sed to those who can examine them with their own eyes, and should they be induced to invest their funds, their speculations will be within the reach of a personal superintendence. Of this frequent and increased communication, there seems to be little doubt that New York must become the emporium. Ports farther to the east may indeed be more readily reached, at most seasons of the year, but they are far less accessible in winter, while they are also more distant from the points to which foreign business and curiosity will naturally direct itself. The ports more to the south are out of the question, as rivals to New York. The time indeed has been, when a liberal and enlightened policy in respect to internal improvements, might have given to the State of Virginia a superiority even over New York, and placed the commercial metropolis of the United States at the mouth of the Chesapeake. But the narrow and short-sighted views of her school of politicians, while they have retarded the progress of other parts of the Union, have operated as a complete blight to her own prospects. The error of the theory is not yet admitted in terms, but in practice a wide deviation has been tolerated from its strict construction. Virginia has at last undertaken, and is fostering with all her energies, magnificent works of internal improvement, which will do much to retard her further decline from the pre-eminent rank in wealth and population which she once held; but the supremacy of New York in foreign commerce, is established on too sure a ground to be shaken at this late period. Our State, indeed, has not escaped from being affected by the cold and blind policy of the Virginia school; but the doctrines and principles of Hamilton, if not always victorious in her councils, have had a silent effect, while the bold and magnanimous manner in which Clinton emancipated himself, and for a time his native state, from the trammels of the political school in which he was bred, has fixed the prosperity of New York upon a sure basis. We may, indeed, regret that the career of internal improvement has been checked, and that our Legislature has, of late years, been more apt to count the immediate cost of new public works, than to estimate their future value; and thus, the Erie Railroad, second only in importance to the Western Canal, is yet involved in uncertainty. Still, much has been recently done, and the design of rendering the canal navigable for vessels which may safely frequent the great lakes, is a step towards fixing the rank which our State holds in the Union, not less important, although far less bold, than that by which the canal was first decreed to be constructed at the cost of the people of New York.

The calamities which have affected our commercial men, however great and positive, have produced no change in the relative standing of New York. We have suffered with, and in consequence of, the misfortunes of our customers. Vast, solid, and available wealth still remains; and even should, which may God avert, the storm of ruin sweep off the merchants who have so nobly sustained themselves hitherto, our excellent harbor, our convenient piers and slips, our extensive warehouses, remain to be used by the foreign capital which the advantages of our position will call to be here employed.

The introduction of steam in the navigation of the Hudson, gave an impulse to the prosperity of New York, which was retarded by the war with Great Britain, and stopped by the calamities of the year 1818. A new impulse was the consequence of the completion of the Western Canal, and this did not cease to be felt until 1837. During the last interval, New York outstripped her former rival in population, and engrossed half the foreign trade of the Union. The opening of a navigation by steam to Europe will act to awaken the now dormant energies of our people, and to give them even a greater proportion of the trade with foreign ports; or, should the severity of the blow have deprived them of all elasticity, will bring foreign traders to supply the place of our native merchants.

We are willing to hope for the best, and to anticipate from the successful voyage of the Great Western, not merely a relief to the landholder, and the day laborer, but a revival in the prosperity of those merchants, who have been first to place their talent, industry, skill, and mercantile honor, on the high stand, which force of capital and the advantages of birth and connection can alone reach in older communities.

In the worst possible point of view, our laboring population may anticipate the return of employment, even if it should be little better remunerated than that of the working classes of Europe; and our landholders, the rise of rents, and in the value of property capable of being leased. The general prosperity will be promoted, however that of particular individuals or classes may suffer.

We would not, by such predictions, seek to revive the dormant spirit of speculation, which has been so recently and so severely checked. The experience of all countries proves, and our own city furnishes a most marked illustration, that commercial business, as it enlarges its sphere and extends its action, seeks to concentrate its actual performance within narrower limits.

The heads of prosperous mercantile houses may seek residences consistent with their wealth, in the distant quarters of our city, but they will pile their counting-houses and shops, story over story, in the burnt district. That part of our population which rises daily without knowing how it is to be employed, and that which performs the manual labor of our commerce, whether at the desk, or in the open air, must dwell in the vicinity of the place in which business is concentrated. Hence, means will be sought and discovered, to accommodate this class with dwellings, in spaces even less than it now occupies, and more close to the place where its labor is to be employed. So, as respects the shipping employed in foreign trade, it will be anchored in tiers in the East River, or line the wharves of Brooklyn, before it will seek its place, for receiving and discharging cargoes, at a distance from the present centre of trade.

