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having called it a "remarkable soliloquy," | energy. Their essence consists in securing and thereupon proceeds to apply to us the for a moment, and by singular devices, the courteous epithets we have before men- command of the entire supply on the martioned. Now, we do not suppose Mr. Aus-ket. But such a command can only with tin was consciously dishonest in garbling difficulty be obtained for a moment. Rare this extract (though asterisks are usual to art is needful to gain it at all. But it never indicate great elisions, especially when a lasts over many months. The gold ring fell man is somewhat vulgarly running down a as soon as the Federal Government became poet, and running down his critics for ad- a seller unexpectedly, and destroyed their miring him), and in pitying us for thinking monopoly of the supply. No clique of it was remarkable, after he had carefully left speculators wishing to raise the gold preout all that we thought remarkable, and the mium, or wishing to depress it, could ever reasons for which we thought so. We feel command the supply of so costly an article very little doubt that he did not see any differ- for six months. Mr. Boutwell, too, the ence between the grossly garbled and short-present Secretary of the Treasury, sells the ened extract and the complete one, and that his mind was incapable of seeing any such difference; but then we think that conduct of this sort does show that the man who is guilty of it is utterly blind to all the simplest conditions of true criticism. For such a man to attempt to assign the relative places of our modern English poets in the poetic scale, is like a man who is colourblind proposing himself as a judge on the relative beauty of various colours. Still, if he serves to illustrate the intrinsic difficulty of his attempt, and to show the public how utterly incommensurable the merits of almost all great poets are, he will not have been clever and scoffing and narrow in vain.

From The Economist, Mar. 26. THE GREAT FALL IN THE GOLD PREMIUM AT NEW YORK.

SOME of the Americans have said that it is the mission of their country to give the world lessons in a new political economy; but the truth is that it is their mission to give most wonderful and surprising illustrations of old political economy. The size of their country makes all phenomena so large that everybody can see them, and that everybody is interested about them. In the last six months there has been a rise of about 16 per cent. in the value of their inconvertible paper currency as compared with gold. So large and so quick a change is unexampled, so far as we know, in similar phenomena. What, then, is the cause of it? It has been ascribed by some to the breaking down of the "gold ring" and the ruin of the gold exchange bank of New York. And no doubt for a time last autumn the effect of that wonderful speculation was greatly to raise the price of gold at New York. The gold speculators sent up the price in a few days from 135 to 160. But such violent causes soon expend their

gold in uncertain amounts, and this tends to hinder speculation, because the Government is the largest of all gold dealers, is always ready to counteract any artificial price by diminishing its sales if that price is too low, or by increasing its sales if that price is too high.

Again, the fall in the gold premium is ascribed to the diminished exportation of gold. And there is no doubt that the export of gold has largely diminished. We received in England from the United States:

:

In 1866
"1867

"1868

"1869

£

10,245,583

6,498,006

8,892,394

2,938,433

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In part this is to be accounted for by a di-
minished production of gold.
The high
prices of corn diverted much labour in Cal-
ifornia from mining to agriculture, and the
result is that the yield of gold has declined.
There is an unusually fine test of this, for
one of the innumerable taxes comprehended
in the American "Internal revenue
tax of 1-2 per cent. on the assays of gold,
and the produce of this tax fell from 488,000
dols in 1866 to 323,000 dols in 1868. In
1869 this tax was repealed, so that we can-
not so accurately test the diminution farther.
But the great diminution of the assay tax
between 1866 and 1868 is conclusive for
those years, as nearly every dealer gets his
gold assayed as soon as he gets it in order
that he may dispose of it for its true value.
But to whatever extent this cause does not

operate to whatever extent the diminished exportation has not been compensated by a diminished production-there must have been an additional supply of gold in the market at New York; and unless there has been a corresponding augmentation of the demand, the price of gold would fall. To some unknown extent there is an increase in the demand for gold yearly for the arts, and in Texas and some other distant parts of the Union where greenbacks have not reached and where gold is the sole current money, there is an augmentation of demand for currency purposes especially when those districts are as now particularly prosperous. But still on the whole and after all these allowances, there must have been an accumulation of gold in America, and that accumulation must have tended to reduce its value as compared with the inconvertible paper currency.

