Ancient Slavery-St. Domingo Insurrection, &c. struggle, they called in the blacks, and the two united, exceeding the whites in the proportion of twelve to one, expelled them from the island, and since that time a continual struggle has been going on between the mulattoes and negroes, the latter having numbers and brute force, and the former sustaining themselves by superior intelligence. How far the disturbances created by gladiators and slaves trained to arms, and disbanded soldiers in Italy, or the rising of the mulattoes and negroes in St. Domingo, has any analogy to the institution of slavery, as it exists among us, can only be determined by the spirit of fairness and candor, or of hatred and prejudice with which they are viewed. To me it appears that the teachings of history show that there never has been a formidable slave insurrection, considered purely as such, and that a comparison of our situation with slavery as it existed elsewhere, ought to relieve the minds of the most timid from any apprehension of danger from our negroes, under any circumstances, in peace or in war. 517 of liberty. From this Broad River must be re-crossed, to the Cowpens, where relics of the strife of that field may yet be picked up. At and near the furnace, there are many picturesque spots, as well as a chalybeate spring. "Proceeding westward till Hog-back, Glassy, and some of the peaks of the Saluda Mountains are seen lifting their sublime forms above the horizon, in the gray distance, no better guides will be wanted till the base of Glassy is reached. Taking an obscure path from the road, if the tourists have sure-footed horses, they may ride to the top; if not, it must be accomplished on foot. This should be early in the morning, for many a temptation to linger will be presented in the shady dells and other beautiful spots on the way upwards. Many a sparkling, playful little stream will beckon them from their path, to witness its daring leap, as it starts on its downward journey to its great home, the ocean. From the top of the mountain the view is beautiand here a week or a fortnight must ful. The distance to Hodge's is but short; be spent. The falls of the Saluda, three Professor Toumey, at the conclusion of or four hundred feet in height, are almost his very able report on the Geological Sur- in sight, and scarcely a rivulet that vey of the State of South Carolina, gives meanders among the rhododendrons that the following interesting description of does not present a little picture of its the beauties of its mountain scenery: own, well worth the finding. After they "There are few places where persons have examined this place to the right in search of health or pleasure, could and left, if they do not heartily pity spend a month or two more pleasantly those who pass, with rail-road speed, than among the mountains of the state. through this wonderful gap, I am greatly They commit a great mistake who mistaken. imagine that by skipping to the top of Table Rock, with the aid of Mr. Sunderland's steps, and from thence run across to Caesar's Head, they have exhausted the beauties of this region. "Let them commence at the Limestone Springs, where a day or two may be pleasantly spent in visiting Gilkey's mountains, from the top of which there is a fine view, and in examining the Iron Works. Some of the islands in the river must also be examined. Crossing the river, and proceeding up the mountain on the York side, till they reach its peak, just over the North Carolina line, where, looking from the rugged top of that fearful escarpment, a scene will present itself not readily to be forgotten. Returning by way of the battle-ground, a simple stone will be found recording the names and marking the restingplaces of the brave who fell on the side "Our ramblers will next ascend to Poinsett's Spring, where I am sure they will admire the good taste and simple beauty of that fountain, and if they have walked up they will bless the man that was mindful of the way-worn traveler. Mr. Burton, at the toll-gate, will conduct them to the top of Walnut Mountain. Of the scene that presents itself here I can only say that if, after beholding it, they do not return more humble and better men, they need proceed no further. "After spending a few days here the base of the Saluda mountains must be circled to the south prong of Saluda, where, at an old mill, close to the mountain side, they will be repaid for the journey across, by the sight of a waterfall of great beauty, brought out against the dark shadows of the hemlocks that overshadow the banks. The journey between this and Cæsar's Head is not wanting in interest and beautiful rates of increase of the various articles views. From the top of the Head, every one knows how magnificent is the scene, but it is at sunset when Table Rock stands out against its glorious background of mountains, that it is the most impressive. "The distance to Table Rock is but a few hours' ride. On the way the travelers amuse themselves with reflections on the stupendous force that severed at this point the mountain, leaving Cæsar's Head and Table Rock fit monuments to attest the event. is singular-while the population has more than doubled in this period, the amount of wheat is over four times greater, rye five times, corn eight times, oats show but a small increase, buckwheat over seven times, cattle three times, horses four times, hogs have scarcely doubled, and sheep nearly thirty-four times. We should thence judge that, while our soil has been found ill-fitted for oats, it is peculiarly adapted for corn and buckwheat, and that sheep are the favourite stock. We may add "At Table Rock they will be in the that