SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

Taivars,

Americo Notes for General Circulation. By Charles Dickens. In two Volumes. Hurroar, Chapman and Hall. Polynesia: or, an Historical Account of the Principal Islands in the South Sea, in_ eluding New Zealand; the Introduction of Christianity; and the actual Condition of the Inhabitants in regard to Civilization, Commerce. and the Arts of Soviet Life. By the Right Reverend M. Russell, LLD. and D.C.L., (of St. John's Col- lege, Oxford); Author of " View of Ancient and Modern Egypt," &e. &c. With a map and vignettes. (Edinburgh Cabinet Library. No. XXXIII.) SzooRAPHy, Oliver and Boyd. Edinburgh; Sinsphin and Marshall. Life and Poetical Remains of Margaret M. Davidson. By Washington Irving. Tilt and Bogue.

MR. DICKENS'S AMERICAN NOTES FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION.

Tam publication rather runs rapidly over the American tour of Mr. DICKENS, including his steam-boat passage out and his voyage home in a New York liner, than presents any thing like a picture of American character and society. Nor was the tour itself of any new- ness. Landing at Boston in January, and lingering there the best part of a month, seeing all its sights, including a visit to the factory- town of Lowell, our author proceeded to New York, and thence through Philadelphia to Washington. The first intention of Mr. DICKENS was to travel to the South, in order to examine the work- ings of slavery with his own eyes : but the weather was getting very warm—he had some doubts whether he should be permitted to see the arcana—time, moreover, was pressing : he therefore travelled to Richmond in Virginia, and then turning back retraced his steps to Baltimore ; whence he crossed the Alleghenies by canal and railway to Pittsburg, and proceeded by steam-boat on the western rivers to St. Louis, the last city of civilization. Here he made an excursion to the Prairies ; and, after gazing and dining, returned to St. Louis, and back again to Cincinnati ; whence he made his way across the country to Niagara, looked in upon Toronto, Kingston, Montreal, and Quebec ; and then returning to New York, embarked for England. In its structure the book is a book of travels ; the places visited being more or less described, the public buildings and institutions taken in the order of their locality, and the whole work being a conti- nuous narrative, though the lapse of time is not very distinctly noted. Essentially, however, the book is a series of sketches; de- scribing, not all the author saw, (for his public receptions are left unnoticed, and his private proceedings only mentioned generally,) nor much even of what he must have seen, but only such bits as he thought likely to make effective " Notes for General Circulation." As far as a couple of light and readable volumes may go, this purpose is accomplished. The Notes are lively, rapid, and sometimes graphic, with occasional touches of the ludicrous, and a good many reflective passages exhibiting what the special admirers of the writer call his " fine humanity." We should not, however, cite the American Notes for General Circulation as displaying the best examples of Mr. DICKENS'S composition. Too much of the bookmaker is visible, especially in the chapters called " Going Away " and " The Passage Out," descriptive of his leave-taking and his voyage : his reflections on the contrasts and characters of human society seem less to emanate from the heart than the head; the liveliness often looks forced, the energy galvanic ; and an artificial smartness of style raises a frequent doubt in the mind as to how far the particular representation can be relied upon. Com- pared with other writers, we doubt whether these sketches can be pronounced successful, or likely to advance the reputation of Mr. DICKENS. His descriptions are not equal to those of MARRYAT in quiet humour and natural strength ; whilst his more ambitious scenes or incidents are much inferior to those of Sam Slick in genuine character, vigour, and effect. The most positive fault of the book is want of distinctiveness. The general manner is that of Boz, excepting where he seems to imitate THEODORE HOOK ; but there is no new phase of American society or American character presented, though a more vivid im- pression of the known may be produced by the are scribendi of DICK- ENS,—as in the description of the water of the Mississippi. Of course, to those who know nothing about the subject, (and many such per- sons will peruse these volumes,) there will appear a good deal of information ; but those who happen to be well read in Transatlan- tic travels will scarcely have a new image presented to their minds, or be able to deduce a new idea. The only points that struck us as having anything like novelty are-1. The picture of the winter- landscape in Boston and its neighbourhood, as regards the unsub- stantial and theatrical aspect of the wooden buildings; but we doubt its strict truth, and suspect that a portion of the scene-painting effect belongs to the mind of the describer. 2. A visit to the " back- slums " of New York, which Mr. DICKENS made in company with two of the police. 3. The system of solitary imprisonment is brought out with more fearful, if with more melodramatic forc?, than by other writers. 4. The American practice of spitting Is described with more detail than late writers have bestowed upon the topic ; though, if our memory serves us, Mrs. TROLLOPE was equally elaborate of yore. 5. Mr. DICKENS rather depreciates the Missis- sippi; not differing from others as to its features, but as to its general effect. In his visit to the Boston Asylum for the Blind, there is an account of a girl, blind, deaf, dumb, and without the sense of smell, which is metaphysically curious, and humanly touching ; this, however, is not written by Mr. DICKENS, but by Dr. Howe, a medical officer of the institution. The facts m the chapter on Slavery are all drawn from advertisements and reports of brawls in the Southern newspapers ; and the comments or decla- motion of Mr. DICKENS upon the text are more intense than those of BUCKISOMAM, STURGB, or GURNEY, who had some actual ac- quaintance with systems of slavery : but Mr. DICKENS offers no practical suggestion, or indeed suggestion of any kind—it is mere attack. Probably the most distinctive trait in the work is per- sonal. Mr. DICKENS seems but a young traveller ; and the dis- comforts of a ship, which SHAKSPERE used as an image of fearful limitation— " cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd, bound in "—struck him with wonder; the various disturbances of a gale, with something more than wonder ; and he looked upon a " corduroy road" as an unheard-of monster, though familiar to all American travellers and readers of travels. Beginning our extracts with the beginning, here is an example of the last trait we mentioned, from " The Passage Out."

