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mile.

We have been more minute in regard to density of population, and to a more definite idea of the surface, in order to call public attention more directly to the greatest, though silent, revolution of modern ages: to place before the present generation the certain growth of those of coming time. In brief, to shew that more than one hundred and fifty years will he passed away, before any surplus population can very sensibly produce diminution of increase.

In the National Intelligencer, of the 6th instant, we have read Mr. Whitney's memorial, stating a project of a National Road, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, presented Jan. 28th current year, to the House of Representatives, by the Hon. Zadoc Pratt.

In 1781, we were removed by our parents to Western Pennsylvania, where also removed, and now rest, the mother, sister and brother of Robert Fulton. Well do we remember when "Fulton's Project" was made public-it became every witling's jest! We were sitting in company with Mrs. David Morris, the sister of Robert Fulton, when she received the first book which announced his project; "a project" which has changed the commercial world. The name then so humble, and when pronounced, pronounced in ridicule, is now immortalized.

Time went on, and Fulton went from an ungrateful world. But, before leaving those he so immensely served, he shared with another of those benefactors of his race, "De Witt Clinton," in the scoffs of the vulgar, and the enduring fame of the great Western Canal. In the latter case we were an actor-a very humble one, it is true, but sincere and resolute.

It might seem that we state these facts as a warning; but such is neither our intention nor wish. With feelings we have no language to express, we honor such men; indeed, too much, to say one word to stay them in their course. We have no more of doubt but that Mr. Whitney's project will be realized, than we have that steam is now amongst the great agents of human power, or that Clinton's Canals are now among the great highways of our country.

In fine, we have lived to hear streetcorner wits amusing themselves on the folly of Railroads; but, though we cannot hope to enjoy such a jaunt, many, we make no doubt, are the children now in life, who will pass on Railroads from the tide-margin of the Atlantic, to the

tide-margin of the Pacific. There is a natural disposition in man to regard as impossible, what is beyond his comprehension. On the subjects now before us, very few persons have exercised their reflection in any way, and the projectors have at the outset, the most serious of all the difficulties in the way of success to remove; that is, the obstinate resistance of unreflective prejudice. And who are they who probably will oppose, most pertinaciously, Mr. Whitney's design? Those of the Atlantic border, who, when the work is completed, will most largely share in its fruits. Who will most warmly support the plan? The men of the great heart of the country, who must, in the share of usufruct, be the least benefitted. The people on the Atlantic slope are, in substance, interested to improve the internal means of intercommunication, for the very same reasons on which they are stimulated to foster every facility in their trans-Atlantic connections. The admirable position, on the earth, of the Atlantic slope, we have already pointed out, and may here only add, that unless blind to not only remote consequences, but to immediate and inevitable evils, they will give profound attention to the plans of Mr. Whitney, or to some plan which may put us into speedy connection with the Pacific. The following anticipation of futurity, is too important for either neglect or levity:

"Your memorialist believes that the time is not far distant, when Oregon must become a State of such magnitude and imcommunication shall be employed in preportance as, unless this rapid mode of interserving the Union, to compel the establish- [ ment of a separate government--a separate nation, which will have its cities, ports, and harbors," &c.

Yes, we may add, and all this will be realized in one quarter of a century hence, or by 1870, when as many inhabitants will exist on the central and western regions of our zone as now exist in the entire Union. By wise foresight and true statesmanlike principles of action, trusting less to force than to the steady and inevitable triumphs of Time, the ne plus ultra of our Union may, safely, be the Pacific shore. A narrow policy may fix our western boundary on a far less distant limit. To use to advantage, Anglo-Saxon increasing numbers, demands only the exercise of wisdom and justice; but to stay that increase, is beyond all human power.

CRITICAL NOTICES.

Eothen, or Traces of Travel brought home from the East. New York: Wiley & Putnam. 1845.

In the flood of light publications we are glad to note the occasional appearance of a book, or series of books, promising some estimable benefit to the public. The series now announced by Wiley and Putnam, to consist of reprints and original works with careful editorial revision, of which Eōthen, The Amber Witch, and two or three of Fouqué's exquisite fictions, have already appeared, bids fair, both in the character of the works and the style of execution, to surpass any that have yet been issued. They need not be considered as done with' when their smooth paper covers become crumpled and tarnished; rebound, they will make a fit addition to a library, that is 'expected to be used.'

