become useful to man, and of its beauty no English nobleman need be ashamed. Land and lake have come to the kind-hearted Lincolnshire farmer as the reward of honest labour, and he will perhaps found a family whose influence shall be greater than that of his one-time landlords, the Winns or the Lacys of the old country.

"You will find Chicago a pandemonium of wickedness," said a provincial gentleman to me, when I mentioned my intention of going Westward. Arrived there, the beginning of my experience looked omnious. On the station walls were conspicuous proclamations bidding us beware of "confidence men," on the waters of the adjoining lake a captain was flying the Fenian flag, a green emblem of defiance to my Queen and country; I heard stories from friend Brown of processions of citizens being attacked by the "Ribband Lodge" of the West, the cruel Klu-Klux clan, and murder done; of swarms of disbanded Southern soldiers hanging about the city, always ready for lawless deeds.

But the strongest powers are ranged on the side of order and peace. Each good citizen is for the sake of his own interests "a law unto himself," and the lawless ones are sometimes visited with terrible retribution. Sunday Schools and Churches scattered amongst the mansions of Wabash and Michigan avenues, and standing within the purlieu of humbler dwellings, attest the fact that Yanks, Scotch, and English have not left their religion behind them. Here in the metropolis of the West, and in hundreds of farm-houses, which nestle amid the broad corn-lands of Illinois and Iowa, we shall find the earnest faith of New England homes, the Ha Bible of Scotland, and the evangelical belief of Lutheran lands, by the side of the Catholic régime of priest and confession.

I will liken Chicago with its mingled lot of peace and strife, rest and unrest, its gloom of savage passions, and smile of glad content, to an Eastern scene, which is brought before us by an English Governor of Ceylon. "The wild and uncivilised trenches closely on the civilised here, for in an Englishman's home, near Kandy, a leopard from the forest above came down nightly, to drink at the fountain in the parterre." So in Chicago-and here too the scene is changing fast; the garden of civilised life is yearly adding to itself parterres of flowers, of purer enterprise and softer graces: the waters of its fountains grow brighter with each philanthropic and earnest Christian help; the visits of the lawless leopards of a fading régime grow less frequent, and perchance some of them will in these purer haunts, be brought even to change their spots of dishonour for those of honour.

It is worth going a long way to see the corn-lands of Illinois, and its sister prairie States. Take all the wheat fields of Sutherland and Cambridge, of York and the Lothians, of Inverness and the Lincoln levels, and the sight will be as a tiny photograph, by the side of the great Illinois painting. Farming is a more simple operation than in Europe. There is no rotation of crops in the West. The soil is virgin. It will yield its increase for a quarter of a century without tilling. An unlearned man may farm. Plough and cast in seed when neighbors do; reap when harvest is ripe. So it comes to pass that emigrant farmers soon become men of substance, and their children-educated in the free schools, and trained in the fear of God-grow up to form the strength and glory of Western America.

Midway between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi is Springfield-the Springfield of honoured LINCOLN. Many a stranger and many a patriot will stay to visit the grave of the martyred President.

Over the Mississippi, on the soil of Missouri, stands the queen city of St. Louis. Years ago it was the "Ultima Thule" of the explorer's desire. While Daniel Boone was a pioneer in Kentucky, and Audubon was searching the woods of Virginia, the region beyond the Mississippi was a veritable "no man's land," Here sprung up a city, and into it, as to a cave of Adullam, flocked the discontented, the unsettled, the lawless ones of the South and West. Now it is outstripped by Chicago, and is pressed hard in the race by its rival, young Omaha of Nebraska. Speaking of the marvellous progress of Western cities, a New York banker told me that the best banking-account they had, was from Omaha. Three young men, brothers,

had gone from Ohio, to the small settlement at Council Bluffs, and now their transactions are of such magnitude, and their wealth is so great that they have sometimes a deposit of 600,000 dollars in the bank.

Un

Just above St. Louis the rivers Missouri and Mississippi unite, the dark floods of the former bringing sand and mud into the clearer waters of the main-stream. fortunately for the St. Louis population, their supplies of drinking-water are drawn from a muddy Missouri, instead of from a clear Lake Michigan. A terrible leveller visits the city now and again, when cholera stalks through hundreds of homes, laying low its victims. There was in St. Louis a population burning with zeal for the Southern slavery cause, but now, ministers preach to the negroes, where a few short years ago, such an act would have imperilled their lives.

I would fain have journeyed further toward the setting sun, for

A true, devoted pilgrim is not weary,

To measure kingdoms with his feeble steps.

I would have visited Minnesota-"L'Etoile du Nord," as its enterprising settlers call it the most beautiful

Water State of the Union-where hamlets and schools are fast filling up a region of meres and cascades, but time would not permit. Westward Ho! was not more the watch-cry of Drake and Raleigh than it is of the whole American people of to-day. In a corridor of the National Capitol is painted a fresco, and there within the narrow limits of a picture, you find the embodiment, the concentration of this trait of American character. "Westward the course of empire takes its sway," is the motto, and this is the scene, -An Emigrant-train is crossing the Rocky Mountains: there are the cattle driven before the wagons; the pioneers of the band, felling trees ahead of the train; the Indian guide is pointing to the smoke of some prairie-camps below; every detail is complete, drawn as it were from the life, the women poorly and roughly clad, the sick sister pale as death, the rough men, the ardent, ragged boys. Love blossoms in the desert, for a stalwart youth is helping a young woman by hand up the rocks, and over all, on the highest crag, the captain has planted the United States flag. By the side is written,

The spirit grows with its allotted spaces,
The mind is narrowed in a narrow sphere.

No pent up Utica contents our powers,
But the whole boundless Continent is ours.

These vast regions seem to invite the poor of every land. It is not profanity to say that the free empire of the West appeals to all who seek for home and freedom, in a material sense bidding every one who thirsts for the waters of liberty and competence to come and receive freely. We are told that we are yet to see another development of Anglo-Saxon beauty-a race flourishing amid the Caucasian mountains of the West. I once met in Paris a lady from the Old World Caucasus, and remember well her great personal beauty, and her fine

intellectual powers, but these and the like are to be outdone by a new Circassian race, dwelling in American Montana.

We can conceive for America a future, the magnitude of which, the mind cannot grasp or comprehend. We know no human power that can stay the wave of AngloSaxon empire. The Red Man was unable to work out a destiny for the great Continent through which he roamed, the ruins in Arizona and Nevada show that another race has gone down in the attempt, like the Aztecs of Mexico. The Spaniard thought that Providence intended the New World as a dowry for his ancient kingdom of Leon and Castile.* It is well for the human race that Northern America has never been subject to Spain, as Mexico, Peru, and South America once were; as Cuba is to-day. To the Anglo-Saxon has come the call to "go in and possess the land." How thankful we ought to be that these fair domains of virgin land have not been given to Mahomedan or Hindoo! The land is glowing with a people, who with all their faults are the children of freedom; a people who hold in their hearts a knowledge, an understanding and a love, weak and imperfect though it be, of that higher law of holiness and peace, which shall some day cover the earth as the waters cover the sea." For good and not for evil, the tide of people rolls to the Western Continent, and on that Continent still westward, and the empires of earth are as powerless to alter its times and seasons, as was King Canute to hurl back the raging sea.

*The ashes of the Discoverer of America (enclosed in an urn of silver) repose in the Cathedral Church of Havana. Along with the royal arms of Spain, Columbus had certain insignia of golden islands, anchors, and azure billows on his quarterings. At Seville there is a monument to him, with the inscription,

A Castilla y a Leon,

Nuovo mundo dió Colon."