writers on practical mechanics and civil engineering. Mr Strickland is now engaged in preparing his Reports for publication; and they will disseminate a mass of information, on the important subjects which they embrace, from which we may confidently expect that the most beneficial results will ensue to every part of the United States.

We have entered thus particularly into the proceedings of the Pennsylvania Society, because however local may be its immediate object, its indirect operation is evidently and eminently national. Indeed the authors of the several tracts before us, while they manifest a laudable pride in the prosperity of their own State, express an ardor for the welfare of all America, as earnest and sincere as it is patriotic. Their motto is "Our

country, our whole country." Yet they declare a partiality for the fortunes of Pennsylvania, which, without making any invidious comparisons, we, although citizens of another State, can readily admit to be well founded.

Our mineral treasures," observes one of them, "exceed those of any state in the Union; treasures far more valuable than the mines of Potosi or Golconda. Coal, of every variety of species, salt, iron, lead, copper, sulphur, alum, ochres, limestone, marble, marl, clay, and many other minerals, excellent in quality, and and inexhaustible in quantity, are diffused throughout our terriritory. Facts in Favour of Railways, p. 55.

Of these mineral productions of Pennsylvania, two or three are entitled to separate consideration. The manufacture of salt is already a very productive source of wealth. It was ascertained a few years since, that upon the margin of the river Alleghany, and of the waters communicating with it, salt water might be procured in any quantity, by boring the earth to the depth of four or five hundred feet. Upon the Connemaugh, the Kiskeminetas, and the Alleghany, thirty-eight salt-works have been established; and many more are in the course of preparation; which, in consequence of the abundance of coal in that region, can be wrought with cheapness and ease. In the year year 1825, seventy-five thousand barrels of salt were made at the Connemaugh and Kiskeminetas salt-works; and it is proved, that, if the facilities for internal communication were suitably increased, this necessary of life could be furnished to all the State, without encouraging foreign industry by its importation, and at a diminished price.

But the beneficial effects on the industry of the State, which may be anticipated from the rich stores of this mineral, great as

they are, sink into insignificance, when compared with the mighty consequences of opening her inexhaustible mines of coal and iron, whose fecundity and value are but just beginning to be duly appreciated. The following passage in Mr Ingersoll's Discourse contains a bold, but hardly an extravagant picture, of the probable effects of the abundance of her fossil coal upon the prosperity of Pennsylvania.

The wharves on the Schuylkill are, for the first time, resorted to by burthensome vessels from over sea, for freights of that inestimable fuel contributed by the mother earth of Pennsylvania, in a mineral more valuable than the precious metals. Poured in for consumption and exportation, as it is, from the shores of the Lehigh and the Susquehanna, as well as the Schuylkill, when we advert to what the coal trade has done for the port of London, it is not fanciful to anticipate revolutions in commerce, manufactures, and capital, which it is destined to bring about here. * * Public conception is not yet awakened to this vital resource, just emerging from the bosom of the State; and we do not foresee its effects on manufactures and commerce, while considering it as a substitute for wood for our consumption as fuel. * * When we advert to the fact, that almost every part of Pennsylvania abounds with every variety of this fossil, and with all kinds of iron ores, wanting nothing but facilities for transportation to market, a vast increase of manufactures, of coasting and foreign trade, and of homebred seamen for our commercial and military marine, must be perceived as the natural offspring. The modern experience of England proves this to be no sanguine expectation. In its effects on the manufactures, commerce, wealth, and power of Great Britain * * the coal trade has transcended all calculation. pp. 7-9.

It is not our purpose to follow Mr Ingersoll in his eloquent exposition of the benevolent, the literary, and the scientific institutions, which have so long pre-eminently distinguished Pennsylvania, and its commercial capital, Philadelphia, and of which he speaks with filial enthusiasm. Nor can we dwell upon the developement of manufacturing industry, for which that State is equally distinguished; observing only in passing, that we would render the most grateful acknowledgments to that truly enlightened policy, which has actuated many of her eminent citizens, in their views of the great questions of domestic improvement. Her example, in this respect, is pregnant with instruction, and especially so to us of these Northern states, whose hardy and laborious population, while the profits of our foreign commerce gradually diminish, are rapidly tending to employ our territorial

resources, our skill, our thrift, and our capital, in the productive labours of domestic industry, the firmest basis of a nation's wealth. Whilst we emulate the praiseworthy spirit of Pennsylvania, we entertain no jealousy of her past, or of her prospective advancement, either in the ornamental and polished arts of civilization, or in the more homely, but also more substantial products of merely useful labour. And her patriotic inhabitants have our hearty wishes for the complete success of the great plans of internal improvement, in which they are now embarked.

Brambletye House; or Cavaliers and Roundheads. A Novel. By one of the Authors of the "Rejected Addresses." Boston. 1826. 3 Vols. 12mo.

