trouble." "Well," says I, "Gineral, that's true enuff, and that's jest the way we are doin now with the minister to England, and some other appointments; we must keep the folks smellin round, and one vacancy to fill," says I, "is worth a dozen filled up." "But, Major, that ain't the worst trouble now," says the Gineral; and he got up and stomped about, and then came back and filled his pipe, and stomped about agin, without lightin it. I see there was trouble brewin.

""Do you know," says he, "Major, that some of these fellows about me here, had the impudence to tell me tother day, I was runnin the risk of bein turned out of the White House?” “ Why," says I, "you don't say so?" "Yes," says he, "it's a fact; but," says he, "Major, they don't know nothin about racoon huntin." "No," says I, "nor skunkin neither." And then he and I turned to, and told stories one arter another about racoonin and skunkin. I expect my next will be a Proclamation, but I don't know. We are putty busy about everything.'-pp. 93, 94.

We must now drop the personal adventures of the Gineral and his subalterns, and afford our readers a specimen or two of the style in which Major Downing is made to expound questions of political economy to the Yankee public. English people may be surprised to find that some of the subjects most dwelt upon should have been thought to require any elucidation at all; but the author of the Stranger in America' has various anecdotes which prove that the small Yankee farmers are to this day in a state of the most primeval ignorance as to matters, even money matters, which one would have supposed must be thoroughly understood wherever the English language, even in the most abominable of its dialects, is spoken. We begin with a colloquy, which occurs at an early period of the bank affair, between a knowing stickler for the old system, Ezekiel Bigelow by name, and our friend the Major, who, at this particular time, shows some symptoms of abjuring the Movement.

Says I," Zekel, we must spring to it, and let the Gineral know, as soon as we can, all about mony matters here." "Well," says he, " Major, I'll tell you putty much all about it; and its jest as true now as the sun." And with that he slick'd his hair down from his eye-brows clean to the eend of his kew, and went at it. Zekel has got a curious notion of tellin a thing-he begins away back to a-b-abb's, and then he comes up along, and ev'ry once and a while he gives his head and hair a slicken down, and he is so earnest, and looks as if he could see right through an inch plank. I couldn't tell you one half he said, if I was to write a week about it. I'll ony tell you a little here and therehe says there is two kinds of mony; hard mony and paper mony. One is always good; and the other is sometimes good, and then agin it ain't good for nothin. He says, there is jist about so much hard mony all the while-and it keeps goin round and round, all about

creation;

creation; and they git the most on't who are the most industrious and cute in inventin things. He says that paper mony is jest as good, and a leetle better than hard mony, if folks don't shell out too much on't: and the natur of paper-mony makers is always to git off as much as they can, and if it warn't for somethin to check it, it would be as bad as old continental times.

'He says, there is two ways to make mony scarce-one is by sendin hard mony away out of the country, to pay for notions we can't pay for any other way; and the other is, by sending Amos Kindle round tellin folks "The Government" is goin to do something, folks don't know exactly what, nor he nuther. Then ev'rybody grabs all he can git, and holds on; and things are jest as bad as if there wasn't " no money:" and then the brokers go at it, and lather and shave;-says they, can only give you a little". hard times"-the fellows figer interest for an hour as easy as nothin, and jest so with the pottecarys -only tell the folks kolery is comin, and they go at it mixin paragoric and kamfire, and chalk it up like gold dust. Zekel says on the hull, that mony matters, and banks, and trade, is all as curious as one of Bissel's clocks; and folks hadn't ought to meddle in regelatin or alterin on't, without knowin all, about it. "And now," says he, "Major, I'm a good mind to spile my watch, to show you my notion why I think trouble will come if the Gineral nocks down the U. S. bank." Zekel is one of them 'ere folks, and always was, who would spile a horn, or make a spoon; and with that he out with his old watch, as big as a tea-cup, wound her up, and then clapt her to my "She is as true," says he, "as the tides." He then opened it "Now," says he, "Major, do you see that 'ere chain pullin all the while? and then do you see a lot of leetle wheels, and springs, and screws? And here on top is a big wheel, that's all the while goin round one way, and back agin, and jest so fast and no faster-that's the clicker," says he, "and if it warn't for that, you'd see trouble in it, and I'll show you-but I know it will all go to bits"-and so he twitched out the big wheel, and the old watch did whiz, I tell you. Some of them leetle wheels went so fast, you couldn't see nothin. One keel'd up, and another got some teeth nock'd out-she stopp'd a spell, then a spring snapp'd, and whiz it went agin, and the splinters flew, and by-and-by it all stopp'd; and Zekel gin his kew another slicken-and says he, "Major, we've spil'd the old watch; but I don't value the loss on't, seeing you got a notion by it"—and with that he scraped it all together, and wrapp'd it up in the Washington Globe" there," says he, "Major, send that to The Government,' and tell the Gineral there is more there than folks think on, who want to meddle with banks and mony matters; and to-morrow we'll go into Wall-street, and you'll see all I tell'd you is jest so❞—and then we took a glass of switchel and went to bed.'