The advantages which New York will derive from a steam communication with Europe, will not be purchased at the cost of the other cities of the Union. Many of these have ceased to be the marts of foreign trade, simply because they could more profitably obtain exotic products by New York than by direct importation; so far from having suffered, therefore, they have in fact been benefitted by the prosperity of our city. That attempt which is now making to re-establish a direct foreign trade in some of them, is just as unwise as that policy which has led the interest concerned in property in the upper wards of New York, to endeavor to scatter the resorts of public business over the whole city. New York is, in fact, the heart of the commercial body of the United States; and every throb which it undergoes, vibrates in the pulse of the most distant quarters of the Union. While it is in an active and healthy state, vigor of action extends throughout all the veins and arteries of trade; when it faints and languishes, the extremities become torpid and lifeless.

ART. VI.-Retrospect of Western Travel. By HARRIET MABTINEAU, author of "Society in America," "Illustrations of Political Economy," &c. Two Volumes. London: Saunders and Otley. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1838.

Ir is, perhaps, a humiliating confession to make, but it is nevertheless a fact, that we have never read a line of Miss Martineau's "Illustrations of Political Economy." We have not even so much knowledge of them as might be derived from the perusal of a review in the London Quarterly if they have ever been honored by the notice of that urbane and impartial dispenser of criticism—or in any other periodical. The extent of our information touching their character is, that they constitute a series of short tales, each developing, or intending to develop, some great principle of social existence-as she understands it. Of course it is not for us to say how thick a cloud of darkness rests upon our understanding, that might be dispelled by the diligent study of the philosophical lady's disquisitions; but we have thought it right to make in limine the acknowledgment that we have not studied them, as due to the reader of the succeeding pages, who may, or may not, find in it grounds for qualifying his faith in the judgment which-having due respect for her sex-we venture to pronounce upon her later productions.

Before we proceed to do this, however, we feel tempted to notice the singular ill-fortune that has attended Miss Martineau, as a traveller in America; or perhaps we should rather say, as an interpreter of American democracy to the aristocracy of England. Opposed as these principles are, even to the very extreme of opposition, it might be imagined that Miss Martineau, coming among us, as she did, and writing of us, avowedly not so much to describe things, as to draw conclusions and expound causes-it might be imagined, we say, that the result of her labors must of necessity be displeasing to one or the other of the parties; either to the democracy on which she undertook to give judgment, or to the aristocracy for whose enlightenment the judgment was pronounced. This alternative has befallen all her predecessors in the modest work of describing and charac

terizing the thirteen millions of America, with all their infinite varieties of character, habits, and local institutions; although it must be confessed that there has been, so far as English travellers are concerned, a remarkable uniformity in the result; but Miss Martineau has contrived to evade the alternative, by seriously displeasing both. The London Quarterly, which we take to be the acknowledged representative and organ of antiAmericanism in England, can afford her no more gracious epithets than "wandering intellect" and "purblind theorist," since her return from this country; what progress she has made in the favor of our own sensitive countrymen, has been long since made known throughout the land, from the housetops of the thousand and one newspapers to which she has so courteously awarded the pre-eminence in "rancor, falsehood, and folly," over those of all the world beside-greatly to the injustice, we think, of the daily press in her own country.

An inquiry into the causes of this peculiarity in Miss Martineau's literary destiny, may not be out of place in a disquisition on the nature of her writings. We take it to be the result, then, principally, if not wholly, of an existing anomaly in herself. She is a democrat to the very extreme of ultraism, in theory and intention; yet possesses all the monarchical and aristocratic feeling which seems to be the inevitable consequence of birth, education, and long residence in England. By inheritance she loves her own country and its institutions-nay, the very abuses of those institutions with the deep-rooted affection of a true-born Briton ; and with this affection she cherishes, perhaps unconsciously and in spite of herself, the arrogant feeling of superiority to all other nations, and particularly to this, the disposition to criticise and censure, and the lordly delight of looking down, which seem to be part and parcel of almost every British constitution. Add to this, that her judgment is weak and her imagination lively, and it is not difficult to understand the process by which she has contrived to offend both toryism and republicanism; theorizing, with conceit of her own opinions, against the one, and in the same breath disparaging, through national conceit, the practical manifesta tions of the other.

It might be supposed, however, considering her alacrity in spying out, and her zeal in exposing the weak points of "Society in America," that her "purblind" theorizing upon the glories of democracy might be forgiven by the anti-democratic mind of her own country- that a sufficient depreciation of the American people might be accepted as a burnt-offering of atone