"The population of the British possessions in America, in 1842, amounted in round numbers to one million and a half.

"The annual growth of the population of the United States, with which their wealth and territory keep pace, exceeds at present 700,000 souls, so that every two years' increase is about equal to the number of all the present inhabitants of British America. The mere contemplation of these figures would seem to me enough to convince a reasonable man, that Canada must owe her security from external aggression, not to local armaments and provincial demonstrations, but to the resources of the whole British empire. A surplus revenue at home, or the remission of taxes which press heavily on industry and commerce, and economy in administering our colonial affairs in times of peace, are the true means of fortifying the Canadian frontier."—pp. 115-123.

To the above may be added the remarks of Mr. Lyell on the capabilities of the province of Nova Scotia; a region hitherto chiefly known to Englishmen as the land of Blue Noses, now made universally familiar to us through the quaint and pithy aphorisms of Mr. Samuel Slick, of Slickville. It will be seen that Mr. Lyell has formed a high estimate of the importance of this colony :

“In spite of the large extent of barren and siliceous soil in the south, and, what is a more serious evil, those seven or eight months of frost and snow which crowd the labours of the agriculturist into so brief a season, the resources of this province are extremely great. They have magnificent harbours and fine navigable estuaries, large areas of the richest soil gained from the sea, vast supplies of coal and gypsum, and abundance of timber.

"Not a few of the most intelligent and thriving inhabitants are descended from loyalists, who fled from the United States at the time of the declaration of independence. The picture they drew of the stationary condition, want of cleanly habits, and ignorance of some of the Highland settlers, in parts of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, was discouraging, and often so highly coloured as to be very amusing. They were described to me as cropping the newly-cleared ground year after year without manuring it, till the dung of their horses and cattle accumulated round their doors, and became, even to them, an intolerable nuisance. They accordingly pulled down their log-cabins and removed them to a distance, till several of their more knowing neigh

bours offered to cart away the dung for a small remuneration. After a time, when the Highlanders perceived the use to which the manure was put, they required those who removed it to execute the task gratuitously; and my informants thought that the idea might possibly occur to some of the next generation of applying the material to their own fields.

"I heard frequent discussions on the present state of the timber duties both here and in Canada, and great was my surprise to find the majority of the small proprietors, or that class in whose prosperity and success the strength of a new colony consists, regretting that the mother country had legislated so much in their favour. They said that a few large capitalists and shipowners amassed considerable fortunes (some of them, however, losing them again by over-speculation), and that the political influence of a few such merchants was naturally greater than that of a host of small farmers, who could never so effectively plead their cause to the Government. But, on the other hand, the labourers engaged during the severe winter, at high pay, to fell and transport the timber to the coast, became invariably a drunken and improvident set. Another serious mischief accrued to the colony from this traffic: as often as the new settlers reached the tracts from which the wood had been removed, they found, instead of a cleared region ready for cultivation, a dense copsewood or vigorous undergrowth of young trees, far more expensive to deal with than the original forest, and, what was worse, all the best kinds of timber, fit for farm buildings and other uses, had been taken away, having been carefully selected for exportation to Great Britain. So that, while the English are submitting to pay an enhanced price for timber inferior in quality to that of Norway, the majority of the colonists, for whom the sacrifices are made, feel no gratitude for the boon. On the contrary, they complain of a monopoly that enriches a few timber merchants, at the expense of the more regular and steady progress of agriculture."-pp. 223-226.

It would appear from Mr. Lyell's account, that in one respect the Blue Noses have been most correctly represented by Mr. Samuel Slick; they are by no means in the habit of setting a very high value on their own time; and, like other loiterers, are not particularly regardful either of the time or the convenience of other people. This observation was exemplified, laughably enough, by the driver of the stage-coach from Picton to Truro. Drawing up the reins of his four horses, the artist very coolly informed his passengers that there was, by the road-side, good store of wild raspberries, quite ripe; and that he, for his part, intended to quit his seat and regale himself with the same. There was nothing to be done but to follow his example; to leave the hot coach, and to pick the refreshing fruit in the shade. This droll incident draws forth the following very sensible remarks from our traveller :

VOL. IV. NO. VII.-OCT. 1845.

H

"Had the same adventure happened to a traveller in the United States, it might have furnished a good text to one inclined to descant on the inconvenient independence of manners which democratic institutions have a tendency to create. Doubtless, the political and social circumstances of all new colonies promote a degree of equality which influences the manners of the people. There is here no hereditary aristocracy-no proprietors who can let their lands to tenants-no dominant sect, with the privileges enjoyed by a church establishment. The sects are too numerous, and too fairly balanced, to admit of the possibility of such a policy; and the Baptists, who predominate greatly in number and position in society, are opposed on principle to all ecclesiastical endowments by the state. The influence of birth and family is scarcely felt, and the resemblance of the political and social state of things to that in the United States is striking.

