commemorated before Cowper's removal to] the soil. Torn and hollow, covered with it, being within an easy distance of his warts and wens, and showing a scanty former abode. The Lime Walk is the sprinkling of foliage, it answers to the tree most noticeable and unaltered spot--a described by Spenser, Gothic aisle-like avenue of stately trees, with interlacing tops, where lights and shadows" dance upon the grass on a sunny day, when the breezes are astir :

"How airy and how light the graceful arch,
Yet awful as the consecrated roof

Re-echoing pious anthems! while beneath
The chequered earth seems restless as a flood
Brushed by the wind. So sportive is the light
Shot through the boughs, it dances as they dance,
Shadow and sunshine intermingling quick,
And darkening and enlightening, as the leaves
Play wanton, every moment, every spot."

Such lines evince the delicacy and truth of
the writer's observations, parallel to which
is the reference to the woods at night in
calm :

"The moonbeam sliding softly in between The sleeping leaves."

He set out, in poetry, to describe Nature from herself, not from a copy, as well as to delineate the heart from his own experience; and no man ever more faithfully kept to a purpose.

Still clad with reliques of its trophies old,
Lifting to heaven its aged hoary head,
Whose foot on earth hath got but feeble hold;"

and might have stood for the decayed oak
to which Pompey in his declining state is
compared by Lucan.

It is quite in character for the author of the "Old Red Sandstone" to geologize, whether tramping over the oolite of North Bucks, or wandering among the ancient granites and contorted schists of the central Highlands. Accordingly, from a heap of stones in the street before Cowper's house at Weston, he picked up some broken fossils, a well-marked plagiostoma, and a fragment of a pecten, thinking with a smile of the philippic on the early geologists. "There they had lain as carelessly indifferent to the strictures in the Task as the sun in the central heavens, two centuries before, to the denunciations of the Inquisition. Geology, however, in the days of Cowper, had not attained to the dignity of a science." Even now that it has, the It is somewhat singular that most of world is slow to believe, though trusting to Cowper's productions may be referred to its own wrongheadedness has led to many the suggestions of others. Mrs. Unwin led expensive follies. To Mr. Miller's account him to the Progress of Error, and its kin- of the Earl of Cromarty's attempt to bore dred moral satires; Newton to the Olney for coal in the old red sandstone, far beneath Hymns; Carissima Taurorum to the trans- the true coal-measures, may be added two lations from Madame Guion; Lady Austen enterprises, in which thousands were squanto the Task, John Gilpin, and Homer; dered, to reach it through the oolite of Olwhile an humble suitor, the parish clerk of ney and Northampton, one so late as 1839, Northampton, procured from him mortuary where, if coal occurs at all, it must be at an verses. The noble fragment on the Yard- unapproachable depth. After a day's ramley Oak is an exception. It was never ble in the haunts of Cowper, we find our mentioned to any of his friends, and not traveller ensconced for the night at Olney, known to exist till found among his papers" in a quiet old house, kept by a quiet old after his death, though evidently he had man," with the fading countenance of the girded up his mind to honor the monarch of Duke of York on the sign-board; and there the woods. The tree, said to have been an we must leave him, with the remark that oak in the time of the Conqueror, and to" mine host" remembers his Scotch guest have borne the name of Matilda from his two years ago, though quite as unconscious wife, is of course an object of frequent re- of his quality as of the ichthyolites he has sort, and has suffered from the spoliation of made so famous. its visitors, though protected by an inscrip- A parting word about Cowper. For him tion from its owner, the Marquis of North- the distinction may be claimed of having ampton, deprecating their ravages. It resuscitated the poetry of England from a boasts not the size of the famous oak of state of collapse, inspired it with life and Dorset, the cavity of which, in the time of health, and with Christian life, and sanctithe Commonwealth, was used by an old fied it to the promotion of human happiman for the entertainment of travellers as ness. Though retired from the great world an alehouse, yet the girth of twenty-eight of men, disliking its Babel sounds, and feet five inches belongs to it, a foot above longing for "a lodge in some vast wilder

those delusions precisely parallel to that of the patient who fancies himself a king, and struts about with an air of royalty, or imagines himself pierced by an assassin's dagger, and cries out "murder " in his agony. We advert to this much handled subject, simply for the sake of introducing a somewhat original view of it by Mr. Miller:

ness," he lived for his race; and has laid society under lasting obligations to him. By verses devoted to the sorrows of the slave, he helped to create that generous sympathy, and form that public opinion, which conquered the reluctant selfishness of senates to assert the natural liberty of universal man, depriving the oppressor of his power, and bidding the oppressed go free. To his righteous castigation of clerical de'It were presumptuous to attempt interpreting linquents, a large and tolerated class in his the real scope and object of the afflictive dispensaday, the Church of England is in no slight awe; and yet there does seem a key to it. There tion which Cowper could contemplate with such degree indebted for the purification which is surely a wondrous sublimity in the lesson which its pulpits have undergone; while the cause it reads. The assertors of the selfish theory have of Christianity owes much to the vigorous dared to regard Christianity itself, in its relation to exposition of its doctrines, morals, and spi- the human mind, as but one of the higher modifirit, to be found in his pages, for its rescue cations of the self-aggrandizing sentiment. May from the heartless mimicry and pantomime hero of Olney-the sweet poet who first poured we not venture to refer them to the grief-worn with which it had been confounded. In the stream of Divine truth into the channels of our poetry, Cowper is essentially the muse of literature, after they had been shut against it for ordinary life and common scenes. Nothing more than a hundred years, and ask them whether can surpass the minute accuracy of his it be in the power of sophistry to square his modrawing, while he never fails to interest us tives with the ignoble conclusions of their philo

in objects that lie at every man's thresh-sophy ?” old, as invested with beauty, and rife with the lessons of practical wisdom. Unlike His terrible conception, expressed in his the elder bards, he neither deals with the last original poem, the Castaway, the tale tricks of Fairy-land, nor with the dread of a shipwrecked mariner perishing solitaricouncils of Pandemonium; and keeps ly in the ocean, in which, as he says, his equally remote from the fictions of mytho- own misery delightedlogy, and the giants of romance. This stay-at-home habitude, charming us with what he sees and hears within the

sweep of

per:

To trace

Its semblance in another's case,

a few acres round the homestead, consti- has been finely commented upon by the tutes one of his highest titles to fame, and lady whose verse is at the head of this pais a leading element of his utility. He opens up sources of delight from nature's common phase within reach of the peasant; and teaches him to rejoice in the hedge-row that skirts his garden, and the robin that chirps at his door.

Mysterious as was his unhappy mental state, it had no mysterious specialty, more than what belongs to other instances of monomania. That he should refrain from ostensible communion with heaven, was a natural consequence of the view he took of himself, as a doomed exile from its paternal regards, under an irreversible ban of exclusion; and by this fact, with his uncomplaining spirit, we are furnished with a spectacle of sublime submission to a hard, and as he deemed it an inevitable destiny. That he should have entertained such a conviction, which no reasoning could shake, no friendship weaken, so contradicted by the tenor of his life, and by his own expressed views of the Divine mercy and the evangelic plan, must be ranked as one of

Deserted! God could separate

From his own essence rather:
And Adam's sins have swept between
The righteous Son and Father--
Yea! once Immanuel's orphaned cry,
His universe hath shaken-
It went up single, echoless,

66

My God, I am forsaken!"

It went up from the holy lips

Amid his lost creation,
That of the lost, no son should use

Those words of desolation;
That earth's worst phrensies, marring hope,
Should mar not hope's fruition;
And I, on Cowper's grave should see
His rapture in a vision !

CRACOW. The Emperor of Austria has not only resolved that the University of Cracow shall remain in existence, but that the education shall be more thoroughly grounded and general, and that a larger ty has appointed Dr. Johann Schindler, Prebendary number of students shall be admitted. His Majesof Cracow, Curator of the said University.

From the Edinburgh Review.

AMERICAN COMMERCE AND STATISTICS.

The Progress of America, from the Discovery by Columbus to the year 1846. By John Macgregor, Secretary to the Board of Trade; author of Commercial Statistics, &c., &c. 2 vols. large 8vo. London: 1847.

[The following article, after a brief discussion of Free Trade, a subject to which, as the great organ of the whig party, it is of course committed, presents a very candid and inspiriting view of our national resources and prospects, quite unusual of late in the British Journals. There are passages of

genuine eloquence, as well as important truths, which the American reader will peruse with interest.—ED.]

THESE Volumes contain by far the most valuable store of facts which has ever been

intended at some future period to supply the omission. If otherwise, we cannot but regret it; not only on account of the peculiar interest which those parts of America possess for the British reader, but also because Mr. Macgregor is personally familiar with them. He illustrated their condition of which the statistical part is already antisome years ago in his "British America," quated, from the rapid changes which the subject matter has undergone.

