But all this is according to taste. Other defects are not so easily pardonable. In the whole book, there is not one glimpse of good society, one spark of genuine religion, nor one approach to true womanliness, except in purblind Miss HILLBODY, Who, though somewhat battish, is good as far as she goes.

In spite of these faults, however (and they are certainly neither few nor slight), the volume is decidedly above the average run of novels. It is capitally written, exceedingly amusing, and very sarcastic, clever and witty. TIFFLES and his Panorama, Mrs SLAPMAN'S Private Theatricals, the School-commissioner's Oration, and Uncle QTP's peculiarities, are all excellent in their way, and furnish abundance of entertainment for those who love to laugh.

Philip Van Artevelde: a Dramatic Romance. In Two Parts. By HENRY TAYLOR. Boston: TICKNOR & FIELDS.

There is but little to be said of a work so well known as the one before us, except that it is doubly attractive in its new garb-this goodly apparel of blue and gold, which is making TICKNOR & Co.'s famous little edition a most ornamental appendage to the finest library. To the resolute few who persist in asserting that they can neither read nor enjoy poetic effusions, we would only say that in the preface (which is more justly a finished essay than a preface) they will find enough admirable prose to outvalue the price of the book.

JUVENILE BOOKS.-No. 1. At Home and Abroad; or How to Behave. By Mrs. MAN

NERS.

In a Series of Sto1864.

No. 2. Pleasure and Profit; or Lessons on the Lord's Prayer. ries. By Mrs. MANNERS. New York: D. APPLETON & Co. Of all life's minor trials there is but one more odious than to be told of your faults, and that one is to have to tell other people of others. The smaller the defect, the harder to speak of; for it is easier to tell a person that he is vicious, when he steals, than that he sputters when he eats his soup. Parents and children get over the diffi culty moderately well, but when it comes to pupils, wards, and younger brothers the combat deepens. Conscience whispers, Rebuke them! while Self-love shouts, They'll hate you if you do! So one waits with feeble indecision, and finally runs between two fires to get burned on both sides. To soothe the wounds of both the trainers and the trained, comes Mrs. MANNERS, with a very vigorous, sprightly, and discerning pen, tapping so deftly with her pruning-scissors at young people's monstrosities over other young people's shoulders that the wing-clipping is effected without the ruffling of a feather.

The book is intended for the rising generation, but there is nothing whatever in it to injure the mature mind; and if the grown people won't read it, we hope that Mrs. MANNERS will write another expressly for the generation that has already arisen.

In Pleasure and Profit, we find a series of pretty, short stories upon the different clauses of the Lord's Prayer. It would, of course, be simply impossible to give the full meaning of this most comprehensive petition within the compass of a child's book, but the narratives illustrate in a pleasant way a portion of its teachings, and suggest a practical and personal application of those prayers which, to many children, would otherwise remain a vague and vain repetition.

I. THOMAS TILESTON, PRESIDENT OF THE PHŒnix Bank, NEW YORK................. II. THE NATIONAL REVENUE. BY HON. AMASA WALKER............

PAGE

85

97

III. TOBACCO DUTIES AND TAXATION-THE TRADE IN AMERICA AND EUROPE...... 106
IV. THE SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN DIFFICULTY. Is A GENERAL EUROPEAN WAR
PROBABLE? BY T. M. J.

V. COMMERCIAL LAW. No. 10. AGENCY..
VI. COMMERCIAL CHRONICLE AND REVIEW

119

122

128

Wholesale Prices of Foreign and Domestic Produce at New York........

141

Estimates as to the Probable Receipts into Great Britain of Cotton, for 1864.

152

An attempt was made in the spring of 1863, by the American House of RUSSELL & Co., so long and favorably known in the China trade, to es tablish a line of steamships between Hong Kong and San Francisco, in connection with their other steamers on the coast and rivers of China. Their steamer, the Robert Lowe, of twelve hundred and seventy-seven tons and eighty horse-power, made a trip from San Francisco in March, stopping for a few hours at Honolulu, although her Captain did not see fit to enter the harbor, and, of course, obtained no supplies of coal there. The greater part of the way was made under sail, and her passage to Hong Kong was not particularly brilliant. So little encouragement was met with on this preliminary trip, that neither she nor the Scotland (of seven hundred and fifty-nine tons, and one hundred and fifty horse-power,) which was to have been the second steamer in the line, were sent back, and, as freights were very much depressed in the Chinese waters, and steamship owners could scarcely find employment for their regular vessels, she remained idle in the Woosing river throughout the summer, and the project was abandoned. There were many reasons for this failure. The vessels of the line were old, unreliable, and notoriously slow, so that no one had much faith in their beating the clippers by many days; it was understood to be an experiment, and some degree of permanency is necessary to form business for a steamship line on so long a route; freights from San Francisco were not plenty at the moment, and several small and fast barks were loading, which had the preference; while, at any time, there is not much valuable freight offering which can pay steamer charges, except bar silver and Mexican dollars, and for some time to come it is not to be expected that this will be otherwise.

But it is not to be inferred from one temporary failure in a favorite project of Americans in California and China, that the importance of a steam line on the grand ocean is undervalued; or that a very long time

will elapse before it will be an established fact, as regularly in operation as the Cunard or Peninsular and Oriental lines. We may look upon this pioneer voyage as a promise for the future, to be fulfilled with the first active resumption of trade, after the settlement of our civil war.

