Trade, in 1839, it appears that in the preceding ten | fixed around them. It is impossible that any two inyears the number of steamboat accidents in the Uni- dependent nations can have such a community of inted Kingdom, as far as their, number could be ascer- terests as England and America. In truth, we know tained, was ninety-two; namely, forty wrecked or of no material and substantial interests in which they foundered, involving a loss of three hundred and eight are opposed; nay, in which they are separated; lives; twenty-three explosions of the boilers, by their origin, their laws, and their language, are the which seventy-seven lives were lost; seventeen fires same; their business, their prosperity, are identified. from various causes, only two lives being lost; and New York is but a suburb of Liverpool, or, if you twelve collisions, by which sixty-six persons perish- will, Liverpool of New York. The failure of the ed. The loss of life in a crowded river, like the Pennsylvania United States Bank has ruined more Thames, occasioned by steamboats, or which occur- fortunes in England than in America; the manufacred on board, amounted to forty in three years and tures of Manchester share more wealth with Carolina the total loss of lives attributable to steamboats in the than with Middlesex. We are not merely brothers ten years, and including all parts of the United King- and cousins; the ties of consanguinity we know are dom, was six hundred and thirty-four. In the wreck not always the bond of friendship; but we are partof the Rothsay Castle, one, hundred and nineteen ners, joint tenants as it were, of the commerce of the persons perished; in one case of collision sixty-two, world; and we have had, as we have just hinted, and in one of explosion twenty-four persons lost their melancholy experience that distress on either shore lives. We need scarcely refer to the well-known hte Atlantic, must be almost equally felt on the other. fate of the President.

The want of experience, science, and attention, has occasioned still greater loss of life in the steamboats of the United States of America. In the report to Congress already quoted, it is stated that to the end of the year 1838, there had been ninety-nine cases of boilers exploding; twenty-eight of fire; fifty-two cases in which the loss of the vessel was occasioned by "snags" and "sawyers" in the rivers. The aggregate loss of life from these various causes was estimated at two thousand, and by many the number was thought to be much greater. The number of persons perishing in single casualities was also much greater than in England. In 1837 the Monmouth came into collision with another steamer on the Mississippi, when three hundred lives were lost. By the explosion of the Oronoco, on the same river, in the same year, one hundred and thirty lives were lost; again, in the same year, also on the Mississippi, the Ben Sherrod took fire, and nearly one hundred and thirty persons perished. In the same year also the Home was shipwrecked on the coast of Carolina, and one hundred lives were lost.

The experiment of STEAM NAVIGATION has now been fairly tried-the road laid open, and no one can tell the effects to be produced by its extension. When we have passed England, then are the great rivers of India open to steam, and who can tell the advances in civilization from its employment? The lust of power and military glory has over-ruled to promote national intercourse, and advance the interests of humanity; we have learned a better way to civilize than by vanquishing and oppressing our fellow-men. Commerce, and her sister, navigation, have done, and will do, far more than the sword to improve the world. But in those arts and enterprises, the ancients, who in some respects excelled us, were greatly our inferiors, They dreaded the waves of the Adriatic; and with ships, little better than canoes, scarcely ventured beyond the peaceful waters of the Mediterranean. The mariner's compass enabled Columbus to accomplish his grand discovery. The next great step was navigation by steam to the country which Columbus discovered; and thus man, who seems to be formed to inhabit only the solid land, uses fire to work the vast powers of machinery, The adoption of even so simple a rule as that launches with it into the bosom of the deep, sits sewhich is observed by carriages on the public high-cure amid elements which uncontrolled would deway would alone have prevented many accidents in both countries, and an inspection of the machinery by authorized persons would probably be a wise safeguard. There appears indeed to be no reason why steam-vessels should not be a safer means of watertransport than any other.

A new era has altogether come upon us; skill, science, and enterprise, have been called into activity by the inexhaustible wealth of England, "whose merchants are princes." The distant conceptions of WATT, and the predictions of FULTON, have been realized. The broad Atlantic wave has been advantageously navigated by steam! England and her eldest daughter have been brought within twelve days' sail of each other; time and space have alike been measurably annihilated-two great nations, descended from a common ancestry, speaking the same language, and having the same birth-right in the literature which adorns their annals, have had the bonds of national friendship and fraternal feeling more securely

stroy him, boldly copes with the billows of the ocean, and successfully struggles against its stormy winds. Does not this sway over the elements prove the vast superiority of MIND? "'Tis the Divinity that stirs within us," destined to surmount the material world, and to survive its ruins. Such power is not committed to us in vain; we would speak of it, not boastingly, but with the humility which it becomes feeble but honored instruments in the hands of the Great Ruler of the Universe, who by such means designs to effect his vast designs. WE ARE BOUND TO EMPLOY IT TO SPREAD KNOWLEDGE, CHRISTIANITY, CIVILIZATION, AND SO TO PROMOTE THE CREATURE'S HAPPINESS AND THE CREATOR'S GLORY.

