above the enlarged base, which is three or four times that size. Exter found one 117.10 French feet in circumference, taken above the enlarged base, which was 200 feet in circumference. In this stem the number of annual rings would be 5352, if one line is assumed as the average annual growth; but if with Zuccarini we take 1.6 line as the average, the age of the tree will be 3512 years. Our waning limits remind us that we must part with our intellectual guide, who has exhibited to us so many objects of interest, and enlightened us with so many lamps of wisdom. We would fain follow him to Louisville, to the fossil coral reef at the Ohio Fall,-into an Episcopal church, where the priest preached against the Reformation, and when catechising the girls told them that the Prayer-Book was written by their mother, namely, Mother Church,-to a Black Methodist Chapel, with about 400 hearers, where the preacher told them that he saw many of them nodding, and begged every one to wake up his neighbour, as the sexton had more than he could do in tapping on the heads of the junior sleepers,-to Cincinnati with its fine observatory, with an equatorial achromatic seventeen feet long, and with an object glass twelve inches in diameter,—to Pittsburg, with its Indian marls and gravel terraces,-to Greensburg, with its fossil foot-prints of animals in coal strata; and finally, to Philadelphia, Washington, New York, Albany, and Boston, from which he sailed for England in the Britannia on the 1st of June, and arrived at Liverpool on the 13th June 1846. We have thus endeavoured to give our readers some idea of the interesting contents of Sir Charles Lyell's two works. We know of no books of modern travels so full of agreeable and useful reading, so pregnant with instruction respecting the geology and physical geography of America, and so liberal and candid in its judgments on all the social, political, and religious questions which now everywhere agitate the public mind. There is no object too low for our author's notice, and none too high for his grasp. Whatever warms the heart of the philanthropist, or excites the zeal of the missionary, or perplexes the genius of the statesman, or exercises the intellect of the sage, calls forth all his powers of observation, and rouses all his energies of thought. The condition of the criminal and the slave, the educational instruction of the ignorant,-the moral and religious training of the people, the amelioration of the condition of the poor,-and the equalization of political rights, are all advocated with that earnestness and talent which seldom fail to advance the object at which they aim. Even if the reader is no geologist he will follow Sir Charles Lyell with exciting interest in his various journeys by sea, by Value of Sir Charles Lyell's Work. 583 river, or by rail, in which he has observed and expounded those singular conditions of the physical world of which America presents so many striking examples,-while the geologist himself will add to his store of knowledge, and entrench himself deeper in those magnificent generalizations which give dignity and grandeur to his science. It is in any country fortunate for science, especially for geological science, which cannot be pursued in the watches of the night, or in the intervals of professional toil, when men in independent circumstances like our author, or in official positions of easy duty, zealously devote themselves to intellectual labour. It is peculiarly fortunate in ours, where the love of knowledge and its institutions never characterizes the statesman, and where experience never leads him to learn the duties which he owes to genius, or to unlearn the prejudices under which he oppresses it. It is more fortunate still, that the rich and noble of the land, and the poor philosophers themselves, are willing to contribute their money as well as their talents to the advancement of knowledge, in a country where our scientific and literary institutions are neglected by the State,-where, as in Scotland, our Universities are allowed to languish and decay,—and where the Government leaves the people untaught, lest they should hazard the sweets of office by giving offence to the bigots of the day. Had the volumes which we have been analyzing referred to any other country than America, their geological details if equally new, would have been equally acceptable to the man of science; but the pictures which they draw of American life, and the account which they give of American institutions, and of the progress of civilisation in the West, have to us Englishmen, and indeed to every citizen of the world, an overpowering interest. Accustomed to look with wonder upon the civilisation of the past-upon the unblest glories of Greece and of Rome-upon mighty empires that have risen but to fall-the English eye has never fixed itself on the grand phenomenon of a Great Nation at School. Viewing America