ture of Jephthah meeting his daughter, which hung opposite. Jephthah, in a very plumy helmet, starting back on very strong legs, I thought very expressive of a father's feelings. His tall daughter, arrayed in a lilac mantle, and pink dress with a long train, immediately became my ideal of unattainable female beauty. The attendant damsel, with her willowy figure and white dress, I thought extremely pretty also; I knew a slender little girl who wore a white dress and blue sash to church, whom she looked very much like.

The next day I made a fine drawing of this picture on our barn door. Jephthah was drawn in a black tunic, with red chalk legs. The daughter's mantle was stained lilac with iris-petals, her train pink with rose ditto. The maiden was drawn in white chalk with bewitching grace. I could not make Jephthah stand very firmly on his legs, and start back at the same time; but Miss Jephthah's train gave great steadiness and composure to her figure. This spirited sketch was the admiration of all the neighboring boys, and they came every day for me to draw them in warlike positions, to represent Jephthah's army standing around him. One day I made a hasty sketch of my dog, Skyblue, in his favorite attitude, and, stepping back to mark the effect, found he was biting the heels of Jephthah. How the boys laughed! I made a new drawing of the anguished father, and greatly improved upon the hands, spreading them out like Mr. Flamdown's, when he was giving the parting blessing to his congregation, only opening the fingers wider to express consternation.

One day one of the boys brought an artist, who was boarding at his house, to look at my frescoes. He laughed, and told me if I would come to his room, he would paint Jephthah for me. With a feeling approaching awe I watched him conjuring into life the well-known forms. Yet I was not wholly satisfied with the result. I thought Jephthah's figure was not thrown back enough to express his emotion with sufficient force, and that the daughter had lost much of her queenliness with her train. The damsel who followed was no longer white, and did not look in the least like Fanny Ann.

Mr. Ochre went away the next day, but left me a few paints and brushes, and told me if I would come to New-York in the winter, he would teach me something. This now became the height of my ambition; and I tried to devise schemes by which I could earn a little money to pay

my board there. some farmer's, and earn good wages by my labor," I told my mother,-I was just twelve years old.

"I could live out at

She smiled, and told me they would only give me my clothes.

"I can draw, and sell my drawings." She smiled again.

"Well, then, after I have improved a little, I can take portraits, and be paid for them."

She smiled approvingly this time, and I felt that my way lay open before me.

I wished to run directly to Fanny Ann's house-into which I had never yet entered-and ask her to sit to me; but I felt a little timid about it. I might not take a good likeness, and she would laugh at me-girls did laugh so! I had better take private sketches of her at church in the hymn-books, I thought, and practise upon my mother first, who immediately proposed putting on her black silk dress, which she had worn for the last ten years on state occasions; but her everyday short-gown would be more picturesque, I thought. She could not be quite reconciled to this. The villagers were accustomed to the black silk, and she thought it due to them and to me that she should be taken in it. However, the portrait was painted in the short-gown; but the villagers never saw much of it. It was not considered a very good likeness, for somehow I got a dark frown about the eyes, and a very dejected expression about the mouth. My mother never frowned, and looked particularly smiling while I was painting her.

I had a hard time of it that winter: so many brave designs launched forth upon the tide of hope, and run aground upon unknown bars. In the summer Mr. Ochre came again and taught me how to steer my way better. He told me that faces should not appear to be pasted flat to the canvas, and that a dark outline all round them was not perfectly true to nature; that lips were not exactly vermilion, nor cheeks pure lake; and eyes were not made of stone; that shadows were not a distinct feature of the face; and lights did not consist entirely of white paint. I learned a wonderful deal from him in a few weeks; and having painted many portraits of the worthy people about me, which sold for two dollars a piece, and scraped together a little money, I went to New-York in the winter with a bounding heart-perfectly conscious that I was the great American genius.

The first thing I did in New-York, after settling myself in the little attic

room Mr. Ochre had engaged for me, was to find my way to a picture gallery. I neither shouted nor jumped when I entered; but was certainly very much dazzled. It was partly the picture frames, I thought -they were so very bright. I immediately saw the importance of gilt frames, and that without one no painting could be of any value. I wondered how much they cost, and whether I could afford to buy one for my portrait of Fanny Ann, which I had brought to the city with me. I knew at once there was no painting in the gallery equal to that; and walked along with the proud consciousness that I was the creator of that gem, which only needed a fine frame to be instantly brought down from my attic, into the public gaze, for the delight of every one. However, I did pause a moment before one little head -the head of a child with a smile in her eyes, and life upon her lips. I looked into the catalogue to be sure that it was good. It was by Copley. "An oldfashioned painter," I thought. "I shall do better things soon."

