great abundance; iron and the various metals are already worked; the hills abound in every kind of limestone, up to the purest marble. The climate is singularly healthy. The higher latitude repels ali the summer epidemics that ravage the United States. Even in the severity of its winter, all that is injurious will yield to the thinning of the forests, the drainage of the swamps, and the other labours of the accumulating population. The temperature of the European climates has gradually given way to the same means. The north of France, at the time of the Roman conquest, was incapable of rearing the vine. The north of Germany was the habitual seat of winter. Its frosts and damps, more than the sword of Arminius, repelled the Roman soldier, seasoned as he was, beyond all other men, to all vicissitudes of climate.

But whatever may be the dreams of England's supremacy in this quarter of the globe, in one thing she cannot be a dreamer,-in the lofty and cheering consciousness that she has laid the foundation of a great society, where all before was a wilderness. Whether the Canadas shall retain their allegiance, or shake it off, there will, at least, be human beings where once was solitude; law, where once was the license of savage life; religion, where the Indian once worshipped in brutish ignorance; and England's will be the wand that struck the waters from the rock, and filled the desert with fertility and rejoicing.

It becomes an interesting question, whether this singular prosperity does not contain within itself the seeds of decline? But we have a right to distrust those prophets of evil who exert their sagacity only in seeing the seeds of ruin in the most palmy state of national fortune. If all the leading commercial powers have fallen, England has been placed in a condition distinct from them all. All those states were exclusively commercial: they had no foundation in the land. Tyre, Carthage, Venice, Genoa, Hol

land, had no territory extensive enough to give them a national existence independently of the sea: they were strips of territory, inhabited by men whose natural dwelling was on shipboard; they had no population that could meet the attack of the military powers that pressed on them by land; their whole armour was in front, their backs were naked. All the maritime states were thus compelled to the perilous expedient of employing foreign mercenaries. The mercantile jealousy that uniformly refused the rights of citizenship to the neighbouring states, left the merchant helpless in his day of danger. The French cavalry insulted the gates of Amsterdam at pleasure; the Austrians seized Genoa, and besieged Venice, when an Austrian cockboat dared not appear on the Adriatic. In older times, the mountaineers of Macedon tore down the battlements of the Phoenician cities, when their ships were masters of all from Syria to the Pillars of Hercules. Scipio found but a solitary force of mercenaries between the shore and the walls of Carthage.

From the catastrophe of those small, jealous, and tyrannical states, what argument can be drawn to the fate of the extensive, the generous, the enlightened, and, above all, the free!

The population of the British Isles is worthy of a great dominion. It probably amounts to twenty millions; and that immense number placed under such fortunate circumstances of rapid communication and easy concentration, as to be equal to twice the amount in any other kingdom. Facility of intercourse is one of the first principles of civilized strength. The rapid returns of merchandise are not more indicative of prosperous commerce, than the rapid intercourse of human kind is essential to national civilization and safety. In England, for whatever purpose united strength can be demanded, it is forwarded to the spot at once. It makes the whole land a fortress. If England were threatened with invasion,

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a hundred thousand men could be conveyed to the defence of any point of her coasts within four-andtwenty hours!

Some common yet striking calculations evince the singular facility and frequency of this intercourse. The mail-coaches of England run over twelve thousand miles in a single night-half the circumference of the globe! A newspaper published in the morning in London, is, on the same day, read a hundred and twenty miles off! The traveller, going at night from London, sleeps, on the third night, at a distance of more than four hundred miles. The length of canal navigation in the vicinage of London is computed as equal to the whole canal navigation of France!

The late combination of the railroad and steamengine systems, and the almost miraculous rapidity of passage thus attained, will increase this intercourse in an incalculable degree. Ten years more of peace may cover England with railroads; relieving the country of the expenses of canals, highways, and all the present ponderous and wasteful modes of conveyance; bringing the extremities of the land together, by shortening the time of the journey from days to hours; and by the nature of the system, which offers the most powerful stimulant to the native ingenuity of the English mind, and summons the artificer from the rude construction of the boat and the wagon, to the finest science of mechanism; providing, in all probability, for a succession of inventions, to which even the steam-engine may be but a toy. The secret of directing the balloon will yet be discovered: and England, adding to her dominion of the land and the sea the mightier mastery of the air, will despise the barriers of mountain, desert, and ocean.

But the most important distinction between the material of British strength and that of the old com'mercial republics, is in the diversity of the popula

tion. The land is not all a dock-yard, nor a manufactory, nor a barrack, nor a ploughed field; the national ship has a sail for every breeze. With a manufacturing population of three millions, we have a professional population, a naval population, and a most powerful, healthy, and superabundant agricultural population, which supplies the drain of them all. Of this last and most indispensable class, the famous commercial republics were wholly destitute, and they therefore fell;-while England has been an independent and ruling kingdom since 1066, a period already longer than the duration of the Roman empire from Cæsar, and equal to its whole duration from the consulate.

But if the population of our settlements be taken into account, the king of England, at this hour, commands a more numerous people than that of any other sceptre on the globe; excepting the probably exaggerated, and the certainly ineffective, multitudes of China. He is monarch over one hundred millions of men! With him the old Spanish boast is true: "On his dominions the sun never sets." But the most illustrious attribute of this unexampled empire is, that its principle is benevolence! that knowledge goes forth with it, that tyranny sinks before it, that in its magnificent progress it abates the calamities of nature, that it plants the desert, that it civilizes the savage, that it strikes off the fetters of the slave, that its spirit is at once glory to God, and good will to man. 99

CHAPTER XVII.

Queen Caroline.

No rank can expect to be free from the common visitations of life; and George the Fourth, always much attached to his relatives, had suffered, within a few years, the loss of his royal mother;* of his brother, the Duke of Kent, but a week before the death of his father; and of his daughter, the Princess Charlotte;-all regretted by the nation; but the loss of the last creating an unexampled sorrow.

The Princess Charlotte, with a spirit of independence unusual in her rank, making her own choice, and marrying Prince Leopold of Saxe-Cobourg, had increased the popular affection for the heiress of the throne, by the remarkable propriety and domestic nature of her life during the year of her marriage. But her constitution was feeble; and when she was about to become a mother, it seems to have been unable to resist that perilous time. She gave birth to a still-born child, and, in a few hours after, unhappily sank into a state of exhaustion, and died. The nation received the unexpected and painful intelligence as if every family had lost a daughter and an heir. Before the customary orders for mourning and the other marks of public respect could be issued, all England exhibited the deepest signs of spontaneous homage and sorrow. All public places were voluntarily closed; all entertainments laid aside; the churches hung with black by the people, and funeral sermons preached every where at their request: the streets

17th Nov. 1818. † 23d Jan. 1820.

6th Nov. 1817