or 30 yards distant from me in the field in which they were employed. A labouring man in the States would think himself degraded, his manhood lowered, and his equality compromised, were he to notice with similar complaisance any person whatever, let his station in life be as superior to his own as it might," &c.

The author mentions the diligence of their husbandry, the excellent quality and cultivation of their lands, their neatly arranged fences, and their comfortable farms. We cannot leave Canada, without looking on the monument of him who so nobly won for his country that magnificent fortress which now secures it. And on his brave rival Montcalm,—

There are several other matters treated of in the first volume, on which we should have been happy to dwell; but that we must hasten on to the banks of the Ohio, and the swamps of Mississippi, or we shall not overtake our active and enterprising traveller; just, however, mentioning by the way, that any one who shall happen to be discontented and peevish with the plain, homely religion of his forefathers, as preserved in our national Church, will have a fine opportunity of indulging his erratic propensities, and gratifying his dainty choice in the luxurious variety of sects which the United States presents. What a delight for an independent, noble-spirited, patriotic lover of liberty, long wearied with hood and surplice, to mix ad libitum with the Universalists, the free-will Baptists, the Mennonites, the Tunkers, the Seventh-day Baptists, the Six-principle Baptists, the Shakers or Dancers, the Emancipators, the Cumberland Presbyterians, cum multis aliis! and what a strong proof is afforded by their multiplied variety of worship, of the impolicy of stinting the enthusiastic mind of man to one form of established devotion! How many dull, plain, sober people while on our shores, as soon as wafted across the Atlantic, would feel wings on their shoulders and fire on their tongues, and start up Irvings, and Bayfords, and Cardales, and Southcotes, and Lees,"Religion spawn'd a various rout

Of the cultivation

given by the author.

Of petulant, capricious sects,
The maggots of corrupted texts,
That first run all religion down,
And after, every swarm his own."

of sugar and cotton in Louisiana, a good account is
The profits of the cultivator seem to vary from 6 to

10 per cent. Of cotton New Orleans exports the most, then Georgia and South Carolina; of coffee the Brazils and Cuba produce nearly half of the estimated annual production throughout the world, with the excep tion of Arabia, which is not mentioned. Holland and Germany are the greatest consumers, and England the least. Of the native Indian population in Mexico, our author gives, as all other observers have done, an account of the state of ignorance, stupor, and degradation, to which they have sunk; and he also agrees with them in observing, that with this they preserve a moral feature and mildness of disposition much superior to those of the lower orders of the different castes (the mulattoes, sambos, and mestizoes,) which appear to become more depraved as the intermixture of one race with another becomes more considerable, by marriage or otherwise.' Of the Real del Monte mines, now purchased and worked by an English Company, Mr. Tudor, who visited them, observes, that during a period of 24 years, from 1738 to 1762, they produced 27,800,000 dol lars; they were then the property of the Condé de Regla. From 1738 to 1781, and from 1794 to 1801, the enormous amount of twenty-six millions of dollars was produced. The construction of the works when at the Nacienda del Regla, cost the proprietor 416,0007.; the fortune he made of them is supposed to be more than between two and three millions sterling: what the present owners may derive, is still a question in posse, and will so remain, till the shaft of Los Terreros is completed. The total number of mines in New Spain is three thousand, of which Mexico produces annually more than all the rest united but that money does not produce wit, or sense, or good feeling, or piety, among these people, we are sorry to say, appears from what Mr. Tudor mentions took place in the capital on Good Friday, and is a deplorable specimen of what the Roman Catholic religion becomes, when it finds a people willing to credit its delusions. "In the streets of the capital was exhibited, as in a tragedy on the stage of a theatre, the whole history of the betraying and taking of Christ,-the personification of Judas Iscariot approaching with a band of soldiers, and accompanied by Indians, to salute and seize the Saviour, who is represented, with unparalleled impiety, by some other of the actors of this most unholy drama, the bearing of him away, and the subsequent awful circumstances that followed the event." Indeed, the state of ignorance, vice, and every kind of wickedness which seems to pollute from high to low all classes in the Spanish provinces, as in Cuba and Mexico, are positively fearful, and are in strong and humiliating contrast with the blessings which the hand of Nature has so profusely lavished on these luxurious climes. "My soul, turn from them ;' "turn we to survey" the more delightful picture of the growing wealth and prosperity of the moral community of the Northern States. It appears that British commerce occupies considerably more than one-third of all the mercantile transactions of the United States with the whole world.* In 1830, the value of imports from England amounted to 22,755,040 dollars, and that of the exports to 23,773,020, while no country but France amounted to more than 5,000,000; so deeply interwoven are the interests and prosperity of the two countries. But we must now draw to a conclusion, and leave the inhospitable and beastly

