sion between the two countries would arise, is devotedly loyal, and antirepublican in its instincts and institutions. Intimate as is the connection, and great as has been the dependence of Upper Canada upon the United States ports, as affording markets, and means of transportation for their produce to Europe, its population is fully aware of the importance of maintaining their connection with Great Britain, of securing the aid of its abundant capital, and of preserving their existing friendly commercial relations. They possess a large mercantile marine, the natural employment for which is to British ports. Above all, an additionally strong bond of allegiance will be cemented between British America and the mother country when the former has created a route of her own through her own territory, and from her own ports, to England and Europe. Moreover, there is the difficulty caused by the institution of slavery in the United States to be got over before any amalgamation with the British provinces can be seriously mooted. Wild and thoughtless politicians overlook this important obstacle, yet it is glaringly observable by all who do not close their eyes to passing events and the tendency of public opinion. The United States legislature has, for the last twelve months, been a scene of almost hostile personal conflict amongst its members, caused by a proposal to organise the territory of Nebraska, adjoining Mexico

and Texas, by which it was feared that the existing balance of power between the northern, or free, and the southern, or slave States, might be disturbed. Any proposal to annex British America, not one of whose provinces would tolerate slavery, could only be the signal of disruption between the northern and the southern States.

There is, however, in addition to other hindrances to the alienation of British America, by force or otherwise, from its present connection with the mother country, the strong ties of consanguinity, of a common religion and laws, and a yearly decreasing absence of any strong motive for separation. Our North American brethren see their present position, and their future career of greatness, and appreciate the power of their mother country to aid them in that career. That it will be a successful

one

we cannot doubt; and those amongst us who may live for twenty years to come, may be privileged to see British America, not merely, as she is called at present, "the brightest gem in the diadem" of her Sovereign, but the most prosperous portion of an empire which, though lying in different zones, composed of different races, and divided by oceans, improved science, and truly paternal legislation, will have cemented together into one harmonious and compact confederacy, the greatest and the most powerful which the world has ever beheld.

B

VOL. LXXVI.-NO. CCCCLXV.

You remember, my dear Eusebius, that as I was leaving you the other day, now happily a hale man again, and with no trace of weakness left by the accident of last year, I told you that I had received one or two letters from my old friend, Oliver Meanwell, consulting me upon some rather delicate family matters.

There were family differences amongst his nearest relatives, which, as an old man, loving peace, and wishing well to them all, he was very desirous to compose. With some of these his relations I am not unacquainted; others he described to me, but with such softenings of some outlines of character, as left me to guess that they were in reality very angular.

He proposed a gathering, and meant, if I approved, to have open house on the occasion; he wished me to be present, as he complimented me on having some tact, that I might be able to prevent things going wrong. I hesitated-thought it over again and again-had on my lips Dryden's line

""Tis dangerous to disturb a hornet's nest." At length, concluding that our old friend would be as much disturbed by not doing this act of benevolence as he could be by any untoward end it might come to, I assented, only stipulating, as a matter of prudence, that the reconciliatory visit should be limited to three days. Why three days? Why not two or four? Surely tempers and human tongues, like neats' tongues, might be steeped in a precautionary pickle, which might keep them sweet and pleasant perhaps for a week. Three, however, is the magic number; and it would be well if, after the third, the house might say of itself, or the owner say for it

"Numero domus impare gaudet," and boast, with the importance of a nation's revolution, of its "three glorious days."