ear.

Into Wall-street they went accordingly; and then follows a most rich account of the conversation that there took place between Squire Biddle, the President of the United States' Bank, and

the

the envoy of the great President of the United States themselves : we must be contented with a fragment of it :

666 Now," says I," Mr. Biddle, I've got one more question to put to you, and then I'm through. You say your bills are better than hard dollars; this puzzles me, and the Gineral too.-Now how is this?" "Well," says he, " Major, I'll tell you; suppose you have a bushel of potatoes in Downingville, and you wanted to send them to Washington, how much would it cost you to get them there?" "Well," says I, "about two shillins lawful--for I sent a barrel there to the Gineral last fall, and that cost me dollar freight." "Well," says he, "suppose I've got potatoes in Washington jist as good as yours, and I take your potatoes in Downingville, and give you an order to receive a bushel of potatoes in Washington, wouldn't you save two shillings lawful by that? We sometimes charge," says he, "a trifle for drafts when the places are distant, but never as much as it would cost to carry the dollars:" and with that we looked into the accounts agin, and there it was. Says I," Squire Biddle, I see it now as clear as a whistle."

"But" (says he) "some on you say the bank has too much power, and that Squire Biddle might do a good deal of mischief if he would. Well there is my old friend Capt. Elihu S. Bunker, of the steamboat President, runnin twixt New York and Providence-he's got about sich another monster-there is no tellin what a "dangerous monopoly" of power that crittur's got in that ere boat. If he was to fasten down the kivers of them two mortal big copper kittles, and blow his bellesses a spell, he would smash everything for more than fifty acres round. Does anybody want to know why he don't do it?-he has ben in a steam-boat as long as the Bank's ben goin, and hain't scalded nobody -but he can do it in a minit if he chuses. Well, I'll tell you why he don't-it ain't his interest. Capt. Bunker knows, if he hurts anybody with his boat, he'd run a chance of hurtin himself too."'—p. 177.

We have not room for more specimens and those which we have given, our choice being necessarily influenced by considerations of brevity, will, we fear, afford a very inadequate notion of Major Downing's merits. We hope some London bookseller may think it worth his while to reprint the volume as it stands—not forgetting the wood-cuts.

ART. VI-Principles of Geology: being an Inquiry how far the former changes of the Earth's Surface are referable to causes now in operation. By Charles Lyell, Esq., F.R.S., President of the Geological Society of London. Third Edition. In 4 vols.

THE

12mo. 1835.

HE publication of a third edition of Mr. Lyell's Principles of Geology' reminds us of our having omitted as yet to notice the concluding volume of the first edition. In remarking, there

fore,

fore, the improvements which the work exhibits in its new dress, we shall take occasion to comment on the matter of the latter part of the book, which has hitherto not been approached by us.

