Exchange of the country had risen to the very turning point, where coin instead of bills would become the medium. Owing to the rise of interest in London, considerable sums of English capital usually employed here, had been called home, and there had been consequently an increased demand npon our own banks and that, too, just at a time when the rise in Foreign Exchanges admonished them of the necessity rather of restricting than expanding their issues. In such a state of the money market, the passing by one House, and as was at first supposed, the certain and prompt passing by the other, of a bill which required that coin and coin only should thenceforth be the currency of the government-and that all duties and payments to it should be bonded until needed for the public expenditure-could not fail to produce apprehension: an apprehension greatly increased by the amount of public moneys, about eleven millions, then held by the different deposit banks. As the bill was adopted and carried through in opposition to the opinions and experience of the whole business community, almost without an exception-so far as we know it was feared that the same certainty of the judgment and interests of that community, evinced in devising the measure, would be exhibited in carrying it into operation-and then it was easy to see that wide spread ruin must ensue. Happily, the Senate of the United Statesnext to the Supreme Court; the great conservative element of the Constitution, -saw and appreciated these possible evils-and by a wise delay, and by the interposition of remedial measures between passing of the Sub-Treasury Bill, and the time of its taking effect-will strip the Sub-Treasury of all, or almost all, that is injurious in its provisions.

In the confidence imparted by the declaration made to this effect, on the floor of the Senate, by the Chairman of the Committee of Finance, in answer to certain queries put to him on 22d April, by Mr. Webster, the price of stocks have advanced, and there is an unwonted buoy ancy in the general business of the city. Money, which panic causes to disappear, begins again to show itself, and the rates of discount in the street are become more moderate. More activity likewise is manifested in foreign commerce. Several ships have been taken within the past few days, for loading with flour and grain for Europe, and every thing portends a

more auspicious state of things than at the commencement, and during the earlier part of the month seemed probable so soon. The rates of foreign exchange, too, have rather receded, and thus contributed to relieve the banks from some degree of apprehension. We have faith that in the course of the next few weeks the embarrassing political topics which have left the country in a state of injurious anxiety, will be satisfactorily disposed of, and that the summer will be a smooth and prosperous one.

The general effect of the intelligence from Europe, of 4th April, was unfavorable to prices. In the great staple of cotton, notwithstanding the then ascertained fact, that there would be a large deficiency in the supply, as compared with past years, no advance had taken place at all commensurate either with expectations or with actual prices, on this side. Of course, the effect was to make a dull market here still duller. In bread stuffs, there was a like disappointment. The appearance of the growing crop in Europe, and the little animation of the demand for foreign supplies in England, coming upon a well-supplied market here, and encountering the appearance equally flattering of our growing crops, produced quite a pause in transactions at previous prices. By submitting to a slight decline, however, some holders have effected sales, and others will follow probably in the same line.

In thus laying before our readers a sketch of the position of money and business towards the close of the month, and our auguries of better times at hand, it may be proper to add, by way of caution, that we expect no sudden improvement. The banks cannot safely relax their prudent course, while legislation which is to affect them so sensibly as the Sub-Treasury bill, is still undetermined, nor while the foreign exchanges rule so near the point of exporting coin. Nor will general enterprise resume its full spring until it shall be definitively ascertained that neither wars nor rumors of wars are again likely to interfere with it. Certainty of law and security against interruption, are essential to commerce, but where there is both vacillating policy in legislation and frequent alarms of hostilities, commercial enterprise withers. We conclude, therefore, with a renewed expression of our hope and belief, that in the coming months of this year, we shall see confidence and stability restored.

THE budget from Europe for the month brings us news of interest and of some importance. British domestic politics are comparatively quiescent, but the British arms in India have been doing deeds worthy of record. Sir Robert Peel's commercial measure has passed its second reading in the House of Commons, by a majority nine votes less than the first received; and some of the most ardent of its opponents have somewhat hastily inferred from this, that there is a chance of its defeat even in the lower House. This, however, seems to us preposterous; but it is by no means impossible that the Lords will refuse it their concurrence. If it goes to the people its success we imagine is scarcely doubtful. Brief conversations have been had in Parliament concerning the question in dispute between England and the United States, but they revealed nothing and only were entirely unimportant.

