For this reason, the agricultural population of the States are more reasonable, more amiable, and more original than those engaged in incessant trade. I have seen an American farmer in my travels this year, who was the perfect image of the English franklin, before his daughters wore parasols and thrummed the piano. Oh, railways, ye have much to answer for! for, although the prosperity of the mass may be increased by you, the happiness and contentment of the million is deteriorating every day. I am not about to write a history of Canada at present, for that is already done, as far as its military annals are concerned, during the three years since I last addressed the public; but it shall yet slumber awhile in its box of pine wood, until the time is ripe for development: I merely intend here to put together some reminiscences which strike me as to the part the French Canadian has played, and to show that we should neither forget nor neglect him. Canada, as it is well known, was French, both by claim of discovery and by the more powerful right of possession. Stimulated by the fame of Cabot, and ambitious to be pilots of the Meta Incognita, that visionary channel which was to conduct European valour to the golden Cathay and to the rich Spice Islands of the East, French adventurers eagerly sought the coveted honours which such a voyage could not fail to yield them, and to combine overflowing wealth with chivalric renown. France, England, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, sent forth those daring spirits whose hopes were uniformly crushed, either by encountering the unbroken line of continental coast, or dashed to pieces amidst the terrors of that truly Cimmerian region, where ice and fog, cold and darkness, contend for empire. Of all those heroic navigators, who would have rivalled Columbus under happier circumstances, none were successful, even in a limited sense, in attempting to reach China by the northern Atlantic, excepting the French alone, who may fairly be allowed the merit of having traversed nearly one half of the broadest portion of the New World in the discovery of the St. Lawrence and its connecting streams, and in having afterwards reached Mexico by the Mississippi. Even in our own days, nearly four centuries after the Columbian era, the idea of reaching China by the North Pole has not been abandoned, and is actively pursuing by the most enlightened naval government in the world, and, very possibly, will be achieved; and, as coal exists on the northern frozen coasts, we shall have ports established, where the British ensign will fly, in the realms of eternal frost--nay, more, we shall yet place an iron belt from the Atlantic to the Pacific, a railroad from Halifax to Nootka Sound, and thus reach China in a pleasure voyage.