The appearance of this work will always form an epoch in the history of geology. Up to that time the doctrine which supposed an order of things to have anciently prevailed entirely different from the present-which assumed the causes of change, whether of a destroying or productive character, actually in progress on the surface of the globe, to be utterly inadequate to explain, scarcely even to illustrate, the earlier changes of which that surface exhibits such striking traces the doctrine which referred all these latter phenomena to vaguely-imagined revolutions and convulsions, deluges or cataclysms (as they were styled), proper to the infancy of the globe, when

'Nature

Wanton'd as in her prime, and played at will
Her virgin fancies,'-

this doctrine held almost undisputed sway in the geological circles.
The powerful arguments brought forward by Professor Playfair in
support of the undiminished vigour of the natural causes still in
operation, were slighted by many as the rhapsodies of a romance-
writer, rather than the authorized speculations of a man of science.
In our assumed ignorance of the order of things which prevailed
in early geological periods, inquiries into causes were too often
discountenanced, and, in short, the science of the history of the
globe had shrunk into little else than a barren descriptive arrange-
ment of the rocks which coat our planet, their superficial extent
and relative superposition. Perhaps, however, this was the best
thing that could have happened. The earlier geologists, in their
ardour for explaining every thing, had neglected to make them-
selves sufficiently acquainted with the facts to be explained. It
was well for the science, that for a time theory was tabooed by
common consent, and the indefatigable labours of its votaries con-
fined to the laying up a store of materials for some comprehensive
mind to work upon at a later period.
The foundation was in fact
thus laid by Messrs. Greenough, MacCulloch, Buckland, Cony-
beare, and other active members of the Geological Society, for the
building which Mr. Lyell, in a happy moment, undertook to raise.
Thinking, apparently, that the ground had been sufficiently pre-
pared for the purpose, and warmed by the descriptions brought
from the continent by Scrope, Daubeny, and other writers, of the
vast powers of destruction and reproduction now in activity among
the volcanized districts of the south of Europe, and of those extinct
volcanoes which offer the intervening link between the products
of recent eruption and the trap-rocks of earlier ages, he applied

himself

himself to the elucidation of the existing causes of change, and of their probable influence on the older geological formations, with an industry and research* which, being joined to the happiest powers of description and command of language, have enabled him to produce a work not only of the highest interest to the scientific world, but of the most popular and fascinating nature to the general reader.

For who is there that does not feel an intense interest in the study of those operations which are going forward before our eyes in the workshop of nature-operations of the minutest as of the grandest character, from the rolling of a pebble to the destruction of a coast-from the formation of a sand-bank to the foundation of a continent-from the rise of a bubble of gas in a mineral source to the elevation of a mountain? Who does not find a pleasure in thus watching nature in the very act of creation, and in examining the results of her similar labours through past ages, which, as we gaze, retire from our eager sight in endless perspective?

If the contemplation of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, as they now show themselves in all their rich and varied profusion, is an employment gratifying to almost every mind, surely it is not less so to study the changes which organized existence seems gradually to have undergone in the lapse of countless centuriesto ransack the sepulchres of former races, and trace the progressive extinction of old and appearance of entirely new speciesto picture to ourselves, as the study of Mr. Lyell's work enables us to do with something like confidence, the geography of our continents before one half of their present area had emerged from the deep, their form and structure, the character of their vegetation, and the figures and habits of the living beings that roamed over their surface or gambolled in their waters,

'Ere Adam was, or Eve the apple ate.'

If the moral and economical history of man be supremely interesting to all his family, it must be a subject, of minor perhaps, but still of intense curiosity, to ascertain the leading facts in the history of the globe which has been given to him as his residence, and of which he seems to consider himself the proprietor-to discover through what changes its surface had been brought at length into a fit state for his reception, and by what succession of secondary causes its Great Author and Designer gradually moulded and fashioned it to his use.

In the dedication and preface to his third volume, Mr. Lyell acknowledges with warm gratefulness his obligations to Mr. Murchison, who accompanied him in the earlier parts of his continental investigation, and materially contributed to his accounts of Auvergne, the Velay, and Piedmont.

We