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than the State of Arkansas, and although the Government of the United States still holds nearly 7,000,000 acres more in Missouri than in Arkansas.

Thus it is that Arkansas bids fair to distance Missouri in the Railroad race.

We here quote a few items from the Little Rock True Demcrat showing the movement which has lately been made in Congress, and the practical operations along the line in favor of the Mississippi Ouachita and Red River Railroad, hoping in our next number to quote a letter from Senator R. W. JOHNSON, Author of the Cairo and Fuiton Railroad grant and branches which reflects distinguished credit on the author and sustains us in the position we have here taken on the subject of Railroads in Arkansas. In Senate, Feb. 27th, 1854.

On motion by Mr. JOHNSON, the Senate proceeded, as in committee of the whole, to consider the bill granting the right of way and making a grant of land to the State of Arkansas, to aid in the construction of a railroad from a point on the Mississippi, in the region of Gaines's Landing, via Camden, to the Texas boundary, near Fulton, in Arkansas, which had been reported from the committee on public lands with an amendment, as a substitute, in the usual form.

The amendment was agreed to; the bill was reported to the Senate as amended; the amendment was incurred in; the bill was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading; was read a third time, and passed.

We take the following extract from a letter addressed us by a friend in Camden, Feb. 21st, 1854 :

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"On last Wednesday Capt. Tighlman made his report as chief of the M. O. & R. R. railroad. It is an able engineer and I will send you a copy as soon as it is printed. He estimates the cost of the road at $1,986,000 00, or $12,773 00 per mile in complete running order. We have placed 40 miles under contract and will break dirt as soon as the necessary implements can be procured from Cincinnati, where we have sent an agent to purchase them. The road bed is to be ready for the iron by the 1st day of March, 1854.

Our road leaves the Mississippi river at Furguson's bluff, about 4 miles above Gaines' Landing, crosses the Ouachita at Camden, and Red river about two miles below the cut-off on the lands of Judge Fort. Furguson gives us 60 acres, on the Mississippi, Maj. Bradley gives 143 acres in Camden, and Judge Fort gives 80 acres on Red river. If Col. Johnson gets our land bill through, and I think he will, our books are ordered to be closed, as we will in that event want no more stock."

LITERARY DEPARTMENT.

LITERARY NOTICES.

Among the many Internal Improvement, Scientific, Literary and other valuable publications we have received during the past month, we would call particular attention to a few from which we bave quoted. The American Railway Times, published in Boston, and the American Railroad Journal, published in New York, from each of which we have this month quoted important leading articles, are filled with valuable data pertaining to the Internal Improvement interests of the whole country. Neither sectional nor party influences seem in the least to sway them with the slightest shade of bias or of prejudice. They seem committed neither against the North, South, East or West, but devoted to the welfare of the whole Union, and what may appear rather singular, particularly interested in the prosperity of the Mississippi valley. We know that these works are already liberally patronized in the West; and from their standard character, we trust that the enquiring sense of the people of the Mississippi valley, will rapidly increase this patronage, thereby promoting both their prosperity and intelligence.

THE SOUTHERN QUARTERLY REVIEW published in Charleston S. C. was noticed somewhat extensively in our last volume; but we must say that the April Number of this year, is superior in value and in liberality of sentiment to its late antecedent Numbers. See the article quoted from this work on the "Material Progress of the United States," and ex uno disce omnes. South Carolina stock is rising, and we hope the Southern Quarterly Review, may meet, throughout the whole region of the west, with the generous subscriptions, which a high toned, civilizing periodical deserves.

THE MINING MAGAZINE published in New York, we have always highly appreciated, and lately particularly noticed. We are happy to see that this periodical is now turning its attention somewhat directly to the Mining interests of Missouri. We hope to see it soon opening its pages still more widely to this cause, and to hear that it receives as well as gives satisfaction.

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From the French of Madame De Staël.

German Philosophy.

Some persons have tried a long time to cast great disgrace on the word "Philosophy." This is the lot of all those words whose acceptation is very wide; they are the objects of the benedictions or of the maledictions of the human species, according as they are applied to happy or unhappy eras; but, in spite of the abuses and of the accidental favors of individuals and of nations, philosophy, liberty, religion never change in value. Man has cursed the sun, love and life; he has suffered, he has felt the touch of fire from these torches of nature; but should he therefore wish to extinguish them?

Every effort which tends to enslave our faculties is debasing; it is our duty to direct them toward the sublime end of existence, moral perfection; but it is not by the partial suicide of such or such a power of our being that we become capable of raising ourselves toward that end; in order to reach it, with all our means. we have not too many; and if heaven had granted to man more of genius, he should have so much the more of virtue.