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The British Campaign in India, has been closed. Two battles, those of Feroospah and Moodkee, were announced in our last month's summary. The result of both, though nominally in favor of England, seemed really doubtful. Two more have been fought and not with doubtful success. In the first, which was at Aliwall, on the 28th of January, under the command of Sir Harry Smith, the whole of the enemy were driven headlong over the difficult ford of a broad river his camp, cannon, stores and everything were wrested from him, and his whole force entirely routed. The Sikh army numbering 20,000 was strongly entrenched on the Sutlej river, and their position was covered by forty or fifty heavy guns. The British force is set down at 12,000 and their loss is reported at 151 killed, 413 wounded and 25 missing. The second battle was fought at Sobraon on the 10th of February, by Sir Hugh Gough, with something over 25,000 men. The Sikhs had 30,000 and were strongly entrenched. The action commenced in the morning and was ended at about eleven o'clock in the forenoon. The British troops stormed the enemy's entrenchments bayonet in hand, defended though they were by 70 pieces of well-served artillery, and reserved their fire until they were within the works. The slaughter was immense. The Sikhs were utterly routed and put to flight and thousands of them were butchered in cold blood while attempting to cross the river. Their loss is set down at about 12,000. The British loss was 2,383, of whom 320 were killed and 2,063 wounded. These successive and

signal defeats destroyed the power of the Sikhs and compelled them to sue for peace. The conquerors, of course, imposed their own terms, which were gladly accepted. The Sikhs agree to pay the expenses of the war, to disband their force, to surrender the sovereignty of their territory to the British and to make the most ample acknowledgments for the wrongs they have perpetrated. So the Punjaub is at last a dependency of the British

crown.

The revolt in Poland has been completely quelled. The insurrection, though brief, was sanguinary, and clearly proves that although the overwhelming force by which the Poles are surrounded, has again thwarted their attempt to regain their freedom and nationality, it has not been able to stifle their love of liberty or to check their resolution to achieve it. The European correspondent of the National Intelligencer has furnished a very timely abstract of an article in a recent number of the Revue des Deux Mondes, upon the Polish insurrection, which the writer, Professor Cyprian Robert, terms the conspiracy of Pan-Sclavism, and which he asserts was intended to be an uprising of the entire Sclavonic race. In this article he gives the entire plan of the outbreak as originally arranged. According to his account the period fixed for the grand explosion, at Posen, in Gallicia, at Cracow, and even in Russian Poland, was the 19th or 20th of February. The noblesse, and all the landed proprietors, and the priesthood understood each other; they wished the revolution to begin from below, but the peasantry lacked confidence and intelligence. were turned by the Austrian tacticians against their masters, who proclaimed liberty and equality. The new Polish Government was to be composed provisionally of seven members, delegated by the seven associations or theatres of conspiracy, on which chief reliance was placed, viz., the Republic of Cracovia, the Grand Duchy of Posen, Lithuania, Gallicia, the kingdom of Poland, Russia Minor, and Paris, as containing the largest and highest body of refugees. Bohemia, Hungary, the Sclavonic countries of the Danube, and the north of Russia, were to be drawn in at a later period. Austria, having only six millions of Germans among her thirty-seven millions of subjects, was deemed the weakest or most vulnerable of the Powers holding the Sclavonic race in bondage. Moldavia and Wallachia were excited, and numbers of Moldavian youth actually rose and pro