A FRESH-WATER SAILOR'S DESCRIPTION OF A GALE.

The labouring of the ship in the troubled sea on this night I shall never forget. "Will it ever be worse than this ?" was a question I had often heard asked, when every thing was sliding and bumping about, and when it certainly did seem difficult to coniprehend the possibility of any thing afloat being more disturbed, without toppling over and going down. But what the agitation of a steam- vessel is on a bad winter's night in the wild Atlantic, it is impossible for the most vivid imagination to conceive. To say that she is flung down on her side in the waves, with her masts dipping into them, and that, springing up again, she rolls over on the other side, until a heavy sea qtrikes her with the noise of a hundred great guns, and hurls her back—that she stops, and staggers, and shivers, as though stunned, and then, with a violent throbbing at her heart, darts onward like a Monster goaded into madness to be beaten down, and bat- tered, and crushed, and leaped on by the angry. sea—that thunder, lightning, hail, and rain, and wind, are all in fierce contention for the mastery—that every plank has its groan, every nail its shriek, and every drop of water in the great ocean its howling voice—is nothing. To say that all is grand, and all appal- ling and horrible in the last degree, is nothing. Words cannot express it. Thoughts cannot convey it. Only a dream can call it up again, in all its fury,

rage, and passion. •• • •

Of the outrageous antics performed by that ship next morning—which made bed a practical oke, and getting up, by any process short of falling out, an impossibility—I say nothing. But any thing like the utter dreariness and de- solation that met my eyes when I literally "tumbled up" on deck at noon, I never saw. Ocean and sky were all of one dull, heavy, uniform, lead colour. There was no extent of prospect even over the dreary waste that lay around us; for the sea ran high, and the horizon encompassed us like a large black hoop. Viewed from the air, or some tall bluff on shore, it would have been im- posing and stupendous, no doubt ; but seen from the wet and rolling decks, it only impressed one giddily and painfully. In the gale of last night, the life-boat had been crushed by one blow of the sea like a walnut-shell, and there it hung dangling in :Ile air—a ir,re fagot of crazy boards. The planking of the paddle-boxes bad been torn sheer away. The wheels were exposed and bare; and they whirled and dashed their spray about the decks at random. Chimney, white with crusted salt ; topmasts struck ; storm-sails set ; rigging all knotted, tangled, wet, and drooping : a gloomier picture it would be hard to look upon.

Enough of the sea : let us take one of the earliest sketches ashore, in which the art of the artist is quite as conspicuous as the subjects of his pen.

BOSTON, BY BOZ.