But this cannot be the permanent cause of so large a reduction in the value of gold. The more gold falls in value because of the diminished exportations in the past the more gold will tend to be exported in the future. If all other commodities remained of the same value and gold fell 16 per cent., it is almost certain that gold would be one of the best articles to export. In the whole list of articles of export some would quite certainly not yield 16 per cent. on exportation, even if any did so, and gold would be substituted for those which yielded a less percentage. The profits made in the commerce of the precious metal are commonly smaller, because more certain, than in most other trades, and therefore in practice gold would probably be exported sooner than a theorist would from a mere inspection of price-lists expect that it would be. Gold is an unusually transferable article, which moves as soon as there is the least profit, not an article which waits to move till all other articles have gone before it.

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In general it is true appreciations and depreciations of an inconvertible currency produce no effect on the export trade. But that is only because they are general. When they extend to all articles alike, they are no bounty on exporting any one article. But if they extend to any one-be it gold or be it tallow - they are sure to be bounties on its export, in case of the particular depreciation and bounties on its import, if the fact be that its value has individually appreciated. The real cause is different. The fall in the gold premium is not an isolated phenomenon, but part of a much larger phenomenon. Paper prices are falling generally in the United States; gold has fallen as measured in greenbacks, but other

things have fallen too. We give at the foot of this article a very careful table of prices six months ago and now, and the result is very remarkable.* The table includes 121 articles, excluding the quotations in gold; in only 11 has there been an increase in value; in all other cases has there been a decrease. In the majority of cases the fall has been above 12 per cent., or not much less than the fall in the gold premium; and in 34 cases it has been over 16 per cent., or greater than that fall. We can see, therefore, why gold is not exported from New York, though its value has fallen so much, for the value of other articles fitted for export to Europe has fallen as much or more. What we have to explain is not a fall in the paper value of gold only, but a fall in the paper value of commodities taken generally.

But what is the cause of this general fall? To account for it we must consider carefully the exact case of America. We may describe it (subject to a correction which we shall give directly) as a country with an unaugmented paper currency, but with a largely augmented amount of business. The number of greenbacks issued by the Government is the same, but the uses of these greenbacks, the bargains for which they are wanted, the commodities which they have (as Americans say) to "move," have increased very rapidly. The South is now again beginning to be prosperous. The whole country, which at the end of the war was a desert, is now again in part thriving, not everywhere or with equal vigour, but still in most places to a considerable extent, and in some places to a remarkable extent. The same greenback currency which at the end of the war only circulated in and had to do only the work of the victorious country, now circulates in and must meet the needs of the defeated half too. The business of the South is new, and as it has to be transacted in the old money, there is a fresh demand for that money, and the value of it rises.

It may indeed be replied that the Government paper currency is not the only paper currency of the United States. That there is also a National Bank currency; but in the first place the amount of this is limited by law. In the next place, the value of it must be the same as that of greenbacks, for it is payable in greenbacks; and a fixed proportion of greenbacks must be held as a reserve against it by every issuing bank; and thirdly, the South never got its due proportion of this Bank currency. It was

* THE LIVING AGE does not copy the long table referred to.

too poor to get it. This National Bank with chagrin and despair if told at the currency must be secured by a deposit of hotel that they were to have rooms on the United States Bonds, and this is a consider-eighth story. What a change has taken able investment of capital. The South has place! The comfortable, nay, luxurious not been able to pay down enough to obtain elevator has reversed all these things. Old a due share in its circulation. A secured ideas are no longer current. A new order circulation necessarily is a heavy burden on of things has come about. Now the top a very poor country, though a very light story is the most desirable. The view from burden on a rich country. The amount of the windows, the pure air of heaven, the National currency distance from noise and confusion - these and many other attractions render these elevated regions the choicest of all.

