dently be said, that he could not have been entirely honest in such schemes; while, on the other hand, it may with equal truth be conjectured, that he was not wholly without belief in the soundness of some of his own projects. He constantly declared, to the last of his life, that his great Mississippi scheme, though he admitted the failure and the fraud of the expeditions which were sent out, was yet, as a financial system, perfectly sound and practicable; and that its failure was owing to the want of co-operation in his views on the part of some of the French statesmen. But his character as a gamester and a professional calculator of chances has justly rendered History extremely rigid and severe in its estimate of his designs. There was unquestionably great fraud and knavery at the foundation of the whole thing. This is apparent from the false and delusive measures taken to keep up the price of the stock, and to inflate the public confidence; while the bare idea of incorporating all the foreign trade of a country, all the public finances and currency, and, involved in these, all the wealth and industry of a people, into a great joint-stock mammoth speculation, could only have been conceived in mischief and executed in villainy. Law, too, was the originator of the system of excessive issues of paper currency, which has gone like an unclean spirit through almost all the systems of banking that have ever prevailed since. He seems to have considered, that there was no objection to the issue of paper to the amount of all the property, of every description, in a country; at least, it would seem so, from the state of things which he encouraged and brought about in France; without reflecting that a nation might be ruined, before a tithe of its property could be made available in the redemption of the paper when its credit had received one serious blow. But it is of no service to discuss the reasonableness of his doctrines. They were the doctrines of an able man, but one who was far in advance of his time in knowledge of these subjects, and was undoubtedly a sharper. The great lesson which his schemes taught to the world, was, after all, a very simple one. It consisted in bold and striking illustrations of the system of joint. stock operations, and of the evils of that system when Companies are carried to an overgrown size. That powerful machinery, which is at once the creature and the means of a high state of civilization, unquestionably affords a power of developing the resources of a country to their highest possible point. But, like all other ma. chinery, it has its limits, within which it must be restrained, and beyond which its power becomes only the motion of enormous masses, too large for regulation or control. It may be questioned, with great seriousness, whether this machinery is not too much extended at the present day, and whether the public confidence is not often

given to schemes which would not have received it but for the mere association of names; and which, after playing their brief parts on the theatre of the stock exchange, and enriching a few, have sud. denly gone down, to the impoverishment of many.

There is a more striking parallel, in certain points, to be drawn between the state of things prevailing in France at the period of which we have been speaking, and the late extraordinary land speculation in the state of Maine, than is furnished by any of the other great bubbles which are on record. The similarity does not, of course, extend to the subject matter of the speculation, or to the mode of conducting it; but the resemblance is found in the effect upon society, the confusion, the factitious prosperity, the sudden wealth, the abandonment of regular industry, and the ruin which ensued. The resemblance ceases again when we come to the mo rality of each of these excitements. In France, the people were deluded by the managers of the great scheme. In the Maine specu. lation, the mass were not deluded by a few superior managers, but every man sought to delude his neighbour. The whole trade was carried on in fraud, and its demoralizing effect was swift, sure, and extensive. The press of this country has not yet done its duty in regard to that strange scene, where property passed from hand to hand at prices so exorbitantly beyond all the returns to be realized from it, that the purchaser could and did depend upon nothing to save him from ruin but the chance of finding some one who should be a greater dupe than himself, or who would in his turn rely on the chance of finding a third, more foolish or more venturous than them all. The factitious excitement of the time presented such persons at every turn; and in the mean time the conveyances and papers by which these lands passed from hand to hand, were often executed in a slovenly and hasty manner, having less than the strength of cobwebs, and letting in litigation at every crevice. We say that the press has not done its duty in regard to this strange affair. If the history of it could be written, if all the fraud could be brought together in detail, as it is now in the process of sifting through the courts of law, and the utter folly of large numbers of the contracts could be exhibited, it would present the most extraordinary spectacle in commercial affairs that this country ever saw. He who should write the history of it, should not overlook the moral aspects of the scene. He would observe, that when the subjects of property pass from hand to hand, at prices in which their real value forms little or no part of the estimate, and reliance is placed upon a public excitement as the means of selling at an extravagant what had been purchased at a great price; that when men disregard the substance, and buy and sell the shadow; then whole fortunes are necessarily

ventured; and as, when once made, the purchase must be disposed of at a gain or ruin will ensue, the temptation to transmit to others the same doubtful representations that were received, will be greater than the virtue of many a man can withstand. Thus is introduced into the action of men, who may become corrupted by such a try. ing situation, a dangerous looseness of principle: while those who mingle in the crowd, with the original purpose of entrapping the unwary, multiply on all sides the occasions which create this apparent necessity for departing from the strict rules of plain dealing.