When I got into the streets upon this Sunday morning, the air was so clew the houses were so bright and gay—the signboards were painted in such gaudy colours—the gilded letters were so very golden—the bricks were so very red, the stone was so very white, the blinds and area-railings were so very green, the knobs and plates upon the street-doors so marvellously bright and twink- ling—and all so slight and unsubstantial in appearance—that every thorough- fare in the city looked exactly like a scene in a pantomime. It rarely happens in the business streets that a tradesman, if I may venture to call anybody a tradesman where everybody is a merchant, resides above his store; so that many occupations are often carried on in one house, and the whole front is covered with boards and inscriptions. As I walked along, 1 kept glancing up at these boards, confidently expecting to see a few of them change into some- thing; and I never turned a corner suddenly without looking cut for the Clown and Pantaloon, who, I had no doubt, were hiding in a doorway or behind some pillar close at hand. As to Harlequin and Columbine, I discovered immediately that they lodged (they are always looking after lodgings in a pantomime) at a very small clockmaker's, one story high, near the hotel; which, in addition to vari- ous symbols and devices, almost covering the whole front, had a great dial hanging out—to be jumped through, of course. - The suburbs are, if possible, even more unsubstantial-looking than the city. The white wooden houses, (so white that it makes one wink to look at them,) with their green jalousie-blinds, are so sprinkled and dropped about in all direc- tions, without seeming to have any root at all in the ground—and the small churches and chapels are so prim, and bright, and highly varnished—that I almost believed the whole affair could be taken up piecemeal like a child's toy, and crammed into a little box.

The following picture, besides its positive novelty, and its adap- tation to the delineator's pencil, possesses a further value in helping to dissipate a notion entertained by many, that whatever coarse- ness may be found in the American States, they are free from the squalid misery and vice of European cities.

THE BACK-SLUMS OF NEW YORK.

Let us go on again ; and, passing this wilderness of an hotel with stores about its base, like some Continental theatre, or the London Opera-house shorn of its colonnade, plunge into the Five Points. But it is needful, first, that we take as our escort these two heads of the Police; whom you would know for sharp and well-trained officers if you met them in the Great Desert. So true it is, that certain pursuits, wherever carried on, will stamp men with the same character. These two might have been begotten, born, and bred in Bow Street.

We have seen no beggars in the streets by night or day ; but of other kinds of strollers, plenty. Poverty, wretchedness, and vice, are rife enough where we are going now.

This is the place ; these narrow ways, diverging to the right and left, and reeking everywhere with dirt and filth. Such lives as are led here bear the same fruits here as elsewhere. The coarse and bloated faces at the doors have counterparts at home, and all the wide world over. Debauchery has made the very houses prematurely old, See how the rotten beams are tumbling down, and how the patched and broken windows seem to scold dimly, like eyes that

have been hurt in drunken frays. • •

What place is this, to which this squalid street conducts us ? A kind of square of leprous houses, some of which are attainable only by crazy wooden stairs without. What lies beyond this tottering flight of steps, that creak be- neath our tread ? a miserable room, lighted by one dim candle, and destitute of all comfort, save that which may be hidden ut a wretched bed. Beside it sits a man, his elbows on his knees, his forehead hidden in his hands. " What ails that man I" asks the foremost officer. " Fever," he sullenly replies, with- out looking up. Conceive the fancies of a fevered brain, in such a place as this !

Ascend these pitch-dark stairs, heedful of a false footing on the trembling boards, and grope your way with me into this wolfish den, where neither ray of light nor breath of air, appears to come. A Negro lad, startled from his sleep by the officer's voice; he knows it well; but comforted by his assurance that he has not come on business, officiously bestirs himself to light a candle. The match flickers for a moment, and shows great mounds of dusky rags upon the ground; then dies away, and leaves a denser darkness than before, it there can be degrees in such extremes. He stumbles down the stairs, and presently comes back, shading a flaring taper with his hand. Then the mounds of rags are seen to be astir, and rise slowly up ; and the floor is covered with heaps of Negro women, waking from their sleep ; their white teeth chattering, and their bright eyes glistening and winking on all sides with surprise and fear, like the countless repetition of one astonished African face in some strange mirror. Mount up these other stairs with no less caution (there are traps and pitfalls here for those who are not so well escorted as ourselves) into the house-top, where the bare beams and rafters meet overhead, and calm night looks down through the crevices in the roof. Open the door of one of these cramped hutches, full of sleeping Negroes. Pak ! They have a charcoal fire within ; there is a smell of singeing clothes or flesh, so close they gather round the brazier; and vapours issue forth that blind and suffocate. From every corner, as you glance about you in these dark retreats, some figure crawls half-awak- ened, as if the judgment hour were near at hand, and every obscene grave were giving up its dead. W here dogs would howl to lie, women and men and boys slink off to sleep; forcing the dislodged rats to move away in quest of better lodgings. Here, too, are lanes and alleys, paved with mud knee-deep; under-ground chambers, where they dance and game; the walls bedecked with rough designs of ships, and forts, and flags, and American eagles out of number; ruined houses, open to the street, whence, through wide gaps in the walls, other ruins loom upon the eye, as though the world of vice and misery had nothing else to show ; hideous tenements, which take their name from robbery and murder; all that is loathsome, drooping, and decayed is here.

