"All people have their stimulants: the Chinese take opium, the Dutch schiedam, the English gin, the Irish whiskey. Now, we Americans who go ahead, we take 'em all, tobacco, rum, green tea, politics, and religious excitement. Every new sect has its revival. I've got four children; the first is a Hicksite, the second a Universalist, the third a Socialist, the fourth a Shaker, and I reckon that if I should have a fifth he would be a Korkornite."

Curious to see the affair, Sam and his companion follow the directions of the innkeeper. Near a bridge on the not yet cleared property of a settler, and on the edge of a forest, the shadows of whose giant trees fell upon the strange scene, some twenty wigwam-like tents had been erected, and therein were sold liquor, tobacco, and cakes as at a fair. In the centre a sort of barn made of planks served for theatre to the chiefs of this revival: and their shrill, shrieking voices aroused the far echoes of rock, shore, and forest; some hundreds of men seated upon the trunks of felled trees, talked of religion or politics, and drank mint-julep or grog while waiting the return of their wives and daughters, who filled the barn. Slick and the Briton managed to effect an entrance into this, at the moment that a person mounted the table which served for pulpit. He was meagre, pale, attenuated, hollow-eyed, his head was bound in a red handkerchief, which increased his palor, his neck was bare; and his whole mien so mournful and resigned that he looked more like a criminal going to be hanged than a minister of the gospel. It was unpleasant to look at him. All were still. Then he slowly pronounced a few words; then murmured inarticulately, then an axiom or two, raising his voice gradually, and then entering upon his subject, which was a picture of the fearful tortures reserved for the damned. His gestures became animated, his eye kindled, his language grew fierce and vehement, he perspired freely, and at last

took off his coat. This done, he recommenced his infernal description, in which the images, borrowed from all that is revolting and hideous in the physical life, inspired so profound a disgust, and were so utterly senseless, that Slick and the Briton left their places and quitted the barn, while frightened women were fainting, howling, and falling hysterically into each other's arms. "I speculate," said Sam," that I have seen that chap somewhere. He calls himself Concord Fisher, but it's a false name, I know.” Nor was he wrong.

The next day this terrible preacher came to the tavern, without his red handkerchief. "Samuel," said he, "I recognized you yesterday; and you're just the man I wanted to see. I am Ahab Meldrum. My dear friend, we preach temperance, for nothing else goes down in these parts; but it is easier to preach than to practice. I can't do any more: for heaven's sake give me a glass of brandy.

"That's good, I guess," replied Sam, "you etarnal hypocrite. Why the devil can't you drink your brandy like everybody else, like a man, hands up, above board, without cheating or trickery? I don't like all this parade."

Nevertheless Sam gave him some of the comfortable liquor, and when he saw him a little revived, said :

"Well, Ahab, what the deuce are you doing here. The last time I saw you the preachin' trade was good, and you was doin' pretty well with your new rule of grammar that the feminine gender is superior to the masculine. Come, don't cry, Ahab, what's the use of that? Bolt your brandy and tell me all

about it.

"Alas," replied Ahab, sobbing, " it didn't end well. The fathers and mothers thought that their girls came too often to submit their consciences to me and to struggle against the evil Spirit. Judge Lynch got under way, and would, I reckon, have hung me up at the door according to your republican

ideas of justice, when I got timely notice, and cut my stick. Now I am a Korkornite, and have a magnificent success. But I lead a deuce of a life, and I kill myself with screaming, drinking water, and acting. I reckon I'll become a Socialist. They are not hard, and their rule will suit me; everybody does as he likes. What do you think, Sam? Can one make something out of it? Is it a good thing? Will it last? When I speculate, I like to have all the chances on my side."

(6 Ahab," ," said Sam, "you make me tremble. You're a real devil. Turn farmer or merchant, and quit your preachin' trade."

"I," " cried the now half-intoxicated Ahab, "I'll never put up with a common trade. Hurrah for Socialism, it's easy, it's free, and it's the fashion." And he fell under the table.

It is by this sort of example that Sam Slick initiates the reader into the popular genius of the nation. He visits the manufactories as a draughtsman, and "takes off the factory girls." Politics, the arts, commerce, are his, personified and living. It is an excellent method--no hypothesis, but all experience.

What is the result of this laborious observation, the most attentive, profound, and naïve, to which the New World has ever been submitted? It does not generalize certain results, and lean upon deductions and conjectures, but penetrates into the secrets of manners, discovers the slightest springs of the on-going elaboration, and weighs with care all the elements which constitute American society. The result is, that nothing is as yet complete in these regions, and the formation now in progress, advancing with a formidable quickness, devouring time and space, yet ever seeing time and space before it, has not yet performed the half of its work.

We southern Europeans, to whom languishing and degenerate Rome bequeathed a language which we afterwards mutilated, institutions which we deformed, and memories which we adored as pedants-we, wear wrinkles in our cradle. The Americans inherit no material civilization. Behind and before them are the forest and the ocean. Therefore their physical activity is unlimited. But they are heirs of so much intellectual civilization, that it crushes them; and they cannot advance one step upon the way. Directors of industrial civilization, they follow intellectual civilization. You must study this prodigious movement, and this complete nullity in Haliburton's book.

But by what eccentricity, you will say, do you go to the limits of the world, not far from Newfoundland and Labrador, to find a book which is not literary, not written in English, and does not treat of the great interests of humanity? The life of Tennesee planters, New Scotland colonists, is of very little importance to us. What new legislation, what ingenious system do you bring us. What new light upon human destiny, is formulized, as the modern thinkers say, in this useless work? Surely none. But we do not stand in need of systems and theories-those baloons floating high and low in our atmosphere for our amusement ought to suffice Continue this easy amusement, the last charm of feeble minds, and make plenty of laws; Europe awaits a great many still. Build with enthusiasm those paper edifices, those sublime card-castles. Leave to other minds their pleasure.

us.

Never, until ours, has any epoch been night and day visible and transparent in its most secret motions. Now we can hear the inner mystery of the world, feel its giant pulsations, watch with mournfully ardent interest the palpitations of that central and living point, which is the heart of humanity, and which is called civilization; observe whether it be displaced,

and whither the life goes; in a word, we seize as it flies, and stenograph, that eternally improvising drama called History, which other men will one day try to write. In the olden times, the rarest intelligences could not succeed; men saw but two steps before them. Julius Cæsar knew poorly what was happening in Persia and Armenia; and the internal affairs of India and Samothrace were nearly unknown to sovereign Rome. Now, all the springs that move society do their work before our eyes; the world is of crystal. It is a glorious joy to listen to the deadened and measured sound of those wheels, and to share in those regular transformations, which were once taken for unexpected and mysterious phenomena.

So we may leisurely contemplate that easily explicable miracle, the peopling and fertilizing of North America; its attraction to itself of the life and force of decaying Europe, aud its disposition to destroy all foreign possessions in its neighborhood. Vast hive of laborers, storehouse, shop, farm, arsenal, manufactory, workshop, it fancies itself a democracy and is only a fabric. Its leisure hours have not yet arrived; the giant does not yet know his strength. But what keeps off the solution of the problem is, that America extends its limits by the magnetism of example. Texas is hers: the old French of Canada incline to be hers; languishing New Scotland expects a new life, if, in her turn, she become a republic. So the terms of the problem are multiplied. The other side of the seas, all is to come, all is hope, ardor, while on us the Past weighs heavily, and we fret ourselves amid the ashes.

Of the two new and threatening societies now being formed, one under the laws of the Czar, the other under the invocation of Washington, the more interesting, by its energy, traditions, Teutonic descent and free form, is North America.