ancient learning of the common law; its technical peculiarities and feudal origin. Its subtile distinctions and artificial logic were familiar to his early studies, and enabled him to expound, with admirable force and perspicuity, the rules of real property. He was familiar with every branch of commercial law; and superadded, at a later period of his life, to his other legal attainments, an extensive acquaintance with the principles of international law, and the practice of the prize courts. In his legal studies he preferred the original text-writers and reporters, (è fontibus hauriri,) to all those abridgments, digests, and elementary treatises, which lend so many convenient helps and facilities to the modern lawyer, but which he considered as adapted to form sciolists, and to encourage indolence and superficial habits of investigation. His favourite law book was the Coke Littleton, which he had read many times. Its principal texts he had treasured up in his memory, and his arguments at the bar abounded with perpetual recurrences to the principles and analogies drawn from this rich mine of common law learning.

External Appearance of England.-A. H. EVERETT

WHATEVER may be the extent of the distress in Eng. land, or the difficulty of finding any remedies for it, which shall be at once practicable and sufficient, it is certain that the symptoms of decline have not yet displayed themselves on the surface; and no country in Europe, at the present day, probably none that ever flourished at any preceding period of ancient o of modern times, ever exhibited so strongly the outward marks of general industry, wealth and prosperity. The misery that exists, whatever it may be, retires from public view; and the traveller sees no races of it except in the beggars,-which are not more numerous than they are on the continent,-in the courts of justice, and in the newspapers. On the contrary, the impressions he receives from the objects that meet his view are almost uniformly agreeable. He is pleased with the great attention paid to his personal accommodation as a

traveller, with the excellent roads, and the conveniences of the public carriages and inns. The country every where exhibits the appearance of high cultivation, or else of wild and picturesque beauty; and even the unimproved lands are disposed with taste and skill, so as to embellish the landscape very highly, if they do not contribute, as they might, to the substantial comfort of the people. From every eminence extensive parks and grounds, spreading far and wide over hill and vale, interspersed with dark woods, and variegated with bright waters, unroll themselves before the eye, like enchanted gardens. And while the elegant constructions of the modern proprietors fill the mind with images of ease and luxury, the mouldering ru ins that remain of former ages, of the castles and churches of their feudal ancestors, increase the interest of the picture by contrast, and associate with it poetical and affecting recollections of other times and manners. Every village seems to be the chosen residence of Industry, and her handmaids, Neatness and Comfort; and, in the various parts of the island, her operations present themselves under the most amusing and agreeable variety of forms. Sometimes her votaries are mounting to the skies in manufactories of innumerable stories in height, and sometimes diving in mines into the bowels of the earth, or dragging up drowned treasures from the bottom of the sea. At one time the ornamented grounds of a wealthy proprietor seem to realize the fabled Elysium; and again, as you pass in the evening through some village engaged in the iron manufacture, where a thousand forges are feeding at once their dark-red fires, and clouding the air with their volumes of smoke, you might think yourself, for a moment, a little too near some drearier residence.

The aspect of the cities is as various as that of the country. Oxford, in the silent, solemn grandeur of its numerous collegiate palaces, with their massy stone walls, and vast interior quadrangles, seems like the deserted capital of some departed race of giants. This is the splendid sepulchre, where Science, like the Roman Tarpela, lies buried under the weight of gold that rewarded her ancient services, and where copious libations of the richest Port and Madeira are daily poured out to her memory. At Liver

pool, on the contrary, all is bustle, brick and business. Every thing breathes of modern times, every body is occupied with the concerns of the present moment, excepting one elegant scholar, who unites a singular resemblance to the Roman face and dignified person of our Washington, with the magnificent spirit and intellectual accomplishments of his own Italian hero.

At every change in the landscape, you fall upon monuments of some new race of men, among the number that have in their turn inhabited these islands. The mysterious monument of Stonehenge, standing remote and alone upon a bare and boundless heath, as much unconnected with the events of past ages as it is with the uses of the present, carries you back, beyond all historical records, into the obscurity of a wholly unknown period. Perhaps the Druids raised it ; but by what machinery could these half barbarians have wrought and moved such immense masses of rock? By what fatality is it, that, in every part of the globe, the most durable impressions that have been made upon its surface Who were were the work of races now entirely extinct? the builders of the pyramids, and the massy monuments Who constructed the Cyclopean of Egypt and India? walls of Italy and Greece, or elevated the innumerable and inexplicable mounds, which are seen in every part of Europe, Asia, and America; or the ancient forts upon the Ohio, on whose ruins the third growth of trees is now more than four hundred years old? All these constructions have existed through the whole period within the memory of man, and will continue, when all the architecture of the present generation, with its high civilization and improved machinery, shall have crumbled into dust. Stonehenge will remain unchanged, when the banks of the Thames But the Romans had shall be as bare as Salisbury heath.

