genuineness of which there is less doubt,) even the softest heads admit that there is little to admire except the language. If its unearthly sounds only grate half as much on the ears of others as they do on mine, they had little to boast of on that

score.

The Saxons were merely continentals living in England, and their literature partook of the continental character, but with less of the more refined ideas of France, and Spain, and Italy, than the peculiar absurdities of the remains of Scandinavian superstition--the source from which we derive our traditions of witches riding on broomsticks, and fairies stealing lovely babies and leaving their own brats in their place. The Normans were French, but French about the farthest removed from refinement; and consequently their literature was meagre in the same ratio.

In the jumble of races, and conflict for preponderance, the language of the Saxons, though considerably modified by being introduced into such miscellaneous society, maintained its supremacy. But it was so clouted and cobbled that it bore but little resemblance, as spoken and written in England, to the purer language from whence it sprung. It was a mere conglomerate; and to turn such a medley to the purposes of Poetry seemed perfectly hopeless. The construction of the Grecian Epic, or the Grecian Ode, was like chiseling from Parian marble, in all the elegance of Corinthian Architecture, a pal. ace for the Gods; or with still nicer touch, a statue of the Medicean Venus. To make any sort of doggerel out of such grotesque material, was like attempting to do the latter out of granite. It is true, the good folks of Aberdeen, my native city, probably out of respect for one of their staple productions, have erected such an equestrian statue of "the last Duke of Gordon." But instead of exhibiting the exact lines and graces of his Grace's features, as seen at the festive board, where with the brilliancy of his wit and drollery, like Hamlet's Yorrick, "he kept the table in a roar," he sits a perpetual monument of their folly, in pock-pitted deformity. How could we suppose that Chaucer, the earliest of any note who undertook the task, should have been able to do more than show to the world, that he was possessed of talents which no perversity of circumstances concealed?

The next great poet who courted the English muse was Spenser, who seems to have aimed at forming a sort of minor

mythology of his own, more especially suited for Christian curiosity. His Muse is Allegory, and the virtues and vices are by him introduced more unscrupulously than were the Gods of the Greeks, by their poets. But his poem, though quaint and sometimes elegant, labors under the objection, that the character of his dramatis persone being subordinate, renders it impossible to make them other than "dii minorum gentium." This prime blunder necessarily prevents the legitimate soarings of his Muse; and we regret that the inventor of that particular stanza which bears his name, which has been used with greater success by Thomson in his Castle of Indolence, and Beattie in his Minstrel, and latterly so triumphantly in Childe Harold, should not have turned his rare talents in a different direction.

The productions of Chaucer and Spenser perspicuously show the composition of Poetry under difficulties, rather than the subjection of those difficulties in the language (which were all but insuperable) so as to free it from its encumbrances and defects, and make it the pliant servant of so graceful a mistress. It was not to such means that the English language owed principally its escape from barbarism. If the Reformation followed fast at the heels of the invention of printing, the Reformation, in its turn, was the immediate precursor of an improvement of "the vulgar tongue," produced by ordinary means. During the earlier times of English History, the language of the people was not the written language of the learned. The Church was confined in her services to the use of Latin, which was also the language used by learned men in their compositions; and though after the Norman conquest the mongrel Saxon of the people was too securely rooted to be subdued, not only was the influence of the court used in favor of the language of the invaders, but in some instances its use was enforced by special enactment. But after the Reformation, the language of the learned and of the people became the same; and the Book of Common Prayer, which was the composition of the most learned men of the day, being used in the morning and evening service of every church in the land, was an example of pure, plain, and elegant English, such as no production which as yet had been placed before the public had attained.

In this interesting period, when the dis encumbered language, in all the vigor of youth, seemed only in want of some man

of genfus to turn his attention to Poetry to render its beauties perfect, Shakspeare was born and educated-than whom, by universal consent, no country ever had a greater. If we look at the extent of his capabilities we are bound to admit it; but if we take perfection in any particular play, or the depicturing of any particular passion, as the rule by which we ought to try his talents, there might be found many who might have much to say in favor of other poets. The truth is, he was more the poet of Nature than of Art. He only toyed and trifled with his Muse. We feel conscious that he had strength in reserve for which he could not find employment, so rich and ready are his ideas on even the commonest subjects.