in 1850, 2,007,598 pounds of wool hands of the veteran guide, Mr. Sunder- were clipped; and that 7,056,478 pounds land, with whom I will leave them, with of butter, 1,112,646 pounds of cheese the assurance that however high concep- were made, being not quite eighteen tions they may have formed of this noble pounds of butter, and three pounds of rock, they will not be disappointed. cheese to each individual. There is, we From the rock to Mr. Barton's hospitable believe, no great quantity of butter imabode is but a short distance, and from ported into the state, but as yet, we this point the wild scenery of the Esta- depend upon New-York and Ohio for a toe mountains must be visited. After large amount of the cheese we consume. this they will receive a hearty welcome from the Kennys, who will conduct them to the locassa valley. They will see here, on the tops of the mountains, forming vast walls, an extension of the stratum seen at Table Rock. The Whitewater meeting with this in its course, and tired of the slow process of cutting a channel through it, fairly clears it at a bound, forming one of the finest waterfalls of the South. Tomassie, and the quiet scenery of Pickens, may close the ramble, as they turn their faces homeward, their minds, I trust, filled with pleasant remembrances of this most beautiful region." What butter we do receive is understood to come from Ohio, Illinois and Indiana. Before the next census ought we not to export both the articles? In the year 1830, Michigan territory, including what is now Wisconsin, contained 30,848 whites, and 280 persons of color, of whom twenty-seven were slaves. In 1810, the population was 4,762; and in 1820, 8,896. Governor McClelland, of Michigan, in his last message, describes the finan cial condition of the state as healthy and encouraging. The following statement shows the results for two years: The amount in the treasury, November The following table of the productions Receipts during the fiscal year. of the State of Michigan in the year 1837, immediately after being admitted into Available means... $35,360 27 414,390 18 $549,740 45 the Union, and the year 1850, may be The expenditures for the same period.. 352,597 2 useful to our readers for reference. Balance in the treasury, November 30, $97,243 23 Grist Mills. Saw Mills 114... 433. 193 Receipts during the last fiscal year.. 451,082 97 Available means... $548,326 20 Distilleries 16. The governor urges the policy of In 1840 the population was 212,267. creating a sinking-fund, as provided for In 1850, 400,000. The difference of the by the constitution. Productions of the State of Michigan-St. Mary's Ship Canal. 519 For the sake of equalizing taxation, he an act for the construction of a ship-carather approves the policy of assessing property at its selling value. There are few things about which those seeking a new home are more inquisitive than the rate of taxation. Michigan taxes appear to be quadruple what they really are, because the tax is ostensibly levied on thirty millions of property, when it is actually assessed on about one hundred and thirty millions. The sales of public lands amounted for the year 1852, to $90,055. The receipts, during the same period, to $236844. Capital punishment has been abolished in the state, and solitary confinement substituted in its place. Although the propriety of the change is doubted, yet he desires to see the principle and the law fully carried out and fully tested. The present structures, however, will not admit of it. SHIP CANAL AT ST. MARY.-On the 26th day of August last, Congress passed nal around the Falls of St. Mary. It grants the right of locating a canal through the Military Reservation, at the Falls of St. Mary's River, and four hundred feet of land in width, extending along the line of the canal, and also 750,000 acres of public land, to be selected by an agent to be appointed by the governor of the state, subject to the approval of the secretary of the interior. Every effort should be made to keep the work out of the hands of mere speculators, and honestly to perform the trust, for it is a work of great importance to all of the lake states. The capital is permanently fixed, and the state is owner of real estate estimated at $106,995, in the village of Lansing. But there is not a fire-engine in the place, and the public buildings are not fire-proof. To this the attention of the legislature is directed. ART. XIV.-EDITORIAL MISCELLANY-NOTES, ETC. LETTER FROM ROME-NOTICES OF GAYARRE'S HISTORICAL LABORS-NEW BOOKS-MEMPHIS CONVENTION, ETC. In one of our numbers last summer we took the liberty of extracting some very pretty thoughts from the letter of a young lady in Naples to her sister in this country. Having had the privilege of perusing another of these letters written from Rome, our readers will think a few extracts some relief in the tedious monotony of argument and statistics with which our pages abound. ROME.