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claimed a National Government. Paris journals, enlisted for the purpose, excited the two provinces with expositions of outrages on their constitutions by the Princes and feudal magnates. At Cracow, in the first assaults on the Austrians, nearly four hundred corpses remained in the streets. The priests rushed into the conflict, holding up their crosses to incite the insurgents. Two divisions of the patriots took the direction of the Carpathian Mountains. They hoped to be able to operate in Hunary and Bohemia; and a third division, the most considerable, entered Russia to work up Podoliea and Volhynia, and unite themselves to the old allies of Poland, the Cossacks of the Ukraine. Professor Rober treck ons the Poles and the Malo-Russians, their sympathizers, at twenty-five millions of the most warlike race of Europe. All the forces of Russia, Austria and Prussia would not have sufficed to conquer the league which the Pan-Sclavonic committees had organized. Unluckily, by untimely fervor of spirit, the restoration of the ancient kingdom of Poland was first announced, instead of the arranged Sclavonic confederacy. Hence the tardiness of the Bohemians, Hungarians, and Malo-Russians. The grand conspiracy, he adds, subsists, perseveres, and will triumph in the end, let present results be ever so gloomy. Austria, he thinks, is enfeebled and discredited by the occurrences of the few last weeks. He counts on the mountains and the marshes to be occupied by invincible and indefatigable rebels, and on the democratic instinct of the Sclavonic race. For the present, certainly, the insurrection has been thoroughly suppressed. Cracow has been occupied by the Austrian and Russian troops, and the most severe injunctions have been placed upon the inhabitants. They are to be disarmed :every person found with arms in his possession after a certain day is to be tried by court-martial: and all the rebel chiefs are to be surrendered. A large number of the insurgents have been seized and imprisoned. Several of the leaders had been executed and the severest punishments were to be inflicted upon the rest. Well, indeed, may Poland be styled unhappy!

There is nothing in the politics of other foreign nations worthy of special notice. Spain has undergone another revolution, but this has long ceased to be a novelty. Each, however, leaves the government more despotic than before, and now nearly the last vestiges of freedom have been obliterated by the suspension of the Constitution, the prorogation of the Cortes and the abolition of the liberty of the pressthe journals having been prohibited by a decree from assailing not only the Queen, the royal family and the Constitution, but foreign sovereigns and their families and

all the functionaries and official acts of the government. In Italy there are symptoms of disaffection, but as yet they amount to nothing. In Mexico, Paredes still holds the seat of supreme power, though its possession is threatened by rumored revolutions. It is said to be the design of Santa Ana to return from Havana, where, since his banishment, he has resided, and to place himself at the head of another movement. Circumstances lend probability to the imputed design. The relations of Mexico and the United States remain in statu quo. The armies of each are upon the frontier, divided only by the Rio Grande: but we apprehend no collision, as the U. S. commanding officer has received the most explicit and imperative instructions to avoid giving the slightest cause of offence, and to confine his action entirely to defensive precautions. The Mexican government is evidently seeking delay in the final adjustment of its difficulties with this country, in order to await the issue of our pending controversy with England. The result of the latter, we have no doubt, will definitively decide that of the former dispute. Mexico would be very glad to enter upon a war with this country, if she could do so with the slightest prospect of success. Any contest upon which she might enter single handed, she knows would be not only disgraceful but ruinous in its issue. As an ally of England, she would gladly, because she could safely, contend with the United States. When, however, peace shall have beet reinstated between the two countries, we shall have no difficulty in obtaining a final and satisfactory adjustment of all our points of difference with Mexico. That most desirable event may not be immediately at hand, but we are confident its consummation is not very remote, and is scarcely contingent. In South America, affairs remain as heretofore. The intervention of the French and English in the affairs of La Plata is still active and warlike, though Sir Robert Peel has recently made a feeble and utterly hopeless attempt to show that the existing status is not that of war. He was answered, pointedly and conclusively, by Sir R. Inglis with some very pertinent references to passages in English history.