Last year, on 9th October, was
Now is

-showing no real increase.

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299,578,000
299,657,000

This is no puff for elevator men - neither for hotels. We shall mention the name of none in the business. We are led to The case then is one of the most remark- moralize and philosophize by the wondrous able in economical history. Owing to the change that has come over our tastes as enormous increase in the amount of Ameri- regards altitudes. Once New York city can business an increase probably un- was not expected to grow in any other wise precedented when we consider both the than longitudinally towards Harlem River, area of business and the quantity of busi- the waters of the bay and the Hudson and ness -the same amount of paper currency East Rivers having combined to prevent is not as efficient as it was once; and its any lateral expansion. But now old resivalue is approaching to that of gold now dents are taken literally off their feet by that the South is rapidly improving, and the tendency of the city to grow upwards. that its improvement aids all who sell to it We are now fully prepared to see next a and deal with it. The principle of this phe-downward growth begun into the bowels of nomenon is old and European, but its size the earth. is new and altogether American.

From The N. Y. Evening Post. THE NEW WAY OF GETTING UP STAIRS.

It is the steam elevator which has done all this. The hotels are beginning to be modern Babels. One on Broadway has lately been adding ten or a dozen stories to its already dizzy height. We confidently look for the day when the city shall be built up so high that vertical city railroads will be run up and down by corrupt corporations.

WHAT Would our ancestors have thought, in the days of George Washington, if they Some twenty years ago or more, hoisting had heard people talk of going up stairs by apparatus began to be introduced somesteam! In those good old times it was the thing after the fashion of modern elevators, elegant thing for a gentleman to have his but with none of the improvements. Then drawing-room, library, dining-hall, cham- merchants and manufacturers began to bers and kitchen all on one floor and to make use of more convenient machines for dispense entirely with stairs of any kind the hoisting of merchandize, and steam was excepting as a means of getting into the soon introduced as a power. As years cockloft or garret. But in these advanced passed on, and men of genius devised new times our wealthy citizens think nothing of modes of applying the theory, the hotels occupying a suite of elegant and expensive ventured to try the experiment of coaxing apartments in the seventh story of the otherwise unwilling guests into the upper Grand Hotel, and are probably not over-stories. The plan proved a success, and particular whether there are stairs or not in the building, as all they have to do to get to their delightful home in the skies is to walk into a small but handsomely furnished room on the ground floor, wink at the young man who ever sits just inside the door, and away they go up to the clouds like one of the happy fellows we read of in the Arabian Night's Entertainments.

It is not so many years since weary travellers just arrived jaded and dusty from the night train would have well-nigh fainted

now a hotel without a steam elevator is like a gun without a barrel.

Even younger readers can remember the time when such a thing as going up-stairs in a dry-goods store was rare indeed. But now, not only are we invited up-stairs in such palaces as those of A. T. Stewart & Co., and Arnold, Constable & Co., and H. B. Claflin & Co., but we are hurled up through the air, past story after story of their magnificent buildings, and brought into their fourth and fifth floors in a shorter

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time than we should have taken to ascend | easily and speedily accessible than those one flight of stairs in the olden time. who now pay high rents for second-story Even the down town office-renters have accommodations in second-class houses in snuffed the advantages of the elevating sys- Nassau and Wall streets and Broadway tem from afar. Space is valuable about to say nothing of the advantage of the fireWall street and in Broadway up to Liberty proof structure. street. It is pretty difficult to find a plot of ground as large as 100x50 feet. And yet the Equitable Life Insurance Company has not only found a plot of ground at the corner of Čedar street and Broadway, of dimensions about 100x150 feet, but has built a fire-proof house on it, the domes of which pierce the sky and the upper portion of which is filled with offices for lawyers and architects, and men of all vocations.