as a froward child that has deserted its home and abjured its parent, we have ever looked upon her with a callous heart, and with an evil eye judicially blind to her progress. In a region teeming with vegetable life-resting upon the subterranean treasures of civilisation-intersected with noble rivers, whose tributary and capillary streams carry food and life into every part of the land, the Anglo-Saxon race has established itself in mighty cities, the centres of manufacturing, commercial, and agricultural wealth; and has intrenched itself amid noble institutions-with temples enshrined in religious toleration,-with universities of private bequest and public organization,-with national and unshackled schools,-and with all the resources which science and literature and philanthropy demand from the citizen or from the State. Supplied from the old world with its superabundant life, the Anglo-Saxon tide has been carrying its multiplied population to the West,rushing onward through impervious forests,— levelling their lofty pines,-chasing before it the denizens of the jungle, and driving to an ocean frontier, where civilisation will at last find them, the savage hordes that still usurp the fairest portions of creation. Nor is this living flood the destroying scourge which Providence sometimes lets loose upon our species. It breathes in accents which are our own.-It is instinct with English life;—and it bears on its snowy crest the auroral light of the East to gild the darkness of the West with the purple radiance of salvation, of knowledge, and of peace. But while the frontier of civilisation is thus advancing with giant strides, the fixed population of the American States has been vying with European communities in the cultivation of the arts which contribute to domestic comfort and national aggrandisement. Their railroads, with all their imperfections, supply the necessities of the traveller, and remunerate the public spirit of their projectors. Their steamboat establishments, whether on coast or on river, are unrivalled in European States; and their telegraphic lines, superior in cheapness and utility to ours, have been carried for thousands of miles into regions where the iron pathway has not been able to penetrate. Nor is their mineral wealth equalled by that of the most favoured quarters of the globe. Her empire of coal;-her kingdoms of cotton and of corn; her regions of gold and of iron, mark out America as the centre of future civilisation;-as the emporium of the world's commerce; as the granary and storehouse out of which the kingdoms of the East will be clothed and fed ;-and we greatly fear, as the asylum in which our children will take refuge when the hordes of Asia and the semi-barbarians of Eastern Europe shall again darken and desolate the West. In thus speaking of America, we have no desire to undervalue our own beloved country. We wish not to exchange for her republican institutions, a monarchy hallowed by time and rooted in the habits and affections of the people; and still less do we desire to replace our territorial aristocracy, with the aristocracy of wealth and talent which a democratic community can alone recognise. Our object is to persuade England to respect America-to love her as the first-born of her political family—and, with the affection of a parent, to rejoice in her progress, and pray for the prosperity and consolidation of her empire. Though dauntless in her mien, and colossal in her strength, she displays upon her banner the star of peace. Shedding its radiance upon us, let us reciprocate the celestial light; and strong and peaceful ourselves, we shall have nothing to fear from her power, but everything to learn from her example. INDEX TO THE FOURTEENTH VOLUME OF THE NORTH BRITISH REVIEW. wrote, 206. Boston, educational arrangements of, 558. Agricultural Crisis-Professor Low, 85—| Boccaccio, father of the language in which he probable futurity of the labouring Autobiography of Leigh Hunt, 143-charac- ter of the work, 144-his father, tarring Babbage, Mr., on the decline of science, 241. British Association for the advancement of - British and Continental ethics and Christi- versities-attempts to check false philo- California, probable produce of, 482. Chalmers, (Dr.,) exposure of the aggres- Church of France, the reformed, 122. Church, its subjection to Christ—the spiri- 26. Corn, free trade in, righteous, 90. Dante, his multifarious learning, 204. Rome alarmed by, 222. Doddridge, Philip, his birth-place, 350_his early history, 352-the Pictorial Bible, Education, special v. general, 197. English Universities, 169-early history, Ethics and Christianity, British and conti- 141. Farmer's true right, 109-tenant farmers Flax, the culture of, 113-effects of the cul- Fraunhofer, Joseph, Memoir of, by Sir D. Free trade in corn righteous, 90-benefits George the Third, description of, by Leigh Gold Mines,-the modern El Dorado, 452 |