The marked excellence of Eōthen is, that on old and much trodden ground he contrives to be original. This comes from the author's giving his own impressions, not those of others; what he felt, not what he ought to have felt. Respecting old associations, places of eternal interest,' he is apt to be somewhat heretical. On ancient battle-fields, sites of ruined cities, shores of classic renown, he is sometimes deeply affected, sometimes not-just as his stomach happens to be, or any slight circumstance. He found that fleas in Jerusalem destroyed much of the poetry of that place, to say nothing of the holiness. Thus Eothen is true as regards the individual, whatever it may be in regard to the scenes it wanders through. And such it ought to be. To see the individual, is a chief element of interest in any narrative; and as to scenes described, why read the book except to look at them through the eyes of the traveller? Doubtless this book is light enough. There is rarely any deep strain of thought; nor is the traveller as full, as we would wish him to be, on many localities, which his evident talent and happy style would invest with new interest. But of this he forewarns us. "I have endeavored to discard from it all valuable matter derived from the works of others, and it appears to me that my efforts in this direction have been attended with great success; I believe I ray truly acknowledge, that from all details of geographical discovery, or antiquarian research; from all display of sound learning, and religious knowledge;" from all historical and scientific illustrations, from all useful statistics, from all political disquisitions,

and from all good moral reflections, the volume is thoroughly free."

With all this, however, Eothen, besides being exceedingly vigorous, lively, and brilliant, as readable, in short, as anything we have seen for months, undoubtedly gives us more nearly the impressions which we ourselves would receive from Eastern scenes, on the spot, than we can gather from many more elaborate works. Some extracts, instead of further comment, will give an idea of the grace and rapidity of the author's style, and the elegance of his fancy, dashed, as it is, with a vein of humor.

Entering the Turk's dominions, where the dark fortress of "historic Belgrade" frowns over the Danube, the author gives us at once, having crossed but a single river, a perfect picture from Oriental Life.

"The Pasha received us with the smooth, kind, gentle manner that belongs to wellbred Osmanlees; then he lightly clapped his hands, and instantly the sound filled all the lower end of the room with slaves; a syllable dropped from his lips which bowed all heads, and conjured away the attendants like ghosts (their coming and their going was thus swift and quiet, because their feet were bare, and they passed through no door, but only by the yielding folds of a purder.) Soon the coffee bearers appeared, every man carrying separately his tiny cup in a small metal stand, and presently to each of us there came a pipebearer, who first rested the bowl of the tchibouque at a measured distance on the floor, and then, on this axis, wheeled round the long cherry stick, and gracefully presented it on half-bended knee; already the well-kindled fire was glowing secure in the bowl, and so, when I pressed the amber lip to mine, there was no coyness to conquer; the willing fume came up, and answered my slightest sigh, and followed softly every breath inspired, till it touched me with some faint sense and understanding of Asiatic contentment."

Passing entirely through the wild heart of the Ottoman Empire, he feasts his eyes with the pomp and beauty of Stamboul, the gleaming minarets, the crowded waters, and cemeteries of mourning Cypresses; but a chance glimpse one day of the "Mysia Olympus," shining far off, awaken memories of the 'Land of Ilium.' Nothing, to one who loves everything that relates to Greece and Grecian genius, can be finer than the passage that follows. The author has been wandering through that region made immortal by the story of 'Achilles' wrath.'

"We took to our horses again, and went southward towards the very plain between Troy and the tents of the Greeks, but we rode by a line at some distance from the shore. Whether it was that the lay of the ground hindered my view towards the sea, or that I was all intent upon Ida, or whether my mind was in vacancy, or whether, as is most like, I had strayed from the Dardan plains, all back to gentle England, there is now no knowing, nor caring, but it was-not quite suddenly indeed, but rather as it were, in the swelling and falling of a single wave, that the reality of that very sea-view, which had bounded the sight of the Greeks, now visibly acceded to me, and rolled full in upon my brain. Conceive how deeply that eternal coast-line--that fixed horizon --those island rocks must have graven their images upon the minds of the Grecian warriors by the time that they had reached the ninth year of the siege! conceive the strength, and the fanciful beauty, of the speeches with which a whole army of imagining men must have told their weariness, and how the sauntering chiefs must have whelmed that daily, daily scene with their deep Ionian curses!