Then I came to a young lady in a green dress and black waist, turning her head towards the spectator, and stepping into a brook. "Excellent!" I exclaimed. "That looks a little like Jephthah's daughter, only she is not quite so tall." Then came a very puzzling head: I could not tell to what race it belonged-"Indian, I suppose." It was named, "Portrait of Judge G." He could not have been an Indian; it must be the shadows. What infatuated young artist could have sent that here?" Then came two little girls holding a kitten between them. Sweet little innocents! That looked like one of my own pictures, and I looked for the name: "Infancy, by P. Pinkall.”

"I shall certainly make Mr. Pinkall's acquaintance," I thought. Then came a young lady looking over her shoulder in the loveliest manner. Such golden hairsuch blue veins-such a rose-tint on the

cheek-such heavenly eyes! Such a transparent creature altogether! I stood enraptured: that was better than Fanny Ann. "Fancy head, by T. Sully," I found it to be. "Oh, what a fancy!" I exclaimed, in boyish enthusiasm, "That I can never surpass."

A young man was copying it, and I immediately resolved that I would do the same. Mr. Ochre came into the gallery at that moment, and I hastened to meet him. "I have found the most exquisite painting!" I exclaimed, leading him eagerly towards it, "and I know you will approve of my copying it."

"What, that waxy little thing," he said. "My dear child, do you not know better than that, after all my instructions?" and he took me back to the head by Copley, and told me I might copy that if I could. "But you had better not copy any thing," he added-"draw from nature, my boy. Go on as you have begun, only do not make your faces pink and white, and get Fanny Ann out of your mind as fast as you can." I wondered how he knew that I thought about Fanny Ann; I had never mentioned her name but twice in his presence, and then almost in a whisper.

So I went to Mr. Ochre's studio every day and Irish boys were hired from the street to sit for me and the other pupils. Very unfit subjects for my brush I thought them, until I chanced to see a picture of a beggar boy by Murillo, and then they rose in my esteem. I had heard that Murillo was a very great genius, and if he painted beggar boys, why should not I?

Well, I painted Irish boys and German boys, until I knew I had learned all I could from Mr. Ochre, and that it was time for me to set up my own studio, and patronize American ladies-immortalize them as only a genius can. "R. Gumbo, Portrait Painter," was the golden name upon the sign that decked one corner of a doorway, which led to a flight of stairs, which led to another flight of stairs, and so on to the fourth story, where I sat in state, awaiting my unknown visitors. My studio was furnished with a skylight, an easel, an old shawl with a very effective border, covering a table on which stood a torso, a small Venus, a chair for the sitter, and two for friends, a lay figure, six new, suggestive canvases, and my paint brushes. Now, I am ready!" Î exclaimed, wielding my maul-stick and making a thrust at the portrait of an Irish boy eating an apple. "My dear little fellow, you will soon see what beauty and grace will appear." I had gone to my studio at nine o'clock-I stayed until dark: I ate two crackers for dinner, and an apple, like the Irish boy, and nobody came. I wondered at it very much. Two of my best portraits were in the Exhibition, and I thought the public were dying to be taken. "But they cannot know I am here," I meditated. “One little sign in a city full of signs attracts no attention. I ought to advertise my number; but advertising is so expensive. I wish some one would buy my pictures in the Exhibition; but there is no love for art in this country. Rosewood and buhl

They are devoted to the dollar, it is true, but they are apt also to spend the dollar in a liberal manner. Their activity in the various spheres of intellectual and benevolent enterprise is not a whit less remarkable than their physical activity. They take care of their unfortunate brothers, of the insane, the idiotic, the mute, the criminal, and the poor (of the latter of whom they have happily fewer than any other nation) with as sedulous a care, and as generous a provision, as the most advanced people in Christendom; they print and read an incredible number of books, and fifty-fold more journals and magazines than any other people; while in respect to education and religion, their efforts, because they are voluntary, put to shame those of other people. Take a few statistics in regard to the latter points. They show that a large proportion of the children of the United States of a suitable age are in attendance upon schools. The whole number is 4,089,507-of which 4,063,046 are whites-26,461 free colored -3,942,681 are natives-147,426 are foreigners. The number of males is 2,146,432, and of females 1,916,614. Of the whole, New-York is set down for 692,321. Ohio comes next with 514,309. Pennsylvania follows with 509,610.

The total number of Colleges in the United States is 234. Number of teachers 1,651; pupils, 27,159. Annual income

$1,916,628. The total number of Academies and Seminaries in the United States is 6,032. Number of teachers 12,207; pupils 261,362. Annual income $4,663,842. Besides these, there are 80,991 Public Schools, which are attended by 3,354,173 scholars.