something of the spirit of these primitive builders, and they left every where distinct traces of theft passage. Half the castles in Great Britain were founded, according to tradition, by Julius Cæsar; and abundant vestiges remain, throughout the island, of their walls, and forts, and military roads. Most of their castles have, however, been built upon and augmented at a later period, and belong, with more propriety, to the brilliant period of Gothic archi

tecture. Thus the keep of Warwick dates from the time of Cæsar, while the castle itself, with its lofty battlements, extensive walls, and large enclosures, bears witness to the age, when every Norman chief was a military despot within his own barony. To this period appertains the principal part of the magnificent Gothic monuments, castles, cathe. drals, abbeys, priories and churches, in various stages of preservation and of ruin; some, like Warwick and Alnwick castles, like Salisbury cathedral and Westminster abbey, in all their original perfection; others, like Kenilworth and Canterbury, little more than a rude mass of earth and rubbish; and others again in the intermediate stages of decay, borrowing a sort of charm from their very ruin, and putting on their dark-green robes of ivy to conceal the ravages of time, as if the luxuriant bounty of nature were purposely throwing a veil over the frailty and feebleness of art. What a beautiful and brilliant vision was this Gothic architecture, shining out as it did from the deepest darkness of feudal barbarism! And here again, by what fatality has it happened that the moderns, with all their civilization and improved taste, have been as utterly unsuccessful in rivalling the divine simplicity of the Greeks, as the rude grandeur of the Cyclopeans and ancient Egyptians? Since the revi val of art in Europe, the builders have confined themselves wholly to a graceless and unsuccessful imitation of ancient nodels. Strange, that the only new architectural conception of any value, subsequent to the time of Phidias, should have been struck out at the worst period of society that has since occurred! Sometimes the moderns, in their la-` borious poverty of invention, heap up small materials in large masses, and think that St. Peter's or St. Paul's will be as much more sublime than the Parthenon, as they are larger; at others, they condescend to a servile imitation of the wild and native graces of the Gothic; as the Chinese, in their stupid ignorance of perspective, can still copy, line by line, and point by point, an European picture. But the Norman castles and churches, with all their richness and sublimity, fell with the power of their owners at the rise of the commonwealth. The Independents were levellers of substance as well as form; and the material traces they left of their existence are the ruins of what their predeces

sors had built. They, too, had an architecture, but it was not in wood nor stone. It was enough for them to lay the foundation of the nobler fabric of civil liberty. The effects of the only change in society that has since occurred, are seen in the cultivated fields, the populous and thriving cities, the busy ports, and the general prosperous appearance of the country.

All the various aspects, that I have mentioned, present themselves in turns; and, having gradually succeeded to each other, their contrasts are never too rude, and they harmonize together so as to make up a most agreeable picture. Sometimes, as at Edinburgh, the creations of ancient and of modern days, the old and new towns, have placed themselves very amicably side by side, like Fitz James and Rhoderic Dhu reposing on the same plaid; while at London, the general emporium and central point of the whole system, every variety of origin and social existence is defaced, and all are coagulated in one uniform though heterogeneous mass.

Features of American Scenery.—TUDOR.

THE numerous waterfalls, the enchanting beauty of Lake George and its pellucid flood, of Lake Champlain and the lesser lakes, afford many objects of the most picturesque character; while the inland seas, from Superior to Ontario, and that astounding cataract, whose roar would hardly be increased by the united murmurs of all the cascades of Europe, are calculated to inspire vast and sublime conceptions. The effects, too, of our climate, composed of a Siberian winter and an Italian summer, furnish new and peculiar objects for description. The circumstances of re mote regions are here blended, and strikingly opposite appearances witnessed in the same spot at different seasons of the year. In our winters, we have the sun at the same altitude as in Italy, shining on an unlimited surface of snow, which can only be found in the higher latitudes of Europe, where the sun in the winter rises little above the horizon. The dazzling brilliance of a winter's day and a moonlight