"And now it was that my eyes were greeted with a delightful surprise. Whilst we were at Constantinople, Methley and I had pored over the map together; we agreed that whatever may have been the exact site of Troy, the Grecian camp must have been nearly opposite to the space betwixt the islands of Imbros and Tenedos :

Μεσσηγυς Τενέδοιο και Ιμβρου παιπαλόεσσης:

but Methley reminded me of a passage in the Iliad in which Jove is represented as looking at the scene of action before Ilion from above the Island of Samothrace. Now, Samothrace, according to the map, appeared to be not only out of all seeing distance from the Troad, but to be entirely shut out from it by the intervening Imbros, which is a larger island, stretching its length right athwart the line of sight from Samothrace to Troy. Piously allowing that the eagle-eye of Jove might have seen the strife even from his own Olympus, I still felt that if a station were to be chosen from which to see the fight, old Homer, so material in his ways of thought, so averse from all haziness and over-reaching, would have meant to give the Thunderer a station within the reach of men's eyes from the plains of Troy. I think that this testing of the poet's words by map and compass, may have shaken a little of my faith in the completeness of his knowledge. Well, now I had come; there to the south was Tenedos, and here at my side was Imbros, all right, and according to the map, but aloft over Imbros---aloft in a far-away Heaven was Samothrace, the watch-tower of Jove!

"So Homer had appointed it, and so it was; the map was correct enough, but could not, like Homer, convey the whole truth. Thus vain and false are the mere human surmises and doubts which clash with Homeric writ!

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Nobody, whose mind had not been reduced to the most deplorably logical condition, could look upon this beautiful congruity betwixt the Iliad and the material world, and yet bear to suppose that the poet may have learned the features of the coast from mere hearsay; now then, I believed-now I knew that Homer had passed along here-that this vision of Samothrace over-towering the nearer island was common to him and to me."

Sailing from Smyrna with a pause at Beautiful Cyprus, the flower-crowned, the beloved of Aphrodētie, the author enters the sacred land of Palestine,---which, after

all, is covered and filled with a more touching and thrilling interest than belongs to any other country in the world.

Here, by good rights, he should have been wrapped up in profound historic associations. A passage or two show the peculiar contrarieties of his feelings.

"The course of the Jordan is from the north to the south, and in that direction, with very little of devious winding, it carries the shining waters of Galilee straight down into the solitudes of the Dead Sea. Speaking roughly, the river in that meridian is a boundary between the people liv ing under roofs, and the tented tribes that wander on the farther side. And so, as I went down in my way from Tiberias towards Jerusalem, along the western bank of the stream, my thinking all propended to the ancient world of herdsmen, and warriors, that lay so close over my bridle

arm.

If a man, and an Englishman, be not born of his mother with a natural Chiffneybit in his mouth, there comes to him a time for loathing the wearisome ways of society; a time for not liking tamed people; a time for not dancing quadrilles; not sitting in pews; a time for pretending that Milton, and Shelley, and all sorts of mere dead people, were greater in death than the first living Lord of the Treasury; a time in short for scoffing and railing; for speaking lightly of the very opera, and all our most cherished institutions. It is from nineteen, to two or three and twenty perhaps, that this war of the man against men is like to be waged most sullenly. You are yet in this smiling England, but you find yourself wending away to the dark sides of her mountains; climbing the dizzy crags; exulting in the fellowship of mists and clouds, and watching the storms how they gather, or proving the mettle of your mare upon the broad and dreary downs,

