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which rise from the great laboratory below. [ of the earth. Those whose recollection of This sublimation, being chiefly sulphur, appeared past political contests is especially sharp, in every shade of bright yellow, orange, and probably thought the introduction of such a crimson, as it glittered in the morning sunbeam. topic a violation of the proprieties of the ocClouds of dense white vapor rose from time to casion, though the cordial applause with time from the innermost depths, with a hissing, which his remarks were received indicated a roaring sound, like a mighty cataract. The occasional intermission of the rising clouds which steamed forth from the great gulf, afforded a partial glance at the lurid fire raging in the internal abyss. All around, as far as the eye could reach, within the crater, huge masses of rock lay tumbled over each other in chaotic confusion. Such an appearance, when the volcano is in a quiescent state, cannot fail to impress a spectator with a fearful idea of the inconceivable powers set in operation when the pent-up fires burst their bonds; and through this chasm, which is said to be near three miles in extent, the mountain hurls back the rocks buried within it by the fury of some earlier commotion. The forest, which is the midmost of the three different regions or districts passed in the ascent, furnishes a striking picture.

tree.

very general concurrence in the sentiments
expressed. Indeed, we believe the public
generally regard the question of protection as
having been settled, and as having taken its
place among the obsolete ideas which belong
exclusively to the past. It is not likely again
to constitute one of the dividing lines of polit-
ical parties. Whether the whig party is
dead or not (a point on which political
doctors disagree), it is not likely again to
advocate the adoption of such a tariff as shall
protect American labor from the fullest and
the freest competition with the labor of the
world. That issue has been made and de-
cided over and over again; and the pop-
ular verdict has been against the principle
of protection. It is very easy, it is true,
to explain the adverse result in each case, by
attributing it to the fact that other issues
intervened.
that the public mind was misled
and that the contest, therefore, was neither
fair nor final. But this cannot alter the

would not have been allowed to interfere with its expression. Right or wrong, the people of this country have decided almost as directly, and, we suspect, quite as finally, in favor of unrestricted commerce, as have those of England. And that party will not be wise, in either country, which shall challenge the verdict and insist upon another trial of the issue.

The Forest Region has also an interest peculiar to itself; for the trees, chiefly oak in the part through which we passed, have as unnatural, unearthly an appearance, as the place in which they are found. The want of a sufficient depth fact; for if the popular conviction had been of soil preventing the roots from penetrating downwards, they have spread themselves in distinctly in favor of protection, other issues curious network over the surface; or, being forced upwards by the hard substratum, have formed the most extraordinary natural arches against the parent trunk, which is frequently of immense diameter, but rarely above fifteen or twenty feet high, and stag-headed like a pollardThe straggling branches afforded but a meagre shade under such a grilling sun; and for the benefit of future travellers we could but exclaim, like the Persians, as we passed, "May your shadows never be less !'' It is impossible to convey any adequate idea of the black petrified torrents which we sometimes crossed, sometimes followed for a while. There was a strange illusion in some of these streams of lava, where the liquid fire had ploughed a deeper channel than usual. Seen from a little distance, the oaktrees growing on the high banks deceptively led one to think that the sparkling water was actually bounding over the rocks, filling the air with its joyous music and refreshing spray; and the contrast was the more hideous as one became conscious of the dead mass in the river-bed, and the deathlike stillness of the air. Where the Forest Region terminates, on the descent, the streams of lava have spread out like a great river losing itself in low marshy land.

From the N. Y. Times, 18 July. FREE TRADE AS A BOND OF PEACE.

MR. SECRETARY DAVIS, at the banquet on Friday night, took occasion to declare himself very warmly in favor of free trade, as a means of preserving peace among the nations

Looking at the matter, therefore, from a political point of view, Gen. Davis committed no very heinous offence against propriety when he introduced the subject of free trade into his speech at the dinner of Friday night. And in every other respect the reference was clearly pertinent. The very first topic which an exhibition of the products of the industry of all nations naturally suggests, is that of the freest possible intercourse the largest possible interchange of commodities, among them. The great London Exhibition, which was the first ever had in which all nations joined, was due directly to the adoption of the free trade policy secured by Sir Robert Peel. It seemed to grow naturally from itto be its direct and inevitable result. And the very general desire which has been shown to imitate that great demonstration, and to hold similar exhibitions in different countries, indicates a growing tendency, on the part of the people of those countries, towards greater freedom of commercial intercourse. Nations no longer repel the products of each other's labor. They rather invite the interchange.

