"Every one ought to know how easy it is, and how pleasant and instructive, to travel in the States. But, though many people do know this, the plague of English travellers which annually overspreads Europe, from July to December, and disturbs even the quiet of the Nile, has hardly touched America. And while one cannot enter the drawing-room of any decent house without hearing descriptions of scenery and manners in Germany, Italy, or Russia,--to have visited America almost involves the suspicion of some commercial connection with that country. Yet no other land in the world has so close an alliance with our own; and, while we are culpably ignorant of almost everything but its peculiarities and its vices, no other country studies our history, and watches our progress, with greater interest or more solicitude. Any English youngster will tell you that Americans speak through their noses, spit, and hold slaves; but how few, even of the most intelligent, know that better English is spoken by the mass of Americans, than by the majority of English citizens, and that education is practically an institution of the United States, and universal; though at home it hardly exists as a system, and can never be extended in any truly national direction without exciting a war of parties! Be the reason what it may, we have been in the habit of looking down on America. We shall soon perhaps have to look up to it. "It is but sixty-two years since the foundation of the Republic. It then consisted of thirteen small States. It now comprises twenty-nine States; without reckoning the new dominions of Oregon, California, New, Mexico, and Texas. Ten years ago its area was 2,000,000 square miles, or more than 1,300,000,000 acres. That area has become, in 1850, 3,252,689 square miles, or 2,081,717,760 acres. It is thus nearly thirty times the size of Great Britain and Ireland. "The Republic now possesses an ocean coast of 5,140 miles, viz.,--l,920 on the Atlantic, 1,620 on the Pacific, and 1,600 on the Gulf of Mexico. "Its population in 1790 was less than 4,000,000; in 1840 it stood at 17,000,000; it is now 25,000,000. And if its vast territory, with a more productive soil, and greater resources of all kinds, should some day become as thickly peopled as our own island, it will then contain a population of 800,000,000 of souls speaking the English tongue. If the Federation hold together in peace, why should this result, though distant, be doubtful? For it now comprises almost every variety of soil, climate, vegetable productions, and mineral wealth.