A mail contract from the United States Government, ensuring $300,000 to $400,000 per annum for three or four years would lead to the establishment of a permanent line immediately; and even without such aid, in a very few years, the rapid growth of California and of her trade with China, already considerable, will make such a line a pressing necessity, profitable without the help of government contracts. To start it now such aid would seem to be necessary.

It is needless to comment on the great advantage that would accrue to San Francisco with the growth of her China trade, and the importance of placing her in as close communication with China as is possible, if we desire her to retain the commercial supremacy of the eastern shore of the Pacific. San Francisco papers often allude to it, and San Francisco men are full of it. Steam on the Pacific comes after the Pacific Railway only; in their estimation, and they are so sure that they will have it shortly, that much more of their attention is engrossed by the Railway.

British Columbia (or England herself by direct communication via Panama,) promises to be her rival, strange as this may appear to men whose attention has been absorbed by events nearer home. It is not generally understood what a magnificent territory the vast tract of land, watered by the Red river and Saskatchawan, has been proved to be by recent explorations, since the charter of the Hudson's Bay Company fell in; and that England possesses here a land greater and richer than Canada, occupying a peculiarly fortunate position in comparison with our own western territory.

To connect ourselves with California, we must surmount a desert of at least a thousand miles, and in one sense of the word our Pacific States will always be separated from us by a vast distance. Emigration cannot pass beyond the great valley of the Mississippi and its tributaries. It may begin again from the Pacific coast, and stretch to the eastward, over the Sierra Nevada and almost to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, but there it must stop. A few mining villages may spring up, like Virginia City in Washoe, far out in the desert, but excepting such, (which will draw their supplies from over the mountains) there must always be a vast wilderness, separating the Atlantic and Pacific States, to be traversed only by relays of horses, with stations in the desert as at present, and eventually by a great railway. Just at that part of the continent where our progress westward is stayed, and when the most profound engineering skill will encounter gigantic obstacles in building a railroad, England possesses a finer district than any other in her possession on this continent; fertile, well-watered, and enjoying a moderate climate for so high a latitude, more equable than that of Canada. It is only within the last three years that her attention has been fairly drawn to its great value, and to the important advantage it possess of almost direct water communication, with breaks amounting to scarcely a hundred and fifty miles, from the Atlantic to the foot of the Rocky Mountains. There the headwaters of the Suskatchawan and Frazer river almost meet; the one connecting with the vast system of rivers and lakes by which we have traveled from Lake Superior, the other emptying into the Pacific; there, too, the Rocky Moun

tains sink to an elevation far below the Southern Passes, and do not present any greater engineering difficulties than have been overcome on the Erie Railway.

The Frazer river empties into the Gulf of Georgia, when the harbor of Victoria on Vancouver's Island is the finest north of San Francisco, with a good channel to the ocean through Juan de Fuca Strait. To speak more correctly, Victoria harbor, itself, is safe for vessels drawing eighteen feet, and ships of that depth can lay alongside the wharf, the only drawbacks to the harbor being several rather sharp turns round the outer point. Esquimauld Harbor, however, four miles from Victoria, is represented to be one of the finest in the world, accessible to ships of all sizes at all hours.

At the point where the Rocky Mountains are to be crossed, in all other parts of the continent the grand obstacle to a railway, they are so low that the head waters of Frazer and Peace rivers, flowing in opposite directions, are only three hundred and seventeen yards apart, and the report of Captain KENNEDY, who was sent by the Canadian Government in 1861, to explore the Saskatchawan valley, declares that no more serious obstacles exist in the other portions of the vast territory, which lie between the Rocky Mountains and the great lakes. The very fact of there being water communication for so vast a distance proves this.

Probably the most serious obstacle to be met with is the depth of the snow for seven months of the year in British Columbia and these Northern Passes of the Rocky Mountains. Victoria is represented as a place where it snows every day and freezes every night during the winter months, when snow is always to be found on any parallel north of 50° often to the depth of three or four feet. In the mountain passes the drifts are often twenty-five or thirty feet deep, and how any railroad North or South, can keep its track clear over such an immense distance, it is difficult to foresee.. Where snow drifts to such a depth it would be a work requiring the constant labor of a very large force.

The country east of the Rocky Mountains, in the great Saskatchawan valley is described as a fertile prairie, nearly bare of trees, but possessing extensive fields of coal, which are seen cropping out in the Red river country, and we know that valuable coal beds exist on Vancouver's Island. The climate moderates as we approach the West coast, and the average temperature is several degrees below that of Canada. Both theory and observation point to this, and the winters in the great valley are mild enough to permit the buffalo to remain all the year round; nothing is said about the heavy rains or snows, which, in all probability, fall for at least five months of the year in the country lying between the Rocky Mountains and Lake Winnipeg.

With such a country justly thrown open to English colonists by the close of the Hudson Bay Company's monopoly, and with so tempting a route, during at least four or five months in the year, for certain and speedy communication between Canada and British Columbia, it is to be expected that the growth of the settlements in the great valley of the Saskatchawan will be rapid, and that in time the attention both of the Canadians and English will be directed to this new project for a Pacific Railway. The old Hudson Bay Company has been reorganized with a-capital of $2,000,000, and with Sir EDMUND HEAD, the former Governor-General of Canada, as President. Its policy has been entirely changed, and its immense