* The receipts of the United States in 1830, were 24,844,116 dollars, of which the Customs furnished 21,922,391; the year 1831 exceeded the former by three millions, and the year 1832, by five millions; leaving a surplus revenue on the expenditure of 16,734,797 dollars. The National Debt amounts to between 5 and 6 millions of pounds alone, which it is said will be paid off in 1834.

Kentuckians, and the unfortunate and ungenteel Mrs. Trollope, to our author's castigation, who has gibbetted them both, and left them to swing side by side on the shores of Cincinnati.

Never can we contemplate any thing connected with the history of America, without feeling the deepest interest in her future fate, and breathing the warmest wishes for her prosperity and peace. "Peace be within her mountain walls, and plenteousness within her civic palaces." Te, natura potens Pelago divisit ab omni

Parte orbis, tuta ut semper ab hoste fores.

Hers is emphatically the land on which the eye of Hope delights to dwell, and where the bosom of Piety is expecting that growing harvest of blessings, which the hand of Providence seems preparing for a renewed world. How few years comparatively are passed, since her impenetrable forests and interminable deserts echoed to no other sound than the howl of the hungry and cruel panther after his evening prey, or the wild solitary cry of the bird of night, or the murderous war-whoop of the still wilder and more savage Indian! Forest after forest rose, and flourished, and fell, in long successive generations, only to increase by their decay the rank luxuriance of the useless soil. The putrid and pestilential marsh suffered nothing to approach it but the slimy reptile, as venomous and loathsome as itself; a dark and barren cloud of umbrage, a night of shade, was spread on all. The cataract poured its living flood of waters, only to deluge and destroy.

densis hunc frondibus atrum

Urget utrimque latus nemoris, medioque fragosus
Dat sonitum saxis, et torto vortice torrens.

Man had sunk to a level with the beasts on which he fed, or against which he warred, and his entire generation was mouldering away in vice, and solitude, and misery. In every face he beheld an enemy. Hatred strong as death, and revenge that could only be satiated by the agonies and blood of its victim, was the food on which he lived, the great master passions of his heart. But the fullness of time was come; and the mansion was at length prepared for its true master; Europe poured forth the dense swarms of her peopled hives, her eager and thickening myriads, over the land that spread its bosom to receive the children of enterprise. The Genius of the Western World stood on her rocky promontories, to welcome the stranger to her shores. Arts and civilization, and polity, and government, and religion, followed in the train. The ploughshare opened its way into regions of inexhaustible fertility. The massive and umbrageous forests bowed beneath the axe of the European peasant, or drooped their giant bulk, as the devouring billows of flame passed over them. Flocks and herds, and corn-fields and orchards, were seen around,

"While bowers and copses green the golden slope divide."

