of morals and enlightenment. The limited commerce of China and the Eastern Archipelago was engrossed by Europe, and took the route of the Cape of Good Hope, with the exception of a few annual vessels that traded from the sea-board states of the North American Union to Valparaiso and Canton. The wool of New South Wales was but coming into notice, and found its way to England alone round the Cape of Good Hope. An American fleet of whalers scoured the Pacific, and adventurers of the same nation carried on a desultory and inconsiderable traffic in hides with California, in tortoise-shell and mother of pearl with the Polynesian Islands. What, then, would have been the use of cutting a canal, through which there would not have passed five ships in a twelvemonth? But twenty years have worked a wondrous revolution in the state and prospects of these regions. The traffic of Chili has received a large development, and the stability of its institutions has been fairly tried. The resources of Costa Rica, the population of which is mainly of European race, is steadily advancing. American citizens have founded a state in Oregon. The Sandwich Islands have become for all practical purposes an American colony. The trade with China--to which the proposed canal would open a convenient avenue by a western instead of the present eastern route--is no longer restricted to the Canton river, but is open to all nations as far north as the Yang-tse-Kiang. The navigation of the Amur has been opened to the Russians by a treaty, and can not long remain closed against the English and American settlers between Mexico and the Russian settlements in America. Tahiti has become a kind of commercial emporium. The English settlements in Australia and New Zealand have opened a direct trade with the Indian Archipelago and China. The permanent settlements of intelligent and enterprising Anglo-Americans and English in Polynesia, and on the eastern and western shores of the Pacific, have proved so many _dépôts_ for the adventurous traders with its innumerable islands, and for the spermaceti whalers. Then the last, but greatest addition of all, is California: a name in the world of commerce and enterprise to conjure with. There gold is to be had for fetching. Gold, the main-spring of commercial activity, the reward of toil--for which men are ready to risk life, to endure every sort of privation; sometimes, alas! to sacrifice every virtue; one most especially, and that is patience. They will away with her now.