principles of democracy have been carried out both in their polity and social arrangements. I have already noticed the extraordinary sameness of their language, which, throughout the whole continent, admits of no dialectical difference and, in passing, how great are the changes this single fact implies have taken place in the conditions of human life, when we recollect that in that little plat of ground of ancient Greece every little town had a dialect of its own. The universality with which any form of expression, any social practice, or even any state of feeling, is abandoned or adopted throughout the vast Union, is to those who observe these matters a very interesting fact in American civilisation. The extent to which they are readers of newspapers is not the cause of this, though of course it somewhat contributes to it. The real cause is the urgent and uncontrollable desire in every American to talk, and think, and live, and dress, and feel, and to do everything just in the same way as other people; as we say here, to be in the fashion, only that they apply the idea of fashion to everything. Changes of this kind are wrought in America almost as if by magic. There is in this a great balance of good, although it is so great a check upon individuality, because it keeps the whole people advancing together as one man. [Sidenote: _Maize._] In the agricultural reports of the United States maize is set down for so many million bushels as almost to transcend the power of belief on this side the water. How can so much be grown? how can so much be used? are questions which occur to us. But after one has seen something of America the feeling is changed into one of wonder at the inexhaustible merits of this grain, and of its incalculable utility to man; and one ceases to be surprised at finding it grown everywhere throughout the Union on so large a scale. It is quite impossible that America could have risen to her present greatness without it. While the hardy pioneer of civilisation was subduing the forest, which reached from the Atlantic to the valley of the Mississippi, there was nothing that could have met his wants as maize did. As soon as he had felled the trees for his log cabin, before the ground was cleared, or prepared sufficiently for any other crop, he would put in his seed for a crop of maize, which would be ready in a few months, perhaps before his log house was finished, and would supply with food his family, and pigs, and any other stock that he might have, till the next harvest. And when ripe, it did not, like wheat and other grain, require immediate harvesting; for nature had provided it with a thick strong stem to support it against the wind, and with a sheath which kept it effectually from the rain. And its yield, as it thus grew among the stumps of these forest clearings, was very great. And now that the land has been cleared, it still holds its ground as the chief crop almost everywhere, and