The whole number of periodicals in the world are distributed in this proportion. Asia 34, Africa 14, Europe 1094, America 3000, of which 2800 are printed in the United States, and have an annual circulation of 422,600,000 copies, or, taking the account of the leading states and empires only, the numbers stand: Austria 10, Spain 24, Portugal 20, Belgium 65, France 269, Switzerland 39, Denmark 85, Russia and Poland 90, the German States 320, Great Britain and Ireland 519, the New England States 424, Middle States 876, Southern States 716, and the Western States 784. It will thus be seen that the newspapers are a pretty good comparative index of civilization, for just in the degree in which we average from the more despotic and stationary conditions of society, we find these means of intellectual intercourse and entertainment increasing in number, the United States and Great

Britain standing first on the list, and Austria and Russia the last.

Then, again, as to churches, it appears that there are 36,221, exclusive of the territories and California, or one church for every 557 free inhabitants, or one for every 646 of the entire population, with a total value of Church property to the amount of $86,416,639. We might append as appropriate here, the returns of the libraries, the lyceums, the scientific associations, and the various charitable and religious societies, but that we feel that our readers have had a sufficiency of figures.

Now, all these results are highly gratifying; but why are they so? Is it because we Americans have a silly schoolboy vanity, as it is sometimes charged, in the magnitude of our wealth and power? Not at all,-if we understand the spirit of those who rejoice with us,-not at all! We have other and better motives; we exult, because these facts confirm, by an irrefragable and resistless demonstration, the political theories to which we are devoted; because they prove the great and vital truth of the necessary connection between a democratic constitution of society and the welfare of the whole people. A controversy is now going forward, among the nations of Christendom, as to the respective merits of a liberal and despotic system of government, and we throw our experience, with all its grand results, into the liberal scale. We say to the absolutist who distrusts the people, who fancies that governments were made to rule one class of men with a rod of iron, and to support another in luxurious authority, "come and see!" Behold a people who govern themselves, making Justice and Freedom the ends of their institutions, allowing to all the choice of what they shall do and think; and behold, too, the beneficent effects! The facts are before you, and judge for yourselves; but do not suppose that in making the exhibit we are moved by an inordinate and foolish pride."

The secret of the prosperity and growth of the United States, it cannot be too often repeated, is in its social and political constitution. By ordaining justice as the single object of its government, and securing to the masses the most unlimited freedom of action, they have unsealed the fountains of human progress, they have solved that problem of social destiny. which has puzzled philosophers so long, and revealed to mankind, the momentous but simple truth, that just in the degree in which you reduce to practical applica

tion, the golden rule of Christian equity, "Do unto others as you would be done by," you win from Heaven all its richest temporal and spiritual blessings.

The operation of the law is this; that, in restricting the political power to its legitimate function of maintaining justice among men, you generate in each individual, a perfect sense of the security of his person and property; he is made certain of the reward of his labor, and he applies himself in the most effective manner to multiply his necessaries and comforts; he enriches the community by enriching himself; his accumulations become the seed of future accumulations; while, being thrown upon his own resources, not only for his maintenance, but his position in life, he exerts his every faculty to the highest degree, to improve his state. He tasks his ingenuity to increase production; -to invent machines, to facilitate processes to economize time, in short, to make the most, both of himself and his opportunities. An English gentleman, one of the Commissioners to the Crystal Palace, observed to a friend of ours, that the fact which had impressed him most strongly, in reference to the industry of the Americans, was not its activity so much as its indescribable knowingness, its ability to meet all emergencies, its readiness under difficulties, its quick facility in applying means to ends. "You have a thousand little convenient contrivances, in all departments of arts, and even in all the appliances of living, that we know nothing about, and should never have devised." In other words, we may say that the quality of our labor is better than that of the people with whom government or society perpetually interferes, and consequently more effective. It realizes more than any other labor from the same expenditure of means. The Greeks and Romans we are told valued the labor of a slave at half that of a freeman, and we know the reason of it; for as Homer himself sings,

"The day, That makes man slave, takes half his worth away." But there is another effect of that security and freedom of labor, that springs from just government,--pointed out by Mr. Carey, which, in our opinion, is the most important truth contributed to Political Economy since the days of Adam Smith. It is this, that where the industry of society is left to its own development, while the gross product of it is increased, a larger proportion of it goes to the laborer, and a diminished proportion to the capitalist; whereby the value of the laborer constantly rises, the number of the unpro

ductive classes grows smaller, a greater equality of conditions is produced, and all men are stimulated through hope, to the improvement of their intellectual and social condition. The misery of the older nations is that the earnings of industry are distributed, by means of the innumerable interferences of laws and institutions, with the most flagrant want of justice. The working class, which is the most effective of all the agencies concerned in the production of it gets the least part, while the capitalist, and the official functionaries take the rest. Thus, the stimulus to active industry is so far forth withdrawn, overgrown fortunes concentrate in particular families, and an excessive expenditure, going to support large classes in idleness or sinecureships, debauches the action of government.