In Literary matters there is not much intelligence of marked interest. The Life and Correspondence of HUME have appeared, and form apparently the most considerable publication of the month. The work is elaborately reviewed in the literary journals, and has led not indeed to renewed controversy concerning his principles of philosophy aed politics, but to serviceable rehearsals of the fundamental falsehoods on which they rested. He seems to have been extremely sensitive to the obloquy to which his irreligious sentiments exposed him,

words, "external nature and human thoughts, both relatively to human affections, so as to cause the production of as great immediate pleasure in each part, as is compatible with the largest possible sum of pleasure in the whole;" his explanation of the sensuous element of poetry, as the "union, harmonious melting down and fusion of the sensual in the spiritual "all are replete with knowledge and suggestive thought. When Coleridge speaks of the poetical powers, we are constantly reminded by his very language that he transcribes his own consciousness, and speaks from authority, not as the reviewers; as when he refers to the "Violences of excitement"-"the laws of association of feeling with thought"-" the starts and strange farflights of the assimilative power on the slightest and least obvious likeness presented by thoughts, words and objects" "the original gift of spreading the tone, the atmosphere, and with it, the depth and height of the ideal world around forms, incidents and situations of which, for the common view, custom had bedimmed all the lustre, had dried up the sparkle and the dew drops." Also, in speaking of the language of the highest poetry, he calls it intermediate between arbitrary language, mere "modes of recalling an object," seen or felt, and the language of nature-a subordinate Logos-that was in the beginning, and was with the thing it represented, and was the thing it represented. It is the blending arbitrary language with that of nature, not merely recalling the cold notion of a thing, but expressing the reality of it-language which is itself a part of that which it manifests." In reading this, and also Wordsworth's definition of language, as the "Incarnation of thought," not its dress, we feel that it is not observation but consciousness that speaks.

To Coleridge belongs the honor of emancipating Shaksperian criticism in England from its old bonds. He showed that the error of the classical critics consisted in "mistaking for the essentials of the Greek stage, certain rules which the wise poets imposed on themselves, in order to render all the remaining parts of the drama consistent with those which had been forced upon them by circumstances independent of their will; out of which circumstances the drama itself rose. The circumstances in Shakspeare's time were different, which it was equally out of his power to alter, and such as, in

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my opinion, allowed a far wider sphere, and a deeper and more human interest. Critics are too apt to forget that rules are but means to an end; consequently, where the ends are different, the rules must be likewise so. We must have ascertained what the end is, before we can determine what the rules ought to be. Judging under this impression," he adds, "I did not hesitate to declare my full conviction, that the consummate judgment of Shakspeare, not only in the general construction, but in all the detail of his dramas, impressed me with greater wonder than even the might of his genius, or the depth of his philosophy." In his criticisms on Shakspeare, he insists, with much felicity, on the unity of a work of art as its characteristic excellence. It must be a concrete whole, all its parts in just subordination to its leading idea or principle of life. Thus the imagination, in its tranquil and purely pleasure operation, "acts chiefly by creating out of many things as they would have appeared in the description of an ordinary mind detailed in unimpassioned succession, a oneness, even as nature, the greatest of poets, acts upon us when we open our eyes upon an extended prospect." And again: the imagination, by combining many circumstances into one moment of consciousness, "tends to produce the ultimate end of all human thought and feeling, unity, and thereby the reduction of the spirit to its principles and fountain, who is always truly one." At the end of his notes on Shakspeare, he has a passage, full of power and meaning, incidentally referring to the same thought: "There are three powers:Wit, which discovers partial likeness hidden in general diversity; Subtlety, which discovers the diversity concealed in general apparent sameness; and Profundity, which discovers an essential unity under all the semblances of difference. Give to a subtle man fancy, and he is a wit; to a deep man imagination, and he is a philosopher. Add, again, pleasurable sensibility in the three-fold form of sympathy with the interesting in morals, the impressive in form, and the harmonious in sound, and you have the poet. But combine all, wit, subtlety and fancy, with profundity, imagination, and moral and physical susceptibility of the pleasurable, and let the object of action be man universal, and we shall haveO rash prophecy! say, rather, we have— a Shakspeare!"