Our leader has his hand upon the latch of " Almacks," and calls to us from the bottom of the steps; for the assembly-room of the Five Point fashionable, is approached by a descent. Shall we go in? It is but a moment.

Heyday I the landlady of Almack's thrives. A buxom fat Mulatto woman, with sparkling eyes, whose head is daintily ornamented with a handkerchief of many colours. Nor is the landlord much behind her in his finery, being attired in a smart blue jacket, like a ship's steward, with a thick gold ring upon his little finger, and round his neck a gleaming golden watch-guard. How glad he is to see us. What will we please to call for ?—a dance? It shall be done directly, Sir: " a regular break-down."

The corpulent Black fiddler and his friend who plays the tambourine stamp upon the boarding of the small raised orchestra in which they sit, and play a lively measure. Five or six couple come upon the floor, marshalled by a lively ouilg Negro, who !s the wit of the assembly, and the greatest dancer known. lie Dever leaves oil making queer faces, and is the delight of all the rest, who grin from ear to ear incessantly. Among the dancers are two young Mulatto girls, with large, black, drooping eyes, and head-gear after the fashion of the hostess; who are as shy, or feign to be, as though they never danced before, and so look down before the visiters that their partners can see nothing but the long fringed lashes. But the dance commences. Every gentleman sets as long as he likes to the opposite lady, and the opposite lady to him ; and all ate so long about it that the sport begins to languish, when suddenly the lively hero dashes in to the rescue. Instantly the tiddler grins, and goes at it tooth and nail ; there is new energy in the tambourine, new laughter in the dancers, new smiles in the land- lady, new confidence in the landlord, new brightness in the very candles. Single shuffle, double shuffle, cut and cross-cut; snapping his fingers, rolling his eyes, turning in his knees, presenting the backs of his legs in front, spin- ning about on his toes and heels like nothing but the man's fingers on the tam- bourine; dancing with two left legs, two right legs, two wooden legs, two wire legs, two spring legs—all sorts of legs and no legs—what is this to him? And in what walk of life, or dance of lite, does man ever get such stimulating applause as thunders about him, when, having danced his partner off her feet and himself too, he finishes by leaping gloriously on the bar-counter, and, calling for something to drink, with the chuckle of a million of counterfeit Jim Crows, in one inimitable sound?

The air, even in these distempered parts, is fresh after the stifling atmo- sphere of the houses; and now, as we emerge into a broader street, it blows upon us with a purer breath, and the stars look bright again. Here are The Tombs once more.

In the elaborate description of the Prison system, Mr. DICKENS has brought out points, either omitted or less tally treated by other writers. The "black hood" and the mystery in the following are of this kind; which, if they had occurred in Europe, would have caused more fine declamation in America than Negro slavery any- where,—though it really seems a refinement on the tyranny ascribed to Venice.

SOLITARY IMPRISONMENT.