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And whatever may be thought of free trade | shall have become consolidated by the unias a question of political economy, and in its versal adoption of free trade, international relations to the welfare of particular coun- wars must become matters of memory and tries, no one can doubt that it is the most of history only. When war shall fall uponpotent of all possible agencies for preserving the great mass of the people of each nation peace among the nations which adopt it. who stay at home with a heavier hand than Gen. Davis and the French minister were upon those who fill the ranks of the contendclearly right in declaring that the best possi-ing hosts-when famine shall waste those ble means of preventing war is to multiply whom the sword shall spare -no government the commercial relations of the different will be rash enough, or strong enough, to countries of the earth. The direct tendency plunge its country into war. No ministry at of free trade is to break down the barriers this day, which should menace the people of which separate nations to create for them England with the calamities of a war with one common interest, and thus to render the United States, upon any of the grounds hostilities among them a mutual suicide. which have occasioned wars hitherto, could Just in proportion as nations become mutually maintain itself a month. Neither the fisherdependent upon one another for the products ies, nor Cuba, nor Canada, will ever occasion of their industry, will it become impossible war between England and America. for them to go to war. So long as England interests of England forbid it. Free trade has could produce upon her own soil food for her so increased the commercial intercourse and own people, manufacture her own goods and the mutual interdependence of the two counprovide within herself the raw material, it tries, as to render it impossible. would be comparatively easy for her to wage hostilities against other nations. But now that she has opened her ports to the products of other lands now that her millions of workmen look to the United States for the cotton they use, and in part for the grain they consume, as well as a market for the goods they make war with this country becomes entirely another thing. The relative strength of our armies and our ships of war is a matter of little consequence. England might win a battle every week, and sink our fleets and annihilate our armies as fast as we could bring them into the field against her, and yet suffer immeasurably from the interruption of commerce which the fact of hostilities would occasion. A declaration of war would at once cut off her supplies of cotton, and thus throw millions of her laboring population out of work; while at the same time it would diminish her supplies of grain, and thus raise the price of food to her people at the very moment it had lessened their means of paying for it. Famine and pestilence would thus tread closely upon the footsteps of war, and that, too, whether victory or defeat should wait upon her banner. The chances of war, therefore, are greatly diminished by the adoption of free trade between any two of the great nations of the earth. And if the day shall ever come when commercial intercourse among all the nations shall be unfettered when each shall interchange its own commodities with every other, and thus make itself dependent upon every other for some essential part of what its people need-it will become almost impossible for war to break out among them. Oppression may still, as it ought, create rebellions at home; the crushed and down-trodden may rise against the arbitrary power that afflicts them; but when the interests of all nations

No one will doubt that this is a result of the highest possible importance to the wellbeing of the human race one to which much of what generally passes for national prosperity may well be sacrificed pared with which all our notions of national independence seem of little weight. All the tendencies of the age are clearly towards the adoption of free trade principles. There is at this moment no considerable nation in the world, which is not relaxing, rather than tightening, the bonds of its commercial intercourse with other nations. And in this fact we may easily find ground for trust, that the world draws sensibly near to that great consummation of prophecy and of hope, when the brotherhood of man shall be universally acknowledged - when the nations of the earth shall not learn war any more, but strive by all possible means to advance the common happiness and well-being of the human race.

The Adventures of a Gentleman in Search of the Church of England.

Sketches of an Evangelical or Low Church family, and their favorite minister; of two young Tractarian curates, and the manner of conducting the service at their church; and of the true media via of safety, as exhibited by an excellent country parson, his amiable family, a pattern landlord, and a worthy village. Belleville and its various inhabitants may possibly be discovered in real provincial life, but we fear as a sort of rara avis. The picture of Rubric, the gentlemanly and scholarly Tractarian curate, is a favorable likeness, not exaggerated. The sketch of the serious family" and the Honorable and Reverend Mr. Mild might have had more force and richness of coloring without ever passing the boundaries of the real. The book is supposed to be written by a returned colonist wishing to find the church of his youth. — Spect.

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LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 483.-20 AUGUST, 1853.

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13. The Aztec Mystery,

Spectator,

507

508

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Chambers' Journal,

511

14. A Midland Town in the reign of George III., Gentleman's Magazine,

15. Cost of Iniquity,
POETRY: The Last Retrospection, 449; Lines-The Wondrous Well-Epitaph, 450.
SHORT ARTICLES: English in Ireland

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Sartines, 467; Thackeray's New American Theme, 476; George Wilson-The Potato, 479; Eliza Robbins - Beethoven, 480; Sweet Oil vs. Bed-bugs, 487; Ardent Spirit in the United States, 492; The Pea, 503; Character in a Blue-bag, 507; Mr. Hannay on Satiric Literature, 512.