"The enthusiasm," says Mr. Macgregor, which accompanied me in my youth to the Bri tish settlements in America, was first inspired by the writings of Robertson, Charlevoix, and Raynal-by poring over Hakluyt and Purchas, and the more recent collections of voyages and travels; and an ambition, entertained on perusing with Alexander Mackenzie, to the Arctic shores, and delight the travels of a near relation, the late Sir afterwards across the broadest part of America to the Pacific. The more I study the progress of the European settlements in America, the more thoroughly am I convinced of an infallible truth, that the history of navigation and commerce is the history of civilization."

collected respecting the commercial and social history of the New Continent. It requires, indeed, some courage even to glance over the enormous mass of details," which these 3000 closely printed pages present to the eye. But a very brief examination dispels any doubt as to the serviceable and practical character of the work. Mr. Macgregor is so thoroughly conversant with the art of dealing with statistical figures, and long habit has rendered him such a master of arrangement, that an inquirer even moderately familiar with such studies will find himself easily enabled to turn to the particular pigeon-hole in which the materials he is in search of, are deposited. The first volume embraces a general sketch of the history of discovery in the New Continent; its more recent political annals; the separate history and geography of British America, Brazil, and Spanish America; and the statistics of the two latter countries, together with those of Hayti and the foreign West Indies. In the second volume, Mr. Macgregor returns to the statistics of the United States of North America; and this is by far the most complete part of the work, as the subject is more important, and the materials more trustworthy.

We do not understand on what principle the British dominions in America are left cut, or rather treated of in part only; a sketch of their history and geography being given, while the statistics both of British North America and the West Indies are wholly omitted. Perhaps Mr. Macgregor was of opinion that these regions, forming part of the British empire, would be more properly included in compilations treating of our own domestic affairs. Perhaps he

To enthusiasm of this order, the history of American progress affords the most ample nourishment. The visions and speculations of the people of a new country are almost wholly of a material order. Wrestlers against nature, conquerors of the wilderness, their chief attention is concentrated on a struggle which, among inhabitants of the Old World like ourselves, is long ago over, and forgotten; and excites only the interest of romance. We have become settled in our present condition. There are many among us-nay, most of us, in some mood, have shared the feeling--who could be content to remain stationary, and to be neither more numerous, nor wealthier, nor more advanced in our command over nature, than we are at present, provided only the rest of the world could gain no advantage by slipping past us. Our cherished dreams are generally of other conquests and glories than these, and are not easily kindled by statistics; but statistics constitute the favorite excitement of the

imagination of most Americans, and of Mr. I portions of the work, however, will be conMacgregor no less. He evidently enjoys sulted more as matters of curiosity than himself amidst the long array of figures, utility; except the commercial returns from which prove the rapidity of past advance, the various ports of South America, which and illustrate the laws of future develop- appear to rest, for the most part, on better authority, and to be compiled with great

ment.

A very large part of his first volume, how-labor from sources generally unattainable. ever, contains matter more attractive to ordinary readers, being composed of extracts and summaries of modern travels, after the fashion of Pinkerton and other compilers; and here Mr. Macgregor has drawn very largely on American stores with which we were previously unacquainted. This is particularly the case in relation to Mexico, the old "Internal Provinces," so long unvisited, but now opened by the commercial and military enterprise of the Anglo-Americans---California, Oregon, and the interior of Brazil. Many of the sources from which he has derived this part of his collections are almost inaccessible to English readers in general.

As matters of political interest, the chapters relating to the United States constitute the main value of the work. Mr. Macgregor is well known in this country as the laborious and steady champion of the cause of free-trade. He has had a share, and no trifling one, in directing the movement of the last few years. To many minds, his figures have brought stronger conviction than all the eloquence enlisted on the same side, both in and out of Parliament. And now that the battle is won (or nearly won) in his own country, there is no more glorious victory left to be achieved, than that which must ultimately be won, over the party prejudices and classAs to the Spanish-American republics, terests which still govern the commercial Mr. Macgregor appears to have been per- legislation of the great republic. That plexed between the necessity of making his legislation may not be worse than what work as complete as possible, and the ex- still prevails in many European countries; tremely worthless character of the materials but it stands in more striking contrast with with which in their case he has had to deal. the character and the other institutions of We place very little reliance on his politi- a people so shrewd and far-sighted in all cal arithmetic respecting these regions, matters concerning their interests. Nor which, feebly disclosed to us in the personal has it arisen, as in less enlightened States, narratives of a few occasional visitors from from the successful intrigues, or the arbiEurope and the United States, are sinking, trary exercise of power, of a protected class for the most part, back into the darkness of monopolists. Nothing is more clear, to which concealed them from the eyes of the any one who has studied the history sumcivilized world during the century before med up in Mr. Macgregor's pages, than their emancipation; and are left as it were that the "American System" of protection aside in the rapid movement of the rest of arose from political and not from commerChristendom. As to these, the statistician cial motives. We are ourselves the fathers has to elicit his results from a multitude of of it. It began in a desire of just, but imold,ill-arranged, and contradictory authori- politic retaliation on England. Once imties; and it is not altogether to be won- planted in the State-according to the unidered at, if, with that propensity which form history of such evil growths-it struck certainly belongs to his class, and from its roots too deeply in popular feeling to which Mr. Macgregor is not wholly free-to be eradicated, so long as the close balance prefer collecting to analysing-to fling down of parties, and the difficulty of conducting cart-loads of figures on the desk, and trust the government, might render it an object to chance for the arrangement-his tables with statesmen to bid for the votes of a are often not only inaccurate, but some-protected class, strong in united self-intetimes inconsistent in their details.* These rest rather than numbers.