Between the body of the prison and the outer wall, there is a spacious gar- den. Entering it by a wicket in the massive gate, we pursued the path before us to its other termination, and passed into a large chamber, from which seven long passages radiate. On either side of each is a long, long row of low cell- doors, with a certain number over every one. Above, a gallery of cells like those below, except that they have no narrow yard attached, (as those in the ground-tier have,) and are somewhat smaller. The possession of two of these is supposed to compensate for the absence of so much air and exercise as can be had in the dull strip attached to each of the others, in an hour's time every day; and therefore every prisoner in this upper story has two cells, adjoining and communicating with each other. Standing at the central point, and looking down these dreary passages, the dull repose and quiet that prevail is awful. Occasionally, there is a drowsy sound from some lane weaver's shuttle or shoemaker's last; but it is stifled by the thick walls and heavy dungeon-door, and only serves to make the general stillness more profound. Over the head and face of every prisoner who comes into this melancholy. house a black hood is drawn ; and in this dark shroud, an emblem of the curtain dropped between him and the living world, he is led to the cell, from which he never again comes forth until his whole term of impri- sonment has expired. He never bears of wife or children, home, or friends; the lite or death of any single creature. He sees the prison-officers, but with that exception he never looks upon a human countenance or hears a human voice. He is a man buried alive; to be dug out in the slow round of years; and in the mean time dead to every thing but torturing anxieties and horrible despair. His name, and crime, and term of suffering, are unknown even to the officer who delivers him his daily tood. There is a number over his cell-door, and in a book of which the Governor of the prison has one copy, and the moral instruc- tor another: this is the index to his history. Beyond these pages, the prison

has no record of his existence; and though be live to be in the same cell ten weary years, he has no means of knowing, down to the very last hour, in what part of the building it is situated ; what kind of men there are about him ; whether in the long winter-nights there are living people near, or he is in some lonely corner of the great gaol, with walls and passages, and iron doors, between him and the nearest sharer in its solitary horrors. Every cell has double doors; the outer one of sturdy oak, the other of grated iron, wherein there is a trap through which his food is banded. He has a Bible, and a slate and pencil, and, under certain restrictions, has sometimes other books, provided for the purpose, and pen and ink and paper. His razor, plate, and can, and basin, hang upon the wall, or shine upon the little shelf. Fresh water is laid on in every cell, and he can draw it at his pleasure. During the day, his bedstead turns up against the wall, and leaves more space for him to work in. His loom, or bench, or wheel is there ; and there he labours, sleeps, and wakes, and counts the seasons as they change, and grows old.

Except a short notice of a party. after his arrival, which differed from ordinary English parties only in being more cheerful and rather less stiff, a gathering at the President's at Washington is almost the only allusion to what may be called the social life of the Americans.

THE PRESIDENTS PARTY.

The great drawing-room, which I have already mentioned, and the other chambers on the ground-floor, were crowded to excess. The company was not, in our sense of the term, select, for it comprehended persons of very many grades and classes ; nor was there any great display of costly attire ; indeed, some of the costumes may have been, for aught I know, grotesque enough. But the decorum and propriety of behaviour which prevailed were unbroken by any rude or disagreeable incident ; and every man, even among the miscella- neous crowd in the hall who were admitted without any orders or tickets to look on, appeared to feel that he was a part of the institution, and was respon- sible for its preserving a becoming character and appearing to the beat advan- tage. That these visiters, too, whatever their station, were not without some re- finement of taste and appreciation of intellectual gifts, and gratitude to those men who, by the peaceful exercise of great abilities shed new charms and asso- ciations upon the homes of their countrymen, and elevate their character in other lands, was most earnestly testified by their reception of Washington Irving, my dear friend; who had recently been appointed Minister at the Court of Spain, and who was among them that night, in his new character, for the first and last time before going abroad. I sincerely believe, that in all the mad- ness of American politics, few public men would have been so earnestly, de- votedly, and affectionately caressed, as this most charming writer: and I have seldom respected a public assembly more than I did this eager throng when I saw them turning with one mind from noisy orators and officers of state, and flocking, with a generous and honest impulse, round the man of quiet pursuits; proud in his promotion as reflecting back upon their country, and grateful to him with their whole hearts for the store of graceful fancies he had poured out among them. Long may he dispense such treasures with unsparing hand, and long may they remember him as worthily.

AMERICAN LANDSCAPE.

