cotton, dyed 15,000,000 yards of the same stuff, and used an eighth part of the cotton produced in America.

As you approach Lowell, you find neither smoke nor putrid exhalations, nor crooked streets: no insalubrity: a pure nature furnishes a healthy atmosphere, plenty of water, and the anthracite coal which is used there, does not produce such masses of black vapor as hang over Manchester and Sheffield. All is tranquil or even gay. The freshness of the faces, the smiles of the women, the regular animation of the town and the extreme cleanliness of the streets seduce you. If you enter the establishments you find contentment upon all faces. Schools are numerous: the poorest can send their children to the primary schools, of which there are thirty; while eight upper seminaries furnish the more wealthy with a more complete education. The workmen who love knowledge have founded what they call a "laboring man's hall," where they are taught reading, writing, and modern languages. population of 30,000 send to school 6000 children.

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The life of the Lowell women is still more remarkable. an American never employs infant labor, the factory girl is not taken until she is fifteen years old. She gains nearly $2 a week or more and her board. She is paid monthly. As she has little to pay for lodging or dress, she puts her savings into the bank, lets it grow to a thousand dollars or so, marries some one going westward, helps her husband to conduct some new prairie-farm and dies at an advanced age, after bringing up ten or eleven children. There is nothing like the European chance-life; the sentiment of religion and of family is preserved. There is some little pedantry joined to all this, as in Geneva and Glasgow. These moral factory girls are wrong in becoming blues. Mrs. Trolloppe calls them the "Precieuses ridicules of Industry."

The Bostonians are proud of Lowell, founded as it was by

their capital, and which agrees well with their Puritanism and grave regularity. As basis of the prosperity of the model manufactories, we find the great matter of which we have already spoken, the respective liberty and mutual dependence of the States. Lowell grew by the suffering of South Carolina. The enormous and almost prohibitory tariff of 1828 assuring to capital placed in a certain way, much greater profits than to any other investment, produced the grand institutions which we have just described; manufacturing population sprang from the soil and the manufacturing capitalist soon grew rich the corporations of Lowell increased rapidly: gigantic fortunes were made; among others, that of Mr. Appleton, a person much esteemed in that country, some noise was made about it yet it was productive of glory and benefit to America. The slave states reproached the north with using the high tariff for their own profits at the expense of the consumers; and were in turn accused of maintaining slavery, of breaking the first laws of humanity, and of compromising in the eyes of the world, the federal integrity, the moral unity and the honor of the land.

And here presents itself the problem of slavery. Legally the question is small. The constitution has recognised the right of self-government in each State, makes the question of slavery a question of local administration, and Congress has no power to issue a decree of emancipation. To this the abolitionists reply that Washington is situated in a slave State; that the rules of Congress permit and enjoin it to determine upon measures essential to its repose and dignity, and that in maintaining slavery it destroys equilibrium and wounds justice. In this thorny and narrow enclosure rest, without power to get out, parliamentary discussion and trickery; outside of the circle, you find the true causes of the difficulty.

They, like all that belongs to the United States, are rooted in tradition, respect for State rights and above all in the spirit of race.

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Not only do the blacks serve as instruments necessary to the grand conquests of the Americans, but in certain localities it would be difficult or impossible to replace them: the pride of blood pushed to the extreme in the South, prevents their being considered as brethren, almost as men. The negro not of the race, not the fellow, not like the son of Japhet, and nothing can elevate him to such rank. To conciliate this anomaly with their principles, the Puritans of the North claim the right of separating themselves from the blacks, as the Mormons separate from the Anabaptists or the Catholics. Therefore the Africans are left in possession of their own churches, taverns, waggons, and balls. Once emparked, the blacks remain so; and even when the traces of blood become faint, the white man will not yet acknowledge the equality of the mulatto or the quadroon. There is no example of marriage between a white and a creole; their union is illegal in the slave States. But if one do form such a marriage, he is not considered sufficiently punished by the public contempt, but is deprived of his rights as citizen. Before the marriage can be concluded he must swear that he has negro blood in his veins, that is that he has no civil rights. Mrs. Houston cites the example of a young man, "who injected some negro blood in to his arm, in order to swear, and so obtain the hand of a wealthy quadroon.'

The trace of African blood, the sign and color of the pails never disappear. The Emperor of Hayti would not be received in a tenth-rate hotel in the States. So the black prince, Boyer, found it through the United States even at the Astor House; nor was either box or parterre of the theatre open to him.

The more one goes southward, the more this Teutonic leaven, this pride of white blood, which the northern Puritans have some what softened, is visible. The immense estates, the aristocratic life, the elegant tastes of Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Florida, the habit of having slaves, who spare the master all personal exertion, the fear of seeing all wealth and power concentrated in the north, of which the superiority is already threatening; the unruled proceedings and fervor of the abolitionists, the impossibility of giving to the planters an equivalent for their slaves, the insalubrity of certain provinces for the white man, all concur to maintain slavery in the United States. Even in the north, vivid scruples, and a profound repulsion, prevent the adoption of any decided measures in favor of Emancipation.

They fear to dissolve the Union, to irritate the south, and to detach it forever. They do not wish to check that progress which has not yet made the tenth part of its advance, and for which the African lends his arms and his blood. Democrats and Whigs agree to push on Agriculture, supplant their English cousins in all markets, and conquer natural obstacles by enormous works, that sometimes render a State bankrupt they agree to tap the West, by canals, which pierce the Continent, unite the Alleghanies to the Atlantic, and level the high lands that separated them; to continue the already numerous lines of railroad, and to precipitate the movement of material civilization. What odds, then, whether there be slaves or not.

SECTION VIII.

ACTIVITY OF THE COUNTRY-CONQUEST OE SOIL-RAPIDITY OF COMMUNICATION.

You know that the device of the Americans is, Go ahead ¡ Moral justice does not always arrest them; impossibility does not frighten them; "let us try," they say. They do try, and once in twenty times, they succeed. As soon as the object is recognized as important, the American goes at it with a surprising vigor and zeal. They are talking, now, of a railroad from the great Lakes to the Pacific, a gigantic and yet practicable scheme, which would make of America the great high road between Europe and Asia, and would turn to profit thousands of now barren leagues. That is enough to command the serious attention of American legislators, and the project will probably be carried out.

In such a country the electric telegraph is of course popular; according to an almanac for 1848, there were, in 1847, 2311 miles of electric wire in use, 2586 in construction, 3815 projected; in all, 8712. Now, a station at Cape Ann communicates European news to Washington before the vessel has reached Boston. A pulsation of five hundred miles of wire, tells the Congressman what is going on in Paris or London. "Being one day at Washington," says a traveller, "I went idly into an office of the Telegraph, and asked about the weather at Boston, 500 miles distant; in three minutes I learned that the weather was fine, but the heat great, and that a storm was gathering in the north