When we take a retrospective view of poetical literature before the time of those prominent pioneers of English Poetry, we find, as in the ramifications of a family chart or tree, that of one age growing out of the former. We discover members of the same family, and lineal descendants of the same Grecian parentage, mingling and marrying among themselves, and occasionally with congenial mates of other origin, but still in every instance retaining the same family features, and traceable either on the father or mother side to the original stock. But in those three, we find an almost entire isolation, and a want of the family resemblance so distinguishable among former poets. They stand as separate pyramids, each on his own basis. It is true, Spenser may have taken hints from other sources, where more was meant than met the ear," and Shakspeare may have read the plays of Sophocles, Euripides, and Eschylus, but he evidently never studied them. He found their system of imagery unsuitable for the English stage, and consequently went to Nature, the source from which they also derived their inspiration. But this is not the way in which either Science or Literature generally progresses. It is by the great men of one age adding something to the great men of former ages that mankind advances. The circumstances in which Shakspeare was placed rendered it almost impossible for him to do otherwise than he did; and besides, he had the irresistible impulse of such an excess of originality of thought to plead, that it ought to exclude him from ordinary obligations. Whether, if he had been a more learned man, and had sought "to climb Parnassus by dint of Greek," the world would have been a gainer, it is hard to say. What it might

have gained by his having more learning, it might have been deprived of by his having less of Nature. În Poetry, as in the doings of Deity, we may admit (where it is genuine) the dictum of Pope-" whatever is, is right." But if he was a poet out of the common order, he does not exactly belong to those to whom I intend more especially to refer, as lineal descendants of those first in favor with the Muses, and who in fact as well as figuratively dwelt around Parnassus, and drank occasionally from the real, as well as ideal fountain of Castalia. Besides his is too conspicuously an every-body's book, and his merit too generally acknowledged, to require any critical examination of his writings.

AGRICOLA.

But besides the question of nautical skill and individual daring, as a commercial undertaking the sending of such steamers round to California was a very bold speculation. Their value in New York is about a hundred thousand dollars, and to take them round to San Francisco costs about thirty thousand more. Insurance is, of course, out of the question (I do not think 99 per cent would insure them in this country from Dover to Calais); so the owners had to play a neck-or-nothing game. Their enterprise was in most cases duly rewarded. I only know of one instance though doubtless others have occurred-in which such vessels did not get round in safety: it was an old Long Island Sound boat; she was rotton before ever she left New York, and foundered somewhere about the Bermudas, all hands on board escaping in the boats.

The profits of the first few steamers which arrived out were of course enormous: but, after a while, competition was so keen, that for some time cabin fare between San Francisco and Sacramento was only one dollar; a ridiculously small sum to pay in any part of the world, for being carried in such boats one hundred and twenty miles in six hours; but in California at that time, the wages of the common deck hands on board those same boats were about a hundred dollars a-month; and ten dollars were to the generality of men, a sum of much less consequence than ten shillings are now.

These low fares did not last long, however; the owners of steamers came to an understanding, and the average rate of fare from San Francisco to Sacramento was from five to eight dollars. I have only alluded to the one-dollar fares for the purpose of giving an idea of the competition which existed in such a business as "steamboating," which requires a large capital; and from that it may be imagined what intense rivalry there was among those engaged in less important lines of business, which engrossed their whole time and labour, and required the employment of all the means at their command.

Looking at the map of California, it will be seen that the "mines" occupy a long strip of mountainous country, which commences many miles to the eastward of San Francisco, and stretches northward several hundred miles. The Sacramento river running parallel with the mines, the San Joaquin joining it from the southward and eastward, and the Feather river continuing a northward course from the Sacramento

all of them being navigable- present the natural means of communication be tween San Francisco and the "mines." Accordingly, the city of Sacramentoabout two hundred miles north of San Francisco-sprang up as the depôt for all the middle part of the mines, with roads radiating from it across the plains to the various settlements in the mountains. In like manner the city of Marysville, being at the extreme northern point of navigation of the Feather river, became the startingplace and the depôt for the mining districts in the northern section of the State; and Stockton, named after Commodore Stockton, of the United States navy, who had command of the Pacific squadron during the Mexican war, being situated at the head of navigation of the San Joaquin, forms the intermediate station between San Francisco and all the "southern mines."

Seeing the facilities that California thus presented for inland navigation, it is not surprising that the Americans, so pre-eminent as they are in that branch of commercial enterprise, should so soon have taken advantage of them. But though the prospective profits were great, still the enormous risk attending the sending of steamboats round the Horn might have seemed sufficient to deter most men from entering into such a hazardous speculation. It must be remembered that many of these river steamboats were dispatched from New York, on an ocean voyage of seventeen thousand miles, to a place of which one-half the world as yet even doubted the existence, and when people were looking up their atlases to see in what part of the world California was. The risk of taking a steamboat of this kind to what was then such an out-of-the-way part of the world, did not end with her arrival in San Fran cisco by any means. The slightest accident to her machinery, which there was at that time no possibility of repairing in California, or even the extreme fluctuations in the price of coal, might have rendered her at any moment so much useless lumber.

In ocean navigation the same adventurous energy was manifest. Hardly had the news of the discovery of gold in California been received in New York, when numbers of steamers were dispatched, at an expense equal to one-half their value, to take their place on the Pacific in forming a line between the United States and San Francisco via Panama; so that almost from the first commencement of the existence of California as a gold-bearing coun