Except when a branch-road joins the main one, there is seldom more than one track of rails; so that the road is very narrow, and the view, where there is a deep cutting, by no means extensive. When there is not, the character of the scenery is always the same. Mile after mile of stunted trees; some hewn down by the axe, some blown down by the wind, some half fallen and resting on their neighbours, many mere logs half hidden in the swamp, others mould- ered away to spongy chips. The very soil of the earth is made up of minute fragments such as these ; each pool of stagnant water has its crust of vegetable rottenness; on every side there are the boughs, and trunks, and stumps of trees, in every possible stage of decay, decomposition, and neglect. Now you emerge for a few brief minutes on an open country, glittering nith some bright lake or pool, broad as many an English river, but so small here that it scarcely has a name ; now catch hasty glimpses of a town, with its clean white houses and their cool piazzas, its prim New England church and schoolhouse ; when, whir-r-r-r ! almost before you have seen them, comes the same dark screen the stunted trees, the stumps, the logs, the stagnant water; all so like the last, that you seem to have been transported back again by magic. The train calls at stations in the woods, where the wild impossibility of any- body having the smallest reason to get out is only to be equalled by the ap- parently desperate hopelessness of there being anybody to get in. It rashes across the turnpike-road, where there is no gate, no policeman, no signal; no- thing but a rough wooden arch, on which is painted, " When the bell rings, look out for the locomotive." On it whirls headlong, dives through the woods again, emerges in the light, clatters over frail arches, rumbles upon the heavy ground, shoots beneath a wooden bridge which intercepts the light for a second like a wink, suddenly awakens all the slumbering echoes in the main street of a large town, and dashes on hap-hazard, pell-mell, neck-or-nothing, down the middle of the road. There—with mechanics working at their trades, and people leaning from their doors and windows, and boys flying kites and playing marbles, and men smoking, and women talking, and children crawling, and pigs burrowing, and unaccustomed horses plunging and rearing, close to the very rails; there—on, on, on, tears the mad dragon'of an engine, with its train of cars ; scattering in all directions a shower of burning sparks from its wood fire ; screeching, hissing, yelling, panting ; until at last the thirsty mon- ster stops beneath a covered way to drink ; the people cluster rouud, and you have time to breathe again.

A NEGRO COACHMAN.

He is a negro—very black indeed. He is dressed in a coarse pepper-and- salt suit, excessively patched and darned, (particularly at the knees,) gray stockings, enormous unblacked high-low shoes, and very short trousers. He has two odd gloves; one of parti-coloured worsted, and one of leather. He has a very short whip, broken in the middle and bandaged up with string. And yet he wears a low-crowned, broad-brimmed, black hat; faintly shadowing forth a kind of insane imitation of an English coachman !

NATIONAL EXCLAMATIONS.

By the way, whenever an Englishman would cry " All right !" an American cries " Go ahead !" which is somewhat expressive of the national cha- racter of the two countries.

The following description of a Western steamer seems to ac- count for the frequency of the accidents ; but we suspect the high- pressure engines are the main cause.

WESTERN STEAMERS.

If the native packets I have already described he unlike anything we are in the habit of seeing on water, these Western vessels are still more foreign to all the ideas we are accustomed to entertain of boats. I hardly know what to liken them to, or how to describe them.

In the first place, they have no mast, cordage, tackle, rigging, or other such boat-like gear; nor have they anything in their shape at all calculated to re- mind one of a boat's head, stern, sides, or keeL Except that they are in the water, and display a couple of paddle-boxes, they might be intended, for any- thing that appears to the contrary, to perform some unknown service, high and dry, upon a mountain-top. There is no visible deck, even; nothing but a long, black, ugly roof, covered with burnt-out feathery sparks ; above which tower two iron cbimnies, and a hoarse escape-valve, and a glass steerage-house. Then, in order as the eye descends towards the water, are the sides and doors and windows of the state-rooms, jumbled as oddly together as though they formed a small street, built by the varying tastes of a dozen men: the whole is supported on beams and pillars resting on a dirty barge, but a few inches above the water's edge : and in the narrow space between this upper structure and this barge's deck are the furnace-fires and machinery, open at the sides to every wind that blows and every storm of rain it drives along its paths. Passing one of these boats at night, and seeing the great body of fire. ex- posed as I have just described, that rages and roars beneath the frail pile of painted wood—the machinery not warded off or guarded in any way, but doing its 'Work in the midst of the crowd of idlers, and emigrants, and children, who throng the lower-deck—under the management, too, of reckless men, whose ac- quaintance with its mysteries may have been of six months' standing--one feels directly that the wonder is, not that there should be so many fatal accidents, but that any journey should be safely made.