-Warm summer days always bring me thoughts of you; so many summers have found us together in our dear country home, that I thought it would be always so, and can scarcely recognize a summer as genuine without you. I have known many homes, but none seem to me half so homelike as the one where our fathers dwelt. When I'm weary with wandering, weary of strange places, and of stranger people, memory is my gentle comforter. She brings me pictures glowing with the hue of life, and warm with the sunny smile of affection; no artist's pencil, no poet's fire-tipped pen, can tell you how beautiful they are to me. The landscape is ever the same; need I say how the wooded bills meet the western skies and bathe in the purple light; how the waters, ever silent and majestic, glitter as I had thought to take you back to Naples, and tell you of our sorrowful farewell to its beauties, of Vesuvius, and of that loveliest of islands, Capri, but I must wait until my lips can be the medium of communication, for you know my pen is soon weary, and there is so much to occupy it here. The theme will have lost none of its interest when we meet. I assure you, for there is a rosy hue over all my recollections of last winter. The common proverb says, "Vedi Napo li e poi mori,"-See Naples and then die. I need not tell you with what strangely mingled feelings we first drove through the streets of Rome. The name alone is "a volume in a word." There is scarce a page in the world's history where it finds not a place, and many and varied are the associa tions that cluster about it. Noble matrons in all the grandeur and beauty of a true wo man's might stern lawgivers, in their judge's robes trampling over their own bleeding hearts-heroic love, and bold ambitionheaven daring genius and deeds of dark and fearful cruelty-war and bloodshed-fierce battles, fire and pestilence, and a thousand other forms and visions flitted before me in that ride." The Niobe of nations!" My brother does not share my enthusiastic interest in all that concerns ancient Rome, and has quite renounced his boyish love and reverence for the classics. He talks very learnedly of the views of Niebuhr and Arnold, and would have me give up all those pretty stories we learned in our old historybooks-Mutius Scævola, and his burning hand: Cincinnatus, and his dignified poverty; Quintus Curtius, and his daring leap; and many others, as idle fables. But I have my revenge, for when he is rapturizing over some picture of the old masters, all stained and discolored by time and neglect, I pretend to see nothing but a piece of black canvas, without form or comeliness, and quote Murray's advice to credulous travelers. Yet I have been rather disappointed to find so few undisputed relics of those early days which seemed to us so full of poetry and beauty. I quite forgot how "The Goth, the Christian, time, war, flood and fire, Have dealt upon the seven-hill'd city's pride." It is the Rome of the middle ages that I hear and think most of now. before the altar engaged in occasional services, and a few devotees, are all that disturb the impressive solitude of this mighty temples at noonday. I had formed no ideas of such immensity among the works of man before. In the inscription round the interior of the dome, the letters are several feet in height. It is "Tu es Petrus, et super hunc Petram ædificato, ecclesiam meam,fet tibi dato claves Regni Cœlorum,” the well-known words of our Lord to St. Peter. The cherubs, which appear the size of infants, are six feet high. After one is satisfied with viewing the interior of the church as a whole, (which I never am,) there are many things in it to interest. Confessionals for all nations are scattered through the nave. Here is the famous statue of Jupiter Capitolinus, re-named St. Peter, the place of the thunder-bolt being supplied by the ever-present keys; the tomb of the Countess Matilda, and the monument to the last of the Stuarts. The latter is by Canova, and interested me very much. In viewing works of art, generally, there arises in my mind, not a feeling of dissatisfaction exactly, but a painful yearning for something higher and nobler. My ideal of the beautiful is not answered; something mars the effect, and with an eager longing unquenched, I have ever turned away. Nature alone has perfectly satisfied, quieting each restless craving, and shedding over every feeling, repose. And this is just the sensation with which I gazed upon St. Peter's. But how can I tell you, what so many abler pens have so often repeated. In fancy we have often seen the snowy fountains sending up their sparkling wealth of spray to catch the sunbeams-the obelisk rearing its strange form-the noble dome and the gigantic statues-but the reality is very much more beautiful than even our wild fancies painted. I have stood for hours by one of the tall columns, (beside which I feel the merest insect,) in a sort of dreamy trance, awed by the vastness of everything And we find little to break our series, for the winter crowd of strangers tourists have all departed; the monks about me. St. Peter's and its adjacent buildings occupy the site of the circus and gardens of Nero, in the Campo Vaticano. The obelisk, brought originally from Heliopolis, remained on the spot where it was placed by Caligula until 1586, when Sextus V. removed it to its present place in the centre of the Piazza. I forget who it is that calls architecture "frozen music ;" and it is said of the architect of some famous cathedral, that, “he would sing a hymn in praise of God, and so he built St." How noble is this hymn of the Buonarotti every part comes so melodiously into the whole, that it seems a thoughtcreation, rather than the works of men's hands. The Vatican, which we visited next to St. Peter's, is a congregation of palaces, built at various times. Raffaelle, Bramate, Bernini, San Salta, and many other artists, contributed to its erection. It contains two hundred staircases, and four thousand chambers, each having its name from the painting decorating its walls. The Loggia di Raffaello was constructed by Leo the Tenth, under the direction of the great master whose name it bears. The walls were covered with some of his grandest designs, but during the occupation by the Austrians, many years since, these rooms were converted into barracks by the ruthless soldiery, and these magnificent productions nearly ruined. The Borgia suite was