These people have made a new application of the aspiring tendency of the times, and the thing has already proved a success. A hundred offices, in a completely fireproof building, made of nothing but iron and stone, is rather a nice piece of property to hold, without saying more. Add to this the most central location for lawyers, brokers, bankers, insurance companies, and managers of estates, and your property is greatly enhanced in value. This is what the Equitable has. But they have not been satisfied with this. They have heated all the offices with steam, ventilated them after the most scientific modern system, finished them in handsome style, arranged them in suites applicable to all branches of business, and put into the building, not one, but two steam elevators, both of which will be constantly running during the business hours of the day. These elevators are of the most improved and perfect description ever made in this country, and move not only with absolute safety but with great rapidity; so that a person having business with a lawyer on the fifth floor will reach his counsel's office sooner and with less exertion than in ascending stairs to the second floor.

The effect of this bold_but brilliant move has already been felt. Leading law firms, capitalists and managers of estates have taken offices on the fifth and sixth floors of the building, and others are after the rooms. The officers of the company now regret that the building was not made twelve instead of seven stories high.

It is hard to realize- but on the 1st of May next this building will be filled with a swarm of lawyers and others six layers deep, and the upper ones will be more

If you call on a lawyer- instead (as now) of throwing away time, rupturing blood vessels, and losing your wind by clambering up dark staircases -you walk directly from the street into one of the handsome vertical steam cars (which will always be in readiness, one ascending while the other descends), and, taking a seat on the comfortably-cushioned seats, will be almost instantaneously lifted to the sixth floor, where, apart from the world, and undisturbed by the noises of the street, you can consult your advisers in seclusion and repose.

Who will not revel in such a luxury as this? The tendency of this movement will be to collect a great number of the legal profession together in this spacious building, and we doubt not a nucleus will thus be formed for a general settlement of lawyers in that neighborhood.

Now is the opportunity for some enterprising New Englander to buy a lot twenty by fifty and put up a building on it as high as Trinity Church steeple, with a line of steam elevators running every five minutes. Thirty floors, with two rooms on each floor, will be about the available office room of the structure; and the proprietor might rent out the roof either for an astronomical observatory, a shot tower, or a light house, as best accorded with his fancy.

One single manufacturer of steam elevators has erected over one thousand of them. They are now being introduced in almost every branch of business. People are forgetting the old prejudices against the upper stories of the house, and the time is not distant when the question will be "how high up can you let me an office ?" instead of how low down?"

Anything in this crowded, badly-cleaned city, to get Heaven's pure air and to escape the noxious smell of the street. Anything for quiet and repose. Anything for ventilation and light. And the business man will add anything to get more desirable accommodation at the heart of the city, where its financial arteries meet.

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No. 1352.-April 30, 1870.

CONTENTS.

1. THE DANISH NATIONAL CHARACTER,

2. THE SPOTTED DOG. By Anthony Trollope. Part I. St. Pauls,

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Temple Bar,

259

272

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258 HYMN ON THE TRANSFIGURATION,
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Macmillan's Magazine, .
Spectator,.

SHORT ARTICLES.

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The publishers are in want of Nos. 1179 and 1180 (dated respectively Jan. 5th and Jan. 12th, 1867) of THE LIVING AGE. To subscribers, or others, who will do us the favor to send us either or both of those numbers, we will return an equivalent, either in our publications or in cash, until our wants are supplied.

PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY

LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON.

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FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually for warded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year, nor where we have to pay commission for forwarding the money.

Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars.

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Any Volume Bound, 3 dollars; Unbound, 2 dollars. The sets, or volumes, will be sent at the expense of the publishers.

PREMIUMS FOR CLUBS.

For 5 new subscribers ($40.), a sixth copy; or a set of HORNE'S INTRODUCTION TO the Bible, unabridged, in 4 large volumes, cloth, price $10; or any 5 of the back volumes of the LIVING AGE, in numbers, price $10.

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