THE 7dISSISSIPPL

But what words shall describe the Mississippi, great father of rivers, who (praise be to Heaven) has no young children like him ! An enormous ditch, sometimes two or three miles wide, running liquid mud six miles an hour : its strong and frothy current choked and obstructed everywhere by huge logs and whole forest-trees : now twining themselves together in great rafts, from the interstices of which a sedgy lazy foam works up, to float upon the water's top; now rolling past like monstrous bodies, their tangled roots showing like matted hair ; now glancing singly by.like giant leeches; and now writhing round and round in the vortex of some small whirlpool, like wounded snakes. The banks low, the trees dwarfish, the marshes swarming with frogs, the wretched cabins few and far apart, their inmates hollow-cheeked and pale, the weather very hot, mosquitoes penetrating into every crack and crevice of tilt? boat, mud and slime on every thing : nothing pleasant in its aspect, but the harmless lightning, which flickers every night upon the dark horizon.

For two days we toiled up this foul stream ; striking constantly against the floating timber, or stopping to avoid those more dangerous obstacles, the snags, or sawyers, which are the hidden trunks of trees that have their roots below the tide. When the nights are very dark, the look-out stationed in the head of the boat knows by the ripple of the water if any great impediment be near at hand, and rings a bell beside him, which is the signal for the engine to be stopped : but always in the night this bell has work to do, and after every ring there comes a blow which renders it no easy matter to remain in bed. We drank the muddy water of this river while we were upon it. It is con- sidered wholesome by the natives, and is something more opaque than gruel. I have seen water like it at the filter-shops, but nowhere else.

THE PRAIRIE.

We again pushed forward, and came upon the Prairie at sunset.

It would be difficult to say why, or how — though it was possibly from having heard and read so much about it—but the effect on me was disappointment. Looking towards the setting sun, there lay stretched out before my view a vast expanse of level ground ; unbroken, save by one thin line of trees, which scarcely amounted to a scratch upon the great blank, until it met the glowing sky, wherein it seemed to dip, mingling with its rich colours, and mellowing in its distant blue. There it lay, a tranquil sea or lake without water, if such a simile be admissible, with the day going down upon it ; a few birds wheeling here and there, and solitude and silence reigning paramount around. But the grass was not yet high; there were bare black patches on the ground; and the few wild flowers that the eye could see were poor and scanty. Great as the picture was, its very flatness and extent, which left nothing to the imagination, tamed it down and cramped its interest. I felt little of that sense of freedom and exhilaration which a Scottish heath inspires, or even our English downs awaken. It was lonely and wild, but oppressive in its barren monotony. I felt that in traversing the Prairies I could never abandon myself to the scene, for- getful of all else; as I should do instinctively were the heather underneath my feet, or an iron-bound coast beyond; but should often glance towards the distant and frequently-receding line of the horizon, and wish it gained and passed. It is not a scene to be forgotten; but it is scarcely one, I think, (at all events, as I saw it,) to remember with much pleasure, or to covet the looking on again, in after-life.

We will close with a bit of British-American--the impressions left on Mr. DICKENS'S mind by

CANADA.

Canada has held, and always will retain, a foremost place in my remem- brance. Few Englishmen are prepared to find it what it is. Advancing quietly ; old differences settling down, and being fast forgotten ; public feeling and private enterprise alike in a sound and wholesome state; nothing of flush or fever in its system, but health and vigour throbbing in its steady pulse : it is full of hope and promise. To me (who had been accustomed to think of it as something left behind in the strides of advancing society, as something neglected and forgotten, slumbering and wasting in its sleep) the demand for labour and the rates of wages—the busy quays of Montreal—the vessels taking in their cargoes, and discharging them—the amount of shipping in the different ports— the commerce, roads, and public works, all made to last—the respectability and character of the public journals—and the amount of rational comfort and hap- piness which honest industry may earn—were very great surprises. The steam- boats on the Lakes, in their conveniences, cleanliness, and safety, in the gen- tlemanly character and bearing of their captains, and in the politeness and per- fect comfort of their social regulatior J, are unsurpassed even by the famous Scotch vessels, deservedly so much esteemed at home. The inns are usually bad ; because the custom of boarding at hotels is not so general here as in the States, and the British officers, who form a large portion of the society of every town, live chiefly at the regimental messes : but in every other respect the tra- veller in Canada will find as good provision for his comfort as in any place I know.