I should have ill deserved the praise of tact, which Meanwell bestowed upon me, had I gone direct, and in all haste, to his house. "A hasty birth," as the proverb saith, "bringeth forth blind whelps." It was evidently my business to gather a pack, not only gifted with eyes, but with music to encourage pursuers; for I thought it possible that we might have to hunt the fox-hearts of a few wily ones to earth. Indeed, I suspected that the differences which we had to adjust owed their origin to jealousy; and that these relatives wished to stand each better than the other in the regard of Meanwell, from whom they have expectations— the terrible word or thing, 66 expectations!"--the encourager of selfishness, and suppresser of honest heartiness. Perhaps this suspicion did an injury to worthier folk than I took them for; and I could learn nothing from Meanwell himself. His life had been a beautiful unbelief in the wickedness of any individuals whatever. He would step aside from suspicion as from a viper. He used to say that it was the trade of newspaper-makers, and the sad duty of magistrates, to search out and pub

lish all the evil in the world, and would entertain evil thoughts; and that nobody else, if they were wise, he was thankful that his condition was above the want of the trade of the one, and that the smallness of his ambition exempted him from the duty of the other. His maiden sister and housekeeper, Deborah, was of one mind with him, and they had both grown somewhat aged in habits of this amiable incredulity. Having, then, more than a week at my disposal before the day appointed for the reconciliatory visit, I thought I could not do better than spend a few days with our old friend, Dr Allright, the rector of Dowell.

I determined to consult him, and especially his sensible wife, as I knew them to be well acquainted with all

the parties. The humour of Allright is to conceal his sympathies, or rather any expression of them; for if his words are few, quaint, or affectedly harsh upon occasions, there is no lack of human sympathies in his actions. Perhaps he began long ago-for he has been some five-and-twenty years wedded-by thinking it needful to subdue a little the too romantic tendencies of his goodwife, but has ill succeeded; for she knows him too well to put any faith in this his putting on, and has, in fact, seen through his purpose the whole time. So that, without in any degree tempering the warmth or activity of her pathetic movements, their little amiable combats have become but a pleasant domestic sport, which has somewhat sharpened both their wits, and has made her one of the liveliest, semisatiric, most cheerful, open-hearted, unrestrained companions in the world. I could talk over this matter with none better; so I made my way to the rectory, and reached it just as night had driven out the last gleam of day, and the moon was high enough above the horizon to cast her subdued light across the shrubbery avenue as I entered, and to touch the shining laurel-leaves here and there with spangle, that made the depths around them intense, and the repose deeper, at which time silence is a sentiment. The noise of wheels was not heard in the drawing-room, so that I had entered it before the doctor and his wife were aware of my arrival.

They were sitting by the fire-the doctor in his easy-chair, with a handkerchief over his face, as if for an evening doze-the lady had been evidently reading, for a book was on a little table by the fireside. As I entered they both rose to greet me, for the doctor was not actually asleep; but what surprised me was, to see the goodwife smiling a welcome through her tears. I could not refrain from showing my surprise, for I was afraid some ill news had reached that peaceful home.

I was soon relieved by the doctor, who said, with a pleasant laugh, "Ah, you are welcome indeed; you are arrived just in time to lend a sympathy, which you know my hard nature cannot supply; and, indeed, Clara has

quite enough for us both; she has been reading Dickens's last, and as I heard sounds of an emotion which she was endeavouring to suppress, I pretended to be asleep that she might have the full enjoyment of the pathetics. You know, Clara, it was all out of kindness, and how you delighted thereby in your imaginary sorrows." The process of welcoming me, and the usual questionings over, we fell naturally into our quiet talk, and as naturally into a discussion of the book which had so touched the doctor's sensitive wife.

"Dickens," said the doctor, with a sly smile of pleasant domestic banter, "is a very expensive author." "Indeed!" said I; "I thought his serial works were considered remarkably cheap." "Very costly in their consequences," he replied; "as Clara said of Mrs Spendall's gown, the trimmings far exceeded the original material"-" And the additional jewellery that was thought absolutely necessary," said the good-natured Clara. "I reckon," said the doctor, "that every work Dickens publishes, costs fifty pounds at least extra expenditure before it is finished. She sent off a five-pound note yesterday, miles away from this parish, in answer to some appeal to her humanity; and I know it was owing to reading a number of one of these serials. Dear me! It is time he should leave off writing, or we shall be ruined with his humanities. I wish he would publish the whole tale at once, then there would be but one call; now it is monthlyworse than railroad-calls. He must have a wonderful power-a fairycharm given at his birth. You will hardly believe what I am going to tell you: Clara, who, in a way of her own, bewitches people, positively got possession of the ear of the old, miserly, retired banker, A., and read to him one of Dickens's little Christmas tales, and so worked upon the old man's fears, shall I say, or feelings, that he wrote off a cheque for a hundred pounds to the Town Infirmary, and gave Clara twenty pounds to distribute in charity." "Not very much to your credit, doctor," replied Clara,

