It appears to be the destiny of America to carry on the greatness of the future, and that Providence--which shapes the ends of nations as well as of persons, at a time when it was most needful for the prosecution of her mission, when war and the expedients of political strategy are out of vogue, and the people is most powerful of which the individual civilization, energy, ambition, and resources are greatest--that Providence, at this crisis, has opened the veins of the Continent, slumbering so many thousand years, in order that we might derive from them all that remained necessary for investing the United States with the leadership of the world. The first intelligence of the discovery of gold in California fell upon the general mind like news of a great and peculiar revolution. It was at once--even before the statements on the subject assumed a definite or certain form--it was at once felt that a new hour was signally on the dial-plate of history. Immediately, those immense fortunes which were acquired by the Portuguese and Spaniards nearly four centuries ago--fortunes which, in the decline of nations, have still remained in families as the sign and substance of the only nobility and power which mankind at large acknowledge--those astonishing fortunes which raised the enterprising poor man to the dignity and happiness of the most elevated classes in society, were recalled, and made suggestive of like successes to new and more hardy adventurers. The reports came with increased volume; every ship confirmed the rumors brought by its predecessor, and new intelligence, that, in its turn, tasked the popular credulity; and it came soon to be understood that we had found a land literally flowing with gold and silver, as that promised to the earlier favorites of Heaven did with milk and honey. As many as were free from controlling engagements, and had means with which to do so, started for our El Dorado, making haste, in fear that the wealth of the country would quickly be exhausted--not dreaming, even yet, that there was any thing to be acquired but flakes and scales and scattered masses of ore, which would be exhausted by the first hunters who should scour the rivers and turn the surface soil.