Smiling villages and sheltered farms arose in the very heart of the desert. The mighty and destructive volume of waters was drained off, into the veins and arteries of canals, cut through the granite bowels of mountains, or carried over their aërial summits; and lastly, where the eagle's scream alone was heard, now "the sound of the church-going bell," and the hymns and songs of praise chaunted by the lips of thousands of grateful worshippers, gave the delightful assurance, that they who had the privilege of sharing these benefits and blessings, had not been unmindful of the sacred source from which they flowed; that they saw and felt, as all re

flecting and religious persons must, the hand of Providence manifested in this great work of love, of civilization, and of Christianity; and that they had seen it proceeding in a manner and direction which never could have been contrived by the blindness, or executed by the weakness of mortality. How gigantic the scale of these operations! how rapid the progress; how simple and beautiful the means; how astonishing the results! History in all her pages knows no event like this. "Digitus hic Dei est." It is an enlarged dominion over nature given to man in his later days; a new creation in the aged womb of time; an additional realm bestowed for the exercise of virtue, and the enjoyment of happiness; and in it we may humbly and reverentially acknowledge the rapid advancement of the prophetic declaration, as beheld in our days and in our sons' days, "that the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea.'

ST. GILES'S CHURCH, OXFORD.
With an Engraving.

MEMORIALS OF LITERARY CHARACTERS, No. IV.

LETTERS OF ADDISON TO TONSON THE BOOKSELLER.

THE following letters are, it is believed, hitherto unpublished. The originals were in the possession of the late William Baker, esq., and they were transcribed by Mr. Malone. They principally relate to a translation of Herodotus, which Tonson appears to have undertaken from the hands of a joint-stock company of translators, in which manner a translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses was produced in the year 1717. The translation of Herodotus, which was published under the name of Isaac Littlebury in 1709, and continued without a competitor till that by Beloe appeared in 1791, was probably accomplished in the manner described in these letters.

DEAR SIR,

Oxford, Feb. 12.

1

I was yesterday with Dr. Hannes, and communicated your request to him, I told him yt Dr. Blackmore, Mr. Adams, Mr. Boyle, and myself had engaged in it, and that you had gain'd a kind of a promise from Dr. Gibbons, so that he cou'd not plead want of time. The Dr. seem'd particularly solicitous about the company he was to appear in, and would fain hear all ye names of the translatours. In short he told me that he did not know how to deny Mr. Tonson any request that he made; and therefore, if you woud desire it, he'd undertake ye last Muse. I wou'd fain have you write to ye Dr. and engage him in it, for his name wou'd much credit ye work amongst us, and promote ye sale. As for myself, if you remember, I told you y I did not like my Polymnia; if, therefore, I can do you any service, I will, if you please, translate ye eighth booke, Urania, wch if you will send me

down you need not fear any delays in ye translation.

I was walking this morning wth Mr. Yalden, and askt him w" we might expect to see Ovid de Arte Amandi in English. He told me yt he thought you had dropt ye design since Mr. Driden's translation of Virgil had bin undertaken; but yt he had done his part almost a year ago, and had it lying by him, &c. I'm affraid he has done little of it. I believe a letter from you about it wou'd set him at work. I'le take care to convey my pieces of Herodotus to you. I am Sir,

Your humble servt, J. ADDISON. To Mr. Jacob Tonson, at the sign of the Judges Head, near Temple Bar, in Fleet-street, London.

I rec'd your parcel about ye beginning of last week, and not being able to find Dr. Hannes at home, have left his part wth his servitor. I shall see him next week, and if I find it necessary will let you know what he says.

I shall have but little business about the latter end of Lent, and then will set about my muse, wch I'le take care to finish by yor time. I am in haste,

Yor humble servt, J. ADDISON. You shall have yor Urania ye beginning of this week.

1 Edward Hannes, of Christ Church, M.D. 1695. His only publication was an Account of the Dissection of the Duke of Gloucester, 1700, 4to.

2 Sir Richard Blackmore, M.D. the voluminous Author and Poet.

3 There were three William Adams's of Christ Church, M.A. respectively in 1698, 1699, and 1704.

4 Charles Boyle, afterwards Earl of Orrery; he wrote notes on Phalaris.

5 William Gibbons, of St. John's College, M.D. 1683.

6 Rev. Thomas Yalden, afterwards D.D. in 1708; author of an Ode on the Conquest of Namur, and a Poem on the Death of the Duke of Gloucester. His translation of the Art of Love, was published in the third and fourth volumes of Tonson's Miscellanies.