NOVEL writing is a peculiar business; and no one can attain to eminent success in it, who is not gifted with the peculiar powers and qualities proper to this occupation, as well as with general talent. Instances in illustration of this principle are frequently occurring, and this work is one of them. Mr Smith (we believe he is the acknowledged author of Brambletye House), in the "Rejected Addresses" and in more recent publications, has exhibited most of the faculties, which an accomplished writer must possess. He has shown, besides a remarkable power of imitation, much wit and more humour, some genius for poetry, and uncommon command of language. And now, when the circulatating libraries are full of works of this class, which may well serve as models, to the most ambitious aspirant, our author, after long practice, concentrates his faculties in an elaborate effort, the success of which is to place him by the side of the great novelists of the day. In this purpose he has failed; but he has not effaced the impression which his other books have given, for he has failed as one might fail, who nevertheless possessed a highly gifted and cultivated intellect.

Parts of this work are very excellent; and if the whole were cut into pieces few of them would be the worse for the operation. If it be considered only as a bundle of sketches, it might be highly praised, for many of them are well drawn. But as a whole, as one story, it is deficient, for it wants that interest which can be created and sustained only by a well contrived and well conducted tale. There is so little unity of action, that it requires

some effort of memory to connect the different anecdotes together. If our author wishes to introduce us to Milton or old Izaak Walton, an episode is set a going which carries the reader at once to the spot where he may find them, and there drops him. It is said that all plants possess the power of sending their roots and branches wherever nutriment may be found; just so this story branches forth to catch Cromwell in council, or Lord Rochester in a frolic, or London on fire, or any thing else which can keep life in it; but unhappily these branches diverge in such strange directions, and are so diverse from each other, that they are traced to the same root with no small effort, if at all.

Of course we shall not attempt a minute analysis of such a story as this; suffice it say, that the curtain rises, and discovers Sir John Compton, the lord of Brambletye House, and a jolly old Cavalier, plotting to bring back Charles II. He is seized, escapes to the continent, and joins the king. His son Jocelyn, the hero, is also arrested, carried before Cromwell, and by his order imprisoned; but he, too, finally escapes and joins his father. After the restoration, Jocelyn becomes a courtier, and in the course of one of his adventures falls in love with a young lady who is supposed to be the daughter of the regicide Wilmot, a connexion which is extremely troublesome to our hero. But in due season she proves to be the descendant and heiress of the elder branch of the Compton family, who had been at feud with Sir John and his kin, and Jocelyn's marriage with her, reconciles the members and re-establishes the fortunes of his house.

The Comptons, father and son, by ways and means "too tedious to mention," contrive to make us acquainted with most of the eminent men of that great day; and if sometimes the introduction is successfully accomplished, at others it is a little awkward.

The distance between our author and his great exemplar, Scott, is most manifest in the exhibition of historical characters. Scott never introduces any one, without affecting the reader's impressions concerning him, whatever they may have been. If he does nothing else, he gives new force and distinctness to our existing opinions; and if his notions differ from ours, they are usually, at least for a season, substituted for our own, by something very like scenic illusion. We feel that we have received new ideas, more accurate and well defined conceptions, of one whose name we had often met with. But, if a well read Sophomore in some respectable college, were told to take for his theme, the appearance, demeanour, and general characteristics of

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Milton, for instance, he would open his books, embody the results of his researches, and revive the impressions which we had formerly obtained from sources common to him and to us ;— and this is precisely what Mr Smith has done.

An extract will show in what manner Mr Smith conceives and executes the singular character of Lord Rochester. Jocelyn had been persuaded to help him steal an heiress, whom my lord wished to marry; accordingly the fair one is secured, but at the appointed place of rendezvous, there was no Lord Rochester.

He hastened back, repeatedly calling out the name of his missing friend, but without effect. After proceeding about a mile in this manner, he came to a public house, and observing that some of the inmates were stirring, inquired whether any traveller had lately stopped there. A horseman had alighted, he was told, some little time before, who called for spiced Canary, of which he drank three half-tankards in quick succession, and had then quitted the house, and struck across the fields opposite. In the stable Jocelyn immediately recognised the horse upon which his lordship had been mounted, and instantly set off in pursuit of the rider, a good deal puzzled to account for this sudden change of purpose, and not altogether without apprehension as to the motives which had induced a man, always reckless and desperate, and now flushed with wine, to plunge into these lonesome meadows, in which he noticed several pools of water. Although the sun had now risen, he could not see a single moving object, but his ears served him better than his eyes, and his forebodings were quickly dissipated by hearing his lordship's hearty and peculiar laugh, which upon the present occasion was almost aggravated to a shriek.

Crossing a stile in the direction of the sound, he beheld a fold of sheep, with two men leaning upon the wattles, one of whom was his lordship. The other was a mountebank quack-doctor, who having got drunk over night at a neighbouring fair, had strayed to the sheep-fold, and imagining himself, as he leant upon the hurdles, to be in front of his own itinerant tumbrel, was haranguing his woollen auditors upon the merit of his medicines, with a most stolid and grave absurdity. The vacant look of the sheep, who had formed a semicircle at a little distance, and were gazing in his face, the fixed drunken eye of the orator, staring at the sun as if puzzled by the phenomenon, and his tottering efforts to recover the centre of gravity whenever he bowed to his fancied customers, were rendered still more ludicrous by the solemn folly of his address. To a dark-faced sheep, whom he individualized as a gentleman of an atrabilarious temperament, he most urgently recommended the precious elixir of the phial which he held, and so saying, he dropped his tobacco-box at his feet; upon a ram