* E. g. Lima, at vol. i., p. 955, is made to contain 54,096 inhabitants, with an average of 2350 deaths annually. At p. 956 it is stated to have a population not exceeding 45,000, with 3500 interments in the year; a mortality at which even Mr. Chadwick would stand aghast. We are ashamed to notice such trifles in a work of this magnitude, but we might have multiplied instances; and the hint may direct attention in some future revision.

In 1785, Mr. Adams, then the United States' minister at the court of St. James's, proposed to place the navigation and trade between the dominions of Great Britain and all the territories of the United States upon a basis of complete reciprocity. The proposal was not only rejected, but "he was given to understand that no other

would be entertained." Mr. Adams, ac- cle of the first necessity to us, and great cordingly, advised his countrymen (in a advantages in the production of others. letter to the Foreign Secretary, Mr. Jay): Once commenced and set on foot, the "You may depend upon it, the com-"American system" of protecting domestic merce of America will have no relief at manufactures was far too tempting a delupresent; nor, in my opinion, ever, until sion---flattering the prejudices of many, the United States shall have generally harmonizing with the honest but mistaken passed Navigation Acts. If this measure theories of some, and serving the interests is not adopted, we shall be derided; and, of an acute few---not to enlist on its side a the more we suffer, the more will our ca-large party, and become a great political lamities be laughed at. My most earnest bond of union. Mr. Hamilton, a great exhortations to the States, then, are, and name in America---though we never could ought to be, to lose no time in passing such exactly ascertain the basis on which his acts." reputation is founded---presented to ConAdvice to adopt a measure of retaliation, gress his elaborated "Report on Manufacso justly provoked, however questionable tures" in 1791: a species of essays, its real policy might be, could hardly fail embodying the favorite principles of the of being received with favor. The difficul- protection theory. But the breaking up of ties which the then constitution of the Unit- old political parties which followed the ed States interposed in the way of unity of commercial legislation, prevented Mr. Adams's suggestion from being acted on for a few years. But, in 1789, on the adoption of the new Federal constitution, Congress passed a navigation law, which has since led to reciprocity treaties between us and them. Unfortunately pursuing the same policy, they enacted in the same year their first tariff-innocent, indeed, in comparison with its successors, but the commencement of a series of legislation most mischievous to the people of both coun

tries.

French Revolution, and the subsequent war with England, adjourned the execution of his recommendations until the year 1816, when an avowedly protective tariff was for the first time established. It is a curious fact, that this bill and that of 1824 were carried against the will of the New England States. In 1816, "nearly two thirds of the New England members voted for a reduction on the proposed duties on cotton manufactures; while out of 43 members from New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania who voted on the question, nine only were in favor of it." In 1820, a very able It is therefore but too true, as Mr. Mac- speech indeed, in favor of free-trade, was gregor shows, that "the American govern- delivered at Faneuil Hall. Neither Say ment, at the outset of its independent nor Ricardo could have uttered sentiments existence, would have agreed to commence more to the purpose; and the doctrines of and maintain an intercourse which would these abstruse philosophers were clothed in have enabled England to enjoy every possi- plain, home-thrusting popular oratory, of ble advantage which could be derived from the best order. For his part," the orathe United States, if they had remained tor declared, "he believed, that, however colonies; and all those advantages, without derided, the principle of leaving such things either the perplexity or expense of govern- very much to their own course, in a country ing them. The advances made with re-like ours, was the only true policy; and spect to such wise policy by the United that we could no more improve the order, States, were unhappily rejected." The and habit, and composition of society, first consequence of our selfish and sulky by an artificial balancing of trades and ocpolicy was a famine in the West Indies; cupations, than we could improve the natuof which Bryan Edwards gives the details ral atmosphere, by means of the condensers with just indignation---the slaves, and and rarefiers of the chemists." The speakpoorer class of the free inhabitants, being er was Daniel Webster. Since that time, deprived of their old supplies of food from unhappily, falsehood has made its converts the revolted colonies. The ultimate re- as well as truth. But the orator was on sults were embargoes and restrictions; the the popular side; for principles of freedom almost civil war of 1812-15; the war of as yet commanded a majority among those tariffs, which has continued ever since, whom Webster then addressed. On the though now happily one-sided only; and introduction of the tariff of 1824, the votes the crippling of our commerce with those of the New England States were fifteen who possess almost a monopoly of one arti- for, and twenty-three against it: while