NEW BOOKS: Meliora; or, Better Times to Come, 467; The Sea-weed Collector's Guide, 487.

From the Dublin University Magazine.
THE LAST RETROSPECTION.
FAREWELL, bright sun! thou goest to thy rest,
And I to mine. When thou dost rise again,
This busy heart, this racked and aching head,
Shall feel and throb no more; -these failing

eyes

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Shall never watch thee sink behind the roofs,
And fill with tears to think of other times,
When they beheld thee fading from a sky
That overhung green hills and leafy woods.
'Tis my last gaze on thee I perish here,
An idle weed, cast, by the tide of life,
To wither on a bleak and desolate shore.
No heart, in this wide city's wilderness,
Will think the light of day less bright and fair,
That I shall see it not -no loving tears
Will fall upon my coffin-not a soul
Will ache and sicken at its own strong life,
When all which made that life seem beautiful
Lies low with me in my cold, silent grave.
Ah me!-far, far away from these close streets
There lies a spot, hidden in waving boughs,
Where the thrush carols and the swallow flits
Through the long summer-day — where waters
gleam
Between high bowery banks, whose willows droop
To kiss the ripples.

CCCCLXXXIII.

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LIVING AGE. VOL. II. 29

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Lulling me into soft, delicious sleep,
Broken by the loud cuckoo's gladsome cry
Ringing through hawthorn glade and hazel copse.
Night after night, the gentle moon may shine
Into my vacant room, as she was wont,
And cast her silver flags upon the floor,
Chequered with tremulous shadows of the leaves
And flowers that cling around the latticed pane-
But the wild dreamer who lay wakeful there,
Watching her beauty and with charmed ear
List'ning to all the sounds of whispering boughs
And singing waters, till the stars waxed dim
Shall rest in the oblivion of the grave.

I thank thee, God! that my beloved ones
Have hope to cheer them.

When the day wears on And brings not me, they'll look with stronger

trust

On to the morrow. May they never know That their poor wanderer, their pride, their hope,

Shall meet their eyes no more. May they not

know

That wanting one kind hand to close mine eyes,
To wipe the damps of anguish from my brow,
Or moisten the parched fever of my lips,
I died alone.

O, misery for me!

Why did I trust thee, golden fruit, that gleamed
In what I thought the fairy land of life?
Why did I put my faith in baseless dreams,
And leave the quiet haven of my youth
For their deceitful promise?

I have seized
The fruit, and found it wither in my grasp;
I've proved my dreams, and they have left me

thus.

Fame! ah, I know it now! 't is but a word

To lure the victim onward to his doom
The bread of life to the ambitious heart,
Which breaks for lack of it.

I flung my heart
A gauntlet to the world- how was it met?
With cold indifference and blighting scorn.
Pride, with his thrice-mailed hand and iron foot,
Dashed it to earth, then ground it in the dust
And it arose no more.

Blessed be death! Since I have seen my youth's illusions fly Ere youth itself was gone. Blessing and peace On my dear home, and those who dwell therein, Is the poor friendless outcast's latest prayer. There is a long, long night before my soul, And a bright endless day beyond that night; There is another land where we shall meet, And this world's bitter taunts can wound no

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CAME North, and South, and East, and West, Four sages to a mountain crest.

Each vowed to search the wide world round,
Until the Wondrous Well be found.

And here, as simple shepherds tell,
Lies clear and deep the Wondrous Well.

Before the crag they made their seat,
The polished water at their feet.

Said One, "This well is small and mean,
Too petty for a village green."

Another said, "So smooth and dumb,
From earth's deep centre can it come?''
The Third," This water seems not rare,
Not even bright, but pale as air."

The Fourth, "A fane I looked to see;
Where the true well is, that must be."

They rose and left the mountain crest,
One North, one South, one East, one West.
Through many seas and deserts wide,
They wandered, thirsting, till they died.
The shepherds by the mountain dwell,
And dip their pitchers in the Wondrous Well.

LINES

WRITTEN ON A SISTER'S REFUSING TO RESUME HER
MUSIC AFTER HER FATHER'S DEATH.

How can I sing?-This world is now to me
A cold, strange land; for he is here no more
Who loved so well the voice of melody,
And all is gone which gave delight before.

EPITAPH.

FROM CUNWALLOW CHURCHYARD, CORNWALL. (It may be read either backwards or forwards.)

SHALL We all die? We shall die all, All die shall we

Die all we shall.