66

for you have been preaching to him for many a year, and what did you ever get from him?" "A palpable

hit," said I. The doctor laughed, and suggested that Clara should make a collection of magical passages from our modern novelists, and insert them into his sermons, for he believed a battery of half-a-dozen of them would knock a ten-pound note out of a flint-stone. "But will they dovetail?" replied Clara. "If you join them, my darling, they will," quoth he. "I give you warning," she replied, "that, in the household phrase, they will be the plums in the pudding-and if they be picked out, as you may be sure they will pick them out, don't you think the suet will be the less palatable? and, to be serious now, surely the novelists of our day are doing some good. They are working a field which you divines perhaps can't work—I suppose you can't, for I see you don't-and therefore it is well that they should; and yet it is not clear to me that you might not illustrate doctrines by a little narrative, now and then-and so excite more real love, more tenderness and charity, and move, if you please, through fears, but through better, less selfish feelings, first. I would not say it of you, good doctor, but I have both read and heard sermons, the tendency of which was unbounded selfishness. It has been well said that large classes of religionists have religion enough to make them hate, and not to make them love. Now, my favourite writers do aid you, and work upon the human heart, and soften it, and make it ashamed of its selfishness. They humanise, sow the seeds of gentleness, which may peradventure come up in even unpromising soils; but there is in this wide world many a soil fit for the seed, which only waits the sowing. I wish they would more conspicuously make Christian principles the motives of action; but I will not deny that they are making some preparation for their reception." "I do not know," said the doctor; "I doubt if such intermeddling would not be dangerous. I fear fiction on that ground, and some religious novels (for the attempt has been made) I look upon as warnings not to trespass on that ground; nor am I quite sure of that tampering with the human heart, by sending it to bed every night half intoxicated

with the sentimental dram. What you call making it soft may be making it weak-may be forcing out from it in tears what it ought to spend in action. Let us keep up the true wholesome vigour of the heart and understanding. Sir Walter Scott was the true man for that work. There is bone and sinew in his human creatures, and pretty handsome flesh and blood too. I don't like your too much anatomising of human character, and stripping it bare, as some of our taletellers do, to the lower ribs; for that is not nature which is but its possible detail. Nature beautifully covers every anatomy. Let the novelist be the historian, but the pleasant historian, of mankind as they are. What mankind should be, is out of the world of their art; because out of, so far as it is above, unassisted nature. No, my dear Clara, the divine must not be the novelist, nor advertise new nostrums to cure the heart. He must apply the old medicinal virtues intrusted to his keeping, and direct to the One Physician." Our evening was passed in discourse of this kind, interchanging playfulness and seriousness, and both doing their office; and I did not that night enter upon the consultation I intended. The following day, at our breakfast-table, I told my story, - my proposed visit to Meanwell, and its object. The doctor was much tickled with the idea of my becoming a member of the Peace Society, and declared my mission, in his opinion, would be very like theirs, and do a world of mischief, quoted the "malé-sarta amicitia," and wondered at my yielding to my friend Meanwell's amiable nonsense. He loved a paradox now and then, especially when he could hit by it what he termed the conceit of amiability; and so, at the instant, he volubly broke forth on the benefits of quarrelling. He thought society could scarcely be kept whole, sweet, and pleasant without it. "Without positive quarrel," said he, "there must be hypocrisy. The very word society meant a collection of agreements, a separation from disagreements. To be continually rubbing against those whom you dislike, and who dislike you, is to live under the veriest tyranny of false philanthropy. O the