LINES.

"He thought upon his bride."

"Among the persons killed at St. Cos, was Sir John Armitage. The fate of this gentleman was excessively lamented; he was a volunteer, but without having intended being one upon this expedition, his mind being engaged in making preparations for his approaching marriage with Miss Howe. Sir John went to the levee, at the time when the officers were taking leave of the king to join the army. The king asked Sir John when he intended to set out?taken by surprise, Sir John answered, to-morrow; and unhappily kept his word. The lady afterwards married Sir William Pitt. A black collar, which she always wore around her neck, concealed a splendid brilliant necklace, the present of her ill-fated lover."

Correspondence of Horace Walpole.

HE stood before his monarch's throne

The gallant and the tried,

And owned the call which urged him on,
But thought upon his bride.

Oh! what to him the hope of fame,

Or proudest dreams beside,

The soldier felt a dearer flame-
He thought upon his bride.

But not of him the nobly proved
False tale might recreant tell,
He went and left to solitude
The flower he loved so well.

But first that lady's neck he bound

With glittering links of pride,

Then turned, and heard the trumpet sound,

But thought upon his bride.

Well might that fair girl's blinding tears

Fall as he onward past,

Half smiling at her timid fears—

She met him for the last!

Village of Rio Limon-Valley of Santa Barbara-Spanish salutations-Spanish dishes-Catholic rites-Mountain valleys-Mountain pathways-Tula and its vicinity.

BEFORE day dawned, the trampling of the mules, and the voices of the servants as they brought them up to receive their pack-saddles and prepare for an early start, gave us warning to rise, and give up our mattrasses to be packed ready to take their places on the backs of the poor animals, who, like ourselves, had suffered not a little from the extraordinary heat and fatigue of the preceding day. When I mounted my horse, he seemed unable to proceed a step; I urged him in vain, and at length jumped from the saddle just before he fell, as I feared, to rise no more. The servants, however, made very light of it. They raised the horse from the ground, when

immediately one of them sprang into the saddle, and, regardless of the poor creature's painful efforts, spurred him round and round the yard, Julian striding after whip in hand, till he somewhat recovered his easy, ambling pace. Then the fellow who had so unceremoniously placed himself in my saddle, dismounting, led my steed towards me, assuring me with a low bow that my horse was as well as ever. Well! thought I, this must be the Mexican method of curing a foundered horse.

After fording several clear currents, branches of the Rio Limon, we came to the crossing of that rapid stream where it widens into a fine river, which we passed in canoes, paddled over by half-naked leperos. On the opposite side we rested for an hour or two in a pleasant village, where some small tokens of industry were visible. There was an attempt at gardening in some few inclosures at the back of the cottages. The house that received us was clean and neat, and divided into two apartments, in one of which I rested on the first bedstead I had seen since I left Tampico. Besides which, I had the luxury of bathing myself and children in a retired spot a little below the town.

Our host, who was the Alcalde of the place, took some pains to accommodate us, and seizing upon the grammar and dictionary, gave us a lesson in Spanish, his pretty little wife standing by, laughing the while at our awkward attempts to imitate his pronunciation.

From this our attention was called to observe a vast number of mules, which were passing down to the ferry with small packages on their backs, that we found on inquiry contained money; and that this was the Conducta de plata, or Convoy of silver, conveying specie from the interior down to the coast. The mules were fine animals and in excellent condition, and created some sensation as they swept through the little village, with their numerous attendants making rather a formidable appearance, each bearing a gun at his pummel, and a long sword swung to a leather belt buckled round his waist; in addition to which several of the men carried long lances, to which were attached small red flags.

Our good friend and fellow traveller Don Rafael, the former employer of our servant pro tem., the noisy Julian, recommended us to hasten to the end of our afternoon stage, as we might expect rain in the evening. For this purpose the roads were sadly against us, lying for the first few miles through swampy woodland; but our kind counsellor followed up his advice with all the assistance he could offer. He pointed out the best road, and carried one of the children before him on his horse, kindly sheltering him with his sarape when the thunder shower overtook us at last. Then