Among the different branches of philosophy, that which has particularly occupied the attention of the Germans, is metaphysics. The objects which it embraces may be divided into three classes. The first relates to the mystery of creation, that is to say, to the infinity in all things; the second to the formation of ideas in the human spirit; and the third to the exercise of our faculties without tracing them back to their source.

The first of these studies, that which applies to the knowledge of the secret of the universe, has been cultivated among the Greeks as it is now among the Germans. One cannot deny but that such an inquiry, howsoever sublime it may be in its principle, only makes us feel our weakness at each step; and discouragement follows efforts which cannot reach a result. The use of the third class of metaphysical observations, that which is included in the cognisance of the acts of our judgment, cannot be disputed; but that use is limited to the circle of the experiences of every day life. The philosophical meditations of the second class, those which are directed upon the nature of our soul, and upon the origin of our ide

as, appear to me altogether the most interesting. It is not probable that we can ever know the eternal truths which explain the existence of this world: the desire which we experience on this point is among the noblest thoughts which attract us toward another life; but it is not without cause that the faculty of self-examination has been given to us. Doubtless, it is to make use of this faculty by observing at once, the progress of our spirit, such as it is; yet in exalting itself to the highest degree, in seeking to know if that spirit acts spontaneously, or if it can think only when excited by exterior objects, we have more lights on the free will of man and consequently on the subjects of vice and virtue.

A crowd of moral and religious questions depend upon the way in which one considers the origin of the formation of our ideas. The difference of systems on this subject is the main point which distinguishes the German from the French philosophers. It is easy to conceive that, if the difference is at the source, it should manifest itself in all the results; it is therefore impossible to understand Germany, without noting the progress of philosophy, which, from the days of Leibnitz to our own, has continued exercising such supreme sway over the republic of letters.

There are two ways of viewing the metaphysics of the human understanding; the one in its theory, the other in its results. The examination of the theory demands a capacity beyond my own; but it is easy to observe the influence which this or that metaphysical opinion exercises upon the development of the mind and of the soul. The Gospel tells us by their works ye shall know them: this maxim can also guide us among the different philosophies; for every thing which tends toward immortality is something else than a sophism. This life is of value only when it leads to the religious education of our heart, when it prepares us for a higher destiny, by the free choice of virtue on the earth. Metaphysics, social institutions, arts, sciences, all these should be appreciated next to the moral perfection of man; it is the touch stone which is given to the ignorant as well as to the wise. knowledge of the means belongs only to the initiated, are brought home to the capacities of all the world.

[To be continued.]

For if the

the results

CHRISTOPHER NORTH.

Messrs. Editors.

In the death of Professor Wilson, well may the fields of literature and the shrines of philosophy be shrouded in gloom, and well may the genius of Scotland weep over the loss of one of her most gifted spirits one whose talent has exercised perhaps not less influence on the moral and social developments of modern times than upon its triumphs in literature. Those who have read Blackwood's Magazine, must know with what singular ability, and with what zeal and devotion it has maintained the supremacy of its own party principles for the last four and thirty years. It has not only triumphed in party polemics over the old and well established despotism of the Edinburgh Review, but has built up a solid and substantial character for refinement and taste, for sober judgment and sound criticism, which has never before been so well sustained in the whole range of periodical literature.

Professor Wilson-a true lover of nature-with poetic susceptibilities of the first order, with a warm heart and generous affections, with an ardent and enthusiastic temperament, when thrown in this political arena, soon manifested an originality which placed him among the best writers of the age. In his literary productions his knowledge of nature in all her amptitude and beauty, in all her loveliness and grandeur, enabled him so skillfully to strike the cords in the bosom of every right-feeling reader, as to make them responsive to his own. Warm hearted, with more kindness than austerity in his disposition, the cauterizing power of his criticism was exercised not in wantoness, but in suppressing some criminal obliquity, or some growing depravity in the moral tendencies of the political world around him.

As a poet, he wanted neither imagery nor inspiration, but his poetry found its best expression in his prose writings. His pen had the power of portraying scenes in lowly life, the success of which was mainly dependent upon their truth to nature, their unaffected simplicity, and the deep and overpowering pathos which characterized them. Like the Cottager's Saturday Night, of Burns, his pictures stand out in bold relief before us, and we can scarcely destroy the illusion that some shifting scenes, some substantial actors are not in transitu before us. The Lights and Shadows of

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