The able reviewer--for right able he was--must have been either an American or one well acquainted with the face of the country, its trade, the people, their present condition, and future prospects. The statistics of the States in question were at his finger-ends; he produced sound evidence in support of each proposition he advanced; and the argument thus sustained went to prove, beyond all doubt, that the spirit of speculation was in this, as in many other particulars, leading the American people to the verge of madness, and their country to certain bankruptcy. That in leaving their magnificent lakes, their endless rivers, and the smooth waters of their coast,--the highways created by Providence for their use, and amply sufficient for their purposes--to waste their wealth, distract their commercial views, and agitate their politics in the projection of railroads that could never be completed, or, if completed even, would not pay, in our time, the expense of repairs, or endure the severity of the climate; to construct which the material must be imported from England, and after every severe winter would require to be renewed, was, in effect, quitting the substance for the shadow, and, if begun in folly, could not fail to end in ruin and disappointment. I never in my life perused any article more philosophical in spirit or more conclusive in argument; the scheme was clearly shown not only to be absurd but impracticable, and the projectors proved either to be presumptuous imitators, or men profligately speculating upon the ignorant credulity of their fellow-citizens. I closed the review, in short, admiring the clear judgment and practical farsightedness of the writer; pitying the Yankees, for whom I cherished a sneaking kindness, and inwardly hoping that this very clever exposition of the folly of their seeking to counteract the manifest designs of Providence, which had so clearly demonstrated their paths, might produce as full conviction on their minds as it had on mine. Well, I forgot the article and its subject, and was only reminded of it by finding myself one fine day whisking along at the rate of twenty miles an hour over a well-constructed railway, one of a cargo of four hundred souls. The impossibility had, in fact, been achieved; and, in addition to the natural roads offered by Sea, Lake, and River, I found railways twining and locomotives hissing like serpents over the whole continent from Maine to Mississippi: Binding the cold North to the ever-flowing streams of Georgia and Alabama, literally, with bonds of iron, and forming, indeed, the natural roads of a country whose soil and climate would set at nought all the ingenuity of M'Adam, backed by the wealth of Croesus and the flint of Derbyshire to boot.