because that you feel so congenially with the yet unparcelled earth. A little while you are free, and unlabelled, like the ground that you compass; but civilization is coming, and coming; you, and your much loved waste lands will be surely inclosed, and sooner, or later, you will be brought down to a state of utter usefulness; the ground will be curiously sliced into acres, and roods, and perches, and you, for all you sit so smartly in your saddle, you will be caught; you will be taken up from travel, as a colt from grass, to be train ed, and tried, and matched, and run. All this in time, but first come continental tours and the moody longing for Eastern travel; the downs and the moors of England can hold you no longer; with larger stride you burst away from these slips and patches of free land-you thread your path through the crowds of Europe, and at last on the banks of Jordan, you joyfully know that you are upon the very frontier of all accustomed respectabilities. There, on the other side of the river (you can swim it with one arm), there reigns the people that will be like to put you to death for not being a vagrant, for not being a robber, for not being armed, and houseless. There is comfort in that; health, comfort, and strength to one who is dying from very weariness of that poor, dear, middle-aged, deserving, accomplished, pedantic, and pains-taking governess Europe.”

He gives us afterwards a vivid glimpse of the Dead Sea; brief, but capable of making it, to one even who has never seen its dismal waters, a memory forever.

"I went on, and came to those waters of death; they stretched deeply into the southern desert, and before me, and all around, as far away as the eye could follow, blank hills piled high over hills, pale, yellow, and naked, walled up in her tomb for ever, the dead and damned Gomorrah. There was no fly that hummed in the forbidden air, but instead a deep stillnessno grass grew from the earth; no weed peered through the void sand, but in mockery of all life, there were trees borne down by Jordan in some ancient flood, and these grotesquely planted upon the forlorn shore, spread out their grim skeleton arms all scorched, and charred to blackness, by the heats of the long, silent years."

pass over newly reared hills---you pass through valleys that the storm of the last week has dug, and the hills and the valleys are sand, sand, sand, still sand, and only sand, and sand, and sand again. The earth is so samely, that your eyes turn towards heaven---towards heaven, I mean, in the sense of sky. You look to the Sun, for he is your task-master, and by him you know the measure of the work that you have done, and the measure of the work that remains for you to do; He comes when you strike your tent in the early morning, and then, for the first hour of the day, as you move forward on your camel, he stands at your near side, and makes you know that the whole day's toil is before you---then for a while and a long while you see him no more, for you are veiled, and shrouded, and dare not look upon the greatness of his glory, but you know where he strides over head, by the touch of his flaming sword. No words are spoken, but your Arabs moan, your camels sigh, your skin glows, your shoulders ache, and for sights you see the pattern and the web of the silk that veils your eyes, and the glare of the outer light. Time labors on---your skin glows, and your shoulders ache, your Arabs moan, your camels sigh, and you see the same pattern in the silk, and the same glare of light beyond, but conquering Time marches on, and by and by the descending Sun has compassed the Heaven, and now softly touches your right arm, and throws your land shadow over the sand, right along on the way for Persia; then again you look upon his face, for his power is all veiled in his beauty, and the redness of flames has become the redness of roses---the fair, wavy cloud that fled in the morning now comes to his sight once more---comes blushing, yet still comes on---comes burning with blushes, yet hastens, and clings to his side. Then arrives your time for resting. The world about you is all your own, and there, where you will, you pitch your solitary tent; there is no living thing to dispute your choice."

"When the cold, sullen morning dawned, and my people began to load the camels, I always felt loath to give back to the waste this little spot of ground that had glowed for a while with the cheerfulness of a human dwelling. One by one the cloaks, the saddles, the baggage, the hun

We have never seen so striking a descrip- dred things that strewed the ground, and tion of a day in the DESERT.

"As long as you are journeying in the interior of the Desert, you have no particular point to make for as your restingplace. The endless sands yield nothing but small stunted shrubs---even these fail after the first two or three days, and from that time you pass over broad plains---you

made it look so familiar---all these were taken away, and laid upon the camels. A speck in the broad tracts of Asia remained still impressed with the mark of patent portmanteaus, and the heels of London boots; the embers of the fire lay black and cold upon the sand, and these were the signs we left.

"My tent was spared to the last, but

when all else was ready for the start, then came its fall; the pegs were drawn, the canvas shivered, and in less than a minute there was nothing that remained of my genial home but only a pole and a bundle. The encroaching Englishman was off, and instant, upon the fall of the canvas, like an owner, who had waited, and watched, the Genius of the Desert stalked in."

