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."

"Abab," 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 mauufactories 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 clements which constitute American society. The rosult 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 Europeaus, to whom languishing and degenerate Kome 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 fimits 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. 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,

us.

and whither the life goes; in a word, we seize as it flies, and stendgraph, 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 Caesar, knew poorly what, was happening in Persia and Armenia; and the interual 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 unexpetid 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, and its disposition to destroy all foreign possessions in its neighborhood. Vast hive of laborers, storehouse, shop, farin, 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 Now Scotland expects a new life, if, in her turn, she become a republié, 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 tho 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.

CHAPTER IX.

THE FUTURE OF NORTH AMERICA AND OF THE UNITED

STATES.

SECTION I.

RESUME.

We have exposed without indulgence, it may be with some severity, whatever is incomplete in the civilization of the United States; unsatisfactory or hollow in the arts, sketchy or rude in their social position, factitious or chimerical in their literary pretensions. We have reproduced them as in an inventory without accepting them blindly, without taking the responsibility of their own partial criticism, nor yet the severe appreciation of English travellers, more attentive to the faults or absurdities of their transatlantic brethren than is becoming among relatives. While the English analyzed so passionately, the Americans worked on; and what proves that they were endowed with life is that one by one the spots disappeared, the feebleness vanished and the bitter criticisms of English travellers became less applicable.

What then was the element of strongth, which lived at the bottom of the American Institution?

A moral and traditional element, which I have exhibited in the first chapter of this work, and of which I have now only to indicate the development.

SECTION II.

THE BEE-FORMATION OF AN AMERICAN VILLAGE.

He

Towards the borders of Arkansas or Illinois, in the profound and inexplored solitudes at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, you may see on some fine summer day, the arrival of a family whose entire furniture is contained in a wagon drawn by a small horse ; sometimes the husband and wife form the association, sometimes one or two children serve to complete the republic. The father chooses the location. Here is a river, oaks, and turf; but what next? IIe has no tools, and to build his log house he needs time, workmen and money. has no arms but his own and his wife's, maybe those of Jonathan and Samuel, his sons, not yet grown. The old settlers, in the neighboring forest, who have long had their log houses, and who know the country, go to see the strangers, not merely to salute but to aid them. No preparation, no making ready, no tumult, no vain phrases. say little, but content themselves with the most simple things; they imitate the Bee; they work together for the profit of the new-comers. This real and active fraternity has borne great fruit. The oak falls, is dressed and rolled to its place; the house grows; a roof only is wanted, and fifty ready arms soon. construct it. When the harvest comes in, the wheat must be threshed; again the comrades come, and a week's work is done in one day: what would have cost the solitary settler a month's

Time is precious. They