The

In the United States, on the contrary, the share of the laborer in every joint product, increases relatively; he is enabled to rise in his condition, to take one step upward, and, with every generation, to devote a larger portion of his time and means to the improvement of his mind, and the refinement of his tastes. consequence is, that society, as a whole, is levelled upwards; the few are not pulled down, but the many are elevated; the circle of intelligence and culture widens, and the disposition as well as the means, for patronizing art and promoting charity, become the common privileges of larger and larger numbers, instead of being the prerogatives of a favored minority. Moralists, therefore, are short-sighted, who lament what they esteem to be the excessive devotion of our people to practical life; for, it is a precursor of their general enlightenment and elevation. It is preparing the masses, in spite of all the apparent materialism and worldliness of the process, for a higher civilization. It is multiplying their wants and their methods of satisfying them, which are both elements of a larger and better life. Consider the demand for books, and generally the best books,-for music, and the best music, for lectures, and the best lectures, -in short, for all kinds of intellectual and moral incitation,-how it is diffusing itself through all classes of our people, in the midst of the tremendous bustle of work and trade! Where is there a nation in which the masses of the community have a more living and growing interest in whatever gives dignity and grace to human relations? Have the towns of New England a parallel, for intellectual activity and moral integrity, in Europe? Yet the towns in New England are

more and more imitated in the Middle States, at the West, and even under a different social system of the South. Cherish no fears, then, oh apprehensive friends! for you may rest assured, that democracy is spreading the noblest influences of art, knowledge, and religion along with an unprecedented material development. The house that is a building," quoth Carlyle, "is not the house that is built," and a wise man beholds through the smut and rubbish that encumber the scaffolding the fair proportions of the finished edifice.

But the most striking fact of our growth is its tendency to a more beneficent and harmonious social union. The physical aspects of the Continent, as we have already seen, point the way to this end,-the mobile and enterprising character of our people looks in the same direction; the prodigious multiplication of the mere mechanical means of intercourse promote it; the common legislation of the central

government cherishes a common national spirit, while the general sentiment of the popular heart, in spite of political prejudices or local estrangements, which are few and temporary, is melting the entire nation into a close and fraternal unity. Every day, in the face of that powerful expansive movement which carries us over the broad territories of the West, and to the unoccupied or misused lands of the South, we are getting nearer to each other in space, and drawing nearer to each other in mutual respect and affection. We are thus exemplifying that process which is the distinguishing mark of the highest civilization, viz., the growth of a more and more complex association among men ; and we are also reaching forward towards the ideal of a true Christian life, according to that beautiful image of the Scriptures drawn from the harmonious workings of the natural body, which represents mankind as "members one of another," in a spirit of universal fellowship and peace.

ON the 20th of May, A. D., 1852, I was

pursuing my slow and somewhat devious course across the unbroken wilderness which lies between our Western frontier and California. Who I am is of no particular consequence, as this I is a very vague, commonplace, generic sort of character, in the commencement of a story, that may even feel flattered if he has succeeded in throwing around himself any individual interest at its conclusion. As the motives, however, which impel a man to such a journey, and the objects he has in view, seem to come more within the range of a natural curiosity, and may serve to give a coloring to the incidents of his story, it will perhaps be expected that I admit the reader to my confidence in this respect.

First, then, negatively, I was on no tour of exploration or scientific discovery. I had not sold, or-what is the same thing -mortgaged a good farm in the settled States to purchase a square rod of claim in the El Dorado. I had not set out with the "sink or swim, live or die " determination of making a fortune. I can only

SPENSER'S Fairy Queen.

plead guilty, in this particular, to the indistinct vision of a "pile," which every one who turns his face towards the land of golden hills and auriferous streams has floating before his imagination. In the second place, positively, if I can bring out of the haze of memory what was then not very distinct in my consciousness, the only motives which I can specify-though it is not a very satisfactory account to give of myself-were curiosity and the love of adventure. I should, perhaps, add an unsettled state of mind caused by domestic circumstances, with which you, dear reader, have no concern, and which I now wonder had then such power to move

me.

I had already, in my short life, twice been to California-once by the way of the Isthmus, and, years before its golden mines were discovered, I had visited the then unimportant town of San Francisco -but I had never travelled in the deep solitude of vast prairies and rugged mountains, thousands of miles from the haunts of civilization. I had never been in the lodge of the Pawnee, the Sioux, the Oma