Compare the powerful impression here with the delicious sensation that steal over us in dwelling on the description of Blessed Damascus.' The reference to the garden of a deserted English mansion is exceedingly beautiful.

"For a part of two days I wound under the base of the snow-crowned Djibel el Sheik, and then entered upon a vast and desolated plain, rarely pierced at intervals by some sort of withered stem. The earth in its length and its breadth, and all the deep universe of sky, was steeped in light and heat. On I rode through the fire, but long before evening came, there were straining eyes that saw and joyful voices that announced the sight of Shaum Shereef-the "Holy," the "Blessed" Damas

cus.

But that which at last I reached with my longing eyes, was not a speck in the horizon, gradually expanding to a group of roofs and walls, but a long, low line of blackest green that ran right across in the distance from East to West. And this, as I approached, grew deeper-grew wavy in its outline; soon forest trees shot up before my eyes and robed their broad shoulders so freshly that all the throngs of olives as they rose into view looked sad in their proper dimness. There were even now no houses to see, but only the minarets peered out from the midst of shade into the glowing sky and bravely touching the Sun. There seemed to be here no mere city, but rather

a province, wide and rich, that bounded

the torrid waste."

"But its gardens are the delight-the delight and pride of Damascus; they are not the formal parterres which you might expect from the Oriental taste; they rather bring back to your mind the memory of some dark old shrubbery in our northern isle, that has been charmingly "un-kept up" for many and many a day. When you see a rich wilderness of wood in decent

England, it is like enough that you see it with some soft regrets. The puzzled old woman at the lodge can give small account of "The family." She thinks it is "Italy" that has made the whole circle of her world so gloomy and sad. You avoid the house in lively dread of a lone housekeeper, but you make your way on by the stables; you remember that gable with all its neatly nailed trophies of fitches, and hawks, and owls, now slowly falling to

pieces; you remember that stable, and that, but the doors are all fastened that used to be standing ajar; the paint of things painted is blistered and cracked; grass grows in the yard; just there, in October mornings, the keeper would wait with the dogs and the guns--no keeper now---you hurry away, and gain the small wicket that used to open to the touch of a lightsome hand; it is fastened with a padlock (the only new-looking thing), and is stained with thick, green damp; you climb it, and bury yourself in the deep shade, and strive but lazily with the tangling briars, and stop for long minutes to judge and determine whether you will creep beneath the long boughs, and make them your archway, or whether perhaps you will lift your heel, and tread them down under foot. Long doubt, and scarcely to be ended, till you wake from the memory of those days when the path was clear, and chase that phantom of a muslin sleeve that once weighed warm upon your arm.

"Wild as that nighest woodland of a deserted home in England, but without its sweet sadness, is the sumptuous garden of Damascus. Forest trees, tall and stately enough if you could see their lofty crests, yet lead a tustling life of it below with their branches struggling against strong numbers of bushes and wilful shrubs. The shade upon the earth is black as night. High above your head and on every side all down to the ground, the thicket is hemmed in and choked up by the interlacing boughs that droop with the weight of roses, and load the slow air with their damask breath. There are no other flowers. Here and there, there are patches of ground made clear from the cover, and these are either carelessly planted with some common and useful vegetable, or else are left free to the wayward ways of Nature, and bear rank weeds, moist-looking and cool to your earthy and bitter fragrance. eyes, and freshening the sense with their There is a lane opened through the thicket, so broad in some places that you can pass along side by side; in some so narrow (the shrubs are for ever encroaching) that you ought, if you can, to go on the first and hold back the bough of the rose tree. And through this wilderness there tumbles a loud rush

ing stream, which is halted at last in the lowest corner of the garden, and there tossed up in a fountain by the side of the simple alcove. This is all.

Never, for an instant, will the people of Damascus attempt to separate the idea of bliss from these wild gardens and rushing waters."

Steamboats puffing, hissing and blowing off on all the old rivers-rivers hallowed by the rise and ruin of empires, are a sacrilege; but our author finds himself able to

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