From Blackwood's Magazine.

yet concealed, or known but to very few

WEISS' HISTORY OF THE FRENCH PROT- are brought to light. They tend to show

ESTANT REFUGEES.*

that, to the reign in which France attained the apogee of her splendor and prosperity, is to be traced the origin of much of the discord and misery under which she since has groaned.

In no French work do we remember a pas

since so often re-formed

insurmountable

THE reputations of remarkable men, and especially of renowned monarchs, are very variously affected by the lapse of time. A retrospective glance through centuries shows them to us alternately magnified or dimin-sage so nearly approaching to a denunciation, ished. For some, although a brilliant halo temperately and forcibly expressed, of Louis still surround their names, the world's esteem XIV.'s criminal errors, as the following page daily lessens; whilst the fame of others, of Mr. Weiss' new history. "The kingdom," says the learned profesbased upon the rock, is but ripened and confirmed by its antiquity. Contemporaries are sor," which Louis XIV. received covered with often dazzled and fascinated by unprofitable glory, powerful by its arms, preponderant glory and showy achievements; posterity judges abroad, tranquil and contented at home, he by results, which history is sometimes tardy transmitted to his successor humbled, ento reveal. The splendor of the earlier period feebled, dissatisfied, ready to undergo the of Louis the Fourteenth's long reign still reaction of the regency, and of the whole of blinds millions to the errors, crimes, and the eighteenth century, and thus placed upon disasters of its latter half. In France, the the fatal slope conducting to the Revolution Grand Monarque is, to this day, the object of of 1789. To the formidable encroachments an irrational hero-worship. To assail his of a prince ruled, during the latter part of his memory is there impiety; and the few reign, by a narrow and exclusive spirit in Frenchmen, who, from research and reflection, religious matters, and, in his policy, by views have formed a just estimate of his real merits, that were rather dynastic than national, shrink from running counter to the flood of Protestantism opposed an public infatuation. Foreigners may be perbarrier in England and Holland united under initted more impartially to appreciate that one chief, who led the whole of Europe against king's character and actions. They are bound isolated France. The signal of coalitions. by no traditional faith in his perfections; nor was given for the has the "veneration" which an English king first time in 1689, and, also for the first time, thought it not unbecoming to express, by the France was vanquished for the Treaty of mouth of his ambassador, for the French Ryswick was in fact a defeat. Not only the monarch, by any means descended to the sub-king acknowledged William III., but his injects of William the Third's successors. tendants officially recorded the diminution of Complacently dwelling upon his triumphs, the population, and the impoverishment of inevitable consequences of the upon the progress in France, during the first the kingdom part of his career, of arts and arms, of litera- emigration, and of the ensuing decline in ture, learning, and civilization, the fond ad- agriculture, manufactures, and trade. mirers of the fourteenth Louis artfully avert the beginning of the eighteenth century, the their gaze from his subsequent reverses, and safety of France was compromised, in a milifrom the intolerable bigotry and egotism that tary sense. Early in the struggle which folsullied his declining years. So long as he lowed the acceptance of the will of Charles pursued the wise policy of the Béarnais, of II., Marshal Villars had to be sent for from Richelieu, and of Mazarin, glory and prosper- Germany to combat the insurgents of the ity attended him; he quitted that path, be- Cevennes; and no sooner had that skilful came a bigot and a persecutor, and disgust and commander quitted the army than the allies weariness were his portion. The blackest won the victory of Hochstedt, the first of our stain upon his reign, the most grievous mis- great disasters in the War of Succession. take ever made by monarch, the most fatal of During the reign of Louis XV., whenever the errors, in its effects upon the future of France, allied powers threatened our frontiers, the was his heartless persecution of his Protest-government was obliged to purchase the fidelant subjects. Alike barbarous and impolitic, ity of the Protestants in the border provinces, it alone suffices to wither his laurels and by promises constantly renewed and never cancel his fame. The revenge of history, fulfilled. But was even the religious result, often slow, is ever sure. And now, nearly a pursued at the cost of so many sacrifices, ultiAt the period of the revocentury and a half after his death, mately attained? cation of the Edict of Nantes the population of France was about twenty millions, and * Histoire des Réfugiés Protestants de France, included one million of Protestants. At the depuis la Révocation de l'Edit de Nantes jusqu'à nos jours. Par M. Ch. Weiss, Professeur d'His- present day, from fifteen to eighteen huntoire au Lycée Bonaparte. 2 vols. Paris, Char-dred thousand Protestants live disseminated pentier; Londres, Jeffs. 1853.

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amongst thirty-five million of Catholics. The

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