The longer, indeed, that I remained here, the larger were the deductions I found it necessary to make from those peculiarities that I had imagined, during my sojourn in the United States, to be the genuine fruits of a republican as contrasted with a monarchical constitution,-of an American as distinguished from a British supremacy. They who lament the increased power recently acquired by the democracy in the United States ascribe to it, and I believe not without reason, the frequent neglect of men of the greatest talent and moral worth, and the power which it gives to envy, concealing itself under the cloak of a love of equality, to exclude such citizens from the most important places of trust and honour. In our American colonies, on the other hand, we hear complaints that very similar effects result from the habitual disregard of the claims of native merit, all posts of high rank and profit being awarded to foreigners, who have not their hearts in a country where they are but temporary sojourners. The late revolution in our colonial system, obliging the responsible executive to command a majority in the colonial parliaments, must, it is to be hoped, remove this cause of dissatisfaction.

6

"It is no small object of ambition for a Nova Scotian to 'go home,' which means to 'leave home, and see England.' However much his curiosity may be gratified by the tour, his vanity, as I learn from several confessions made to me, is often put to a severe trial. It is mortifying to be asked in what part of the world Nova Scotia is situated-to be complimented on speaking good English, although an American'— to be asked what excuse can possibly be made for repudiation '—to be forced to explain to one fellow countryman after another 'that Nova Scotia is not one of the United States, but a British province.' All this, too, after having prayed loyally every Sunday for Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales-after having been so ready to go to war about the Canadian borderers, the New York sympathisers, the detention of Macleod, and any other feud!

"Nations know nothing of one another-most true-but unfortunately in this particular case the ignorance is all on one side, for almost every native of Nova Scotia knows and thinks a great deal about

England. It may, however, console the Nova Scotian to reflect, that there are districts in the British isles, far more populous than all his native peninsula, which the majority of the English people have never heard of, and respecting which, if they were named, few could say whether they spoke Gaelic, Welsh, or Irish, or what form of religion the greater part of them professed."—pp. 231–233.

We conclude our notice of this publication with the reflections of the writer on returning to his native land :

"We left Halifax in the steam-ship Columbia, and in nine days and sixteen hours were at the pier at Liverpool. This was the ninetieth voyage of these Halifax steamers across the Atlantic, without any loss, and only one case of detention by putting back for repairs. As we flew along in the railway carriage between Liverpool and London, my eye, so long accustomed to the American landscape, was struck with the dressy and garden-like appearance of all the fields, the absence of weeds, and the neatness of the trim hedgerows. We passed only one unoccupied piece of ground, and it was covered with heath, then in full blossom, a plant which we had not seen from the time we crossed the Atlantic. Eight hours conveyed us from sea to sea, from the estuary of the Mersey to that stream which Pope has styled "The Father of the British Floods.' Whatever new standard for measuring the comparative size of rivers I had acquired in my late wanderings, I certainly never beheld the swelling waters and alternate tides' of Father Thames with greater admiration than after this long absence, or was ever more delighted to find myself once more in the midst of the flourishing settlement which has grown up upon his banks."-pp. 233

-234.

ART. IV. Christophe Sauval, ou la Société en France sous la Restauration, par EMILE DE BONNECHOSE. Paris. Comptoir des Imprimeurs Unis. 1845.

THERE is a common saying, that "when things are at the worst, they often mend." We hope that saying may prove true in reference to the lighter literature of France; and we think there is some reason for this hope. For a long time past the Kocks, the Sands, the Sues, the Souliés, the Sandeaus, the Balzacs, et hoc genus omne, with the "roi du genre," as a French reviewer calls him, M. Alexandre Dumas, the man who writes his thirty or forty volumes of novels per annum, at their head, have inundated the reading public of France with their pointless, insipid, and often coarse and immoral trash, written as it would seem for the express purpose of depraving the taste and corrupting the morals of the rising generation. The evil has at last attained to such a height, by means chiefly of the "roman feuilleton,” the novel-scrap, attached to the daily papers, that it promises to cure itself. By a treaty which has recently been concluded between some of the leading journals of the capital, and some of the principal manufacturers of this kind of literature, the nuisance is, not indeed to be discontinued, but to be reduced to certain limits which, so it is "in the bond," are not on any account to be exceeded by any of the high contracting parties. While on the one hand a check is thus put upon the productiveness of these plantations of artificial weeds, by the very planters and merchants themselves who make their profit by them, it is attempted on the other hand to turn the lighter literature, upon which the reading public is now, not in France only, but we fear every where else, so intent, into a vehicle of moral instruction; to combat erroneous, and to inculcate right principles under the more winning disguise of works of fiction. In the ranks of those who thus endeavour to turn the tide of the public taste and morals, the author of Christophe Sauval occupies a distinguished position. M. EMILE DE BONNECHOSE is already favourably known by a short history of France, a prize poem entitled, La Mort de Bailly, but more especially by his lately published historical work entitled, Les réformateurs avant la réforme. In the volume before us he descends a few steps from the dignity of the historian, to the