built by Alexander the Sixth, and contains the finest collection of pictures in the world. In it is Raffaelle's great picture of the Transfiguration. have been there but once, and I was so very weary with wandering through the long suites of rooms and climbing the endless staircases, that I have rather confused impressions, even of this stupendous painting. We saw the Laocoon, and the Apollo of Bel We The Vatican-Museum-Parthenon-Shelley's Tomb, &c. 521 videre, standing where Michael Angelo placed it. The pavement of many of the rooms is of the richest mosaics, and the columns are of porphyry, alabaster, lapis lazuli, and Parian marbles. The library of the Vatican contains 30,000 volumes of manuscripts. bability, make the matter worse, so I will only say: Come to Italy, and help me both to admire and to express that admiration. "In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun," We visited, yesterday, the English Burial Ground, which is just out of the city, amid the ruins of Ancient Rome, very near the pyramidal tomb of Caius Cæsar. I sought One of the things that interested me eagerly for Shelley's tomb, that pure apostle most in the Capitoline Museum, which of a mistaken philosophy. As we stood by comes next in the order of our visiting, was the plain tablet that marks the spot where his a collection of slabs brought from the sepul- ashes repose, one of our party repeated "the chres along the Appian way. The inscrip- Sky-lark." I never felt its exquisite beauty tions, in many instances merely ejaculatory half so well before; it is so like the clear, sentences, seemingly rung from the hearts of thrilling melody of the bird it apostrophithe bereaved, in the depth of their grief. ses. We have often said it together, M., in Such as "Carissimæ conjugi," Optimi "The pale purple even,” and filo," "Juliæ sororæ amatæ, hoc saxum cum multis lachrymis, posui." ("To my dear wife," "In memory of the best of sons" In memory of Julia, our dear sister, we have placed this stone, with many tears.") They invested with a new and affectionate interest the people we have called the "stern Romans." Yet they wept as we weep over broken ties, and more bitterly surely, for to them "the grave was all uncertainty and gloom." One apartment of this museum contains the busts of the old emperor of Rome; in another is the "Dying Gladiator." Read Byron's description of this famous statue and you will have the original painted on your mind's eye with perfect accuracy. It was on the Capitoline Mount, you remember, that Cola Di Rienzi, "The last of the Tribunes," was crowned. Aurelian's charger, from which streams of wine poured forth on that day, is still in the centre of the place of the Campidoglio. It is the only extant equestrian statue in bronze left us by antiquity. We have seen also the house of Rienzi. The site is marked by ruinous desolation, and the dwelling itself is a curious specimen of the domestic architecture in Rome in the fourteenth century. The "Parthenon, pride of Rome!" is now the church of St. Maria ad Martyres, and is the only perfect imperial monument now existing. It belongs to the reign of Augustus Cæsar, and over the cornice of the portico, the inscription still remains: "M. Agrippa L. F. Tertium Fecit." You remember that it was the proud boast of Michael Angelo that he would pile the Parthenon on St. Peter's, and the dome of his mighty edifice is just the dimensions of this gem of antiquity. We were shown the original design of the great architect for St. Peter's, in the library of the Vatican; it was in the form of a Grecian cross, with a façade like the Parthenon. I will not weary you by a long description, even of this beautiful temple. for in repeating over so often Corinthian columns, friezes of porphyry, cornices of Parian marbles, and tesselated pavements, one's ideas get so confused; and were I to use the exaggerated epithets that my enthusiasm prompts, they would, in all pro but the familiar words seemed clothed with Percy Bysshe Shelley-" Cor Cordium," Into something rich and strange. You remember that when Leigh Hunt and Lord Byron burned his body by the waters where he met his untimely end, his heart was found unconsumed among the ashes. We have been much interested in exploring some of the subterraneau ruins; among them the baths of Titus. In some of the excavated chambers, the walls are frescoed with forms that have been beautiful, but time's effacing fingers are fast robbing them of form and color. As the torches of our guides glared upon them, ever and anon one would seem starting into life, dim, mysterious, and shadowy. The Laocoon was found in these baths in the time of Julio the Second. You wonder, M, that we selected the summer for visiting the "Eternal City," and have many fears of malaria for us. Our reason was, to avoid the winter crowd of strangers in Rome, and I am more delighted than I can tell you with this avoidance. Tourists there are who come to Italy because it is fashionable,-one's education is scarcely complete without "a season on the conti nent.' And to bring about this properly, there is a certain round prescribed by fashion,-"The Coliseum by moonlight," the "Carnival," the illumination of St. Peter's," at the end of Holy Week, etc., etc., etc. To one whose sense of the ludicrous is keenly developed, and who is willing to sacrifice the beautiful to the humorous, these people may be interesting; but I do not like to have my enthusiasm so rudely dissipated. You will hardly believe it, M-, but I heard one day an oath in St. Peter's! I need scarcely say that it was spoken by an English tongue. The Frenchman's name for the people using our mother tongue is fas |