The arrivals and departures of these leviathans of the deep-these eighth wonders of the world-have caused an excitement rarely ever before evinced both in the old continent and in the new. No one can look with any ordinary emotions on the future and present state of things effected by Atlantic steaming

The enormous steamer, the GREAT BRITAIN, was size and resources of the respective architects, far Jaunched with all possible splendor at Bristol, Eng- exceed many of those greatest results of human inland, on the 19th July, 1843. Every accommoda- genuity and labor by which the world has been astion for the important ceremony was afforded, and tonished. Whether as masons, carpenters, miners, numerous was the assembly of lords, ladies, and dis- or carvers of wood, they offer examples which the tinguished persons present to witness the ceremony. most ingenious need not refuse to admire, and by It was calculated, at the time, that upward of one which the wisest may be instructed. In the various hundred thousand persons occupied the surrounding species of ants the constructions are various, and heights, and that a more animating scene never pre- none unworthy of attention. The mason-ant offers sented itself at any former launch.

The Great Britain is indeed a wonderful achievement. She is 322 feet long (from 60 to 70 feet longer than the largest line-of-battle-ship), is 50 feet broad, and 32 in depth. She has four decks, each carry 1,000 tons of merchandise, besides 1,200 tons of coals. Her boilers will be heated by 24 fires, and her funnel (which does not look large until you get close to it), is 24 feet in circumference. She has six masts, all of which can be lowered from the deck in case of heavy head winds, and her canvass covers about an acre and a half of ground-a pretty fair quantity of sail for a steamer. She is built in six compartments, so that it is calculated if she were to strike and carry away a dozen feet of her bottom, the uninjured compartments would render her sufficiently buoyant to float-a rather important consideration for passengers-besides which, being built of iron, she can not take fire. Fifteen hundred tons of iron have of which exhibits a series of labyrinths, lodges, vaults, to our contemplation its earthen hillock, the interior been used in constructing this monster! Her engines and galleries; its construction skilful, and its situaare of one thousand horse-power, and her average tion chosen with judgment. Such nests are somespeed, it is calculated, will be twelve miles per hour times constructed in twenty stories above and as -with a fair wind and sails set, much greater. She is without paddle-wheels, her mode of propulsion be- ants are enabled to regulate with great facility the heat, many below the ground, by which arrangement the ing the Archimedian screw-and this circumstance withdrawing to the underground apartments when adds greatly to the anxiety with which her first trip those have become too warm, and proceeding upward is looked forward to by scientific men. Her conwhen their lower rooms are too cold. With equal sumption of coal is estimated at fifty tons per day. skill, and perhaps greater labor, do the carpenter-ants She will accommodate three hundred and sixty pas-chisel their stories, chambers, galleries, and colonsengers, all of whom can sit down to the table at nades, in the bodies or roots of growing trees. once, besides carrying about one hundred and thirty more persons as her crew. May she plough through the Atlantic surge, like a giant rejoicing in his course, engendering generous deeds and friendly feelings between the denizens of the old and the new world, to the mutual happiness and prosperity of both; and may the interests of the people of the two countries be as near to each other as their banners at her mast-head; and let us fondly and fervently desire that their best affections may be as closely entwined.

ANTS.

THE study of the ways of the ant, is calculated to furnish lessons of wisdom, revealing to us the wisdom of God as manifested in the humblest of his creatures, and furnishing important practical lessons, which the humbleness of the teacher should not lead us to despise, but to value the more highly.

Our wood-cuts show what only is capable of pictorial illustration-the skill, industry, and labor, with which the domicils of the different kinds of ants are constructed, and which, considered relatively to the

Nest of Termites in the branch of a tree. Then other species construct nests among or upon the branches of trees, various in their kinds and dimensions, but all wonderful instances of the results of the art and industry of co-operating numbers, even among creatures so small that myriads may be crushed unregarded beneath the foot. Some of these nests are as large as hogsheads; others from the size of a human head to a fist,-the latter being formed by the

powerful bending of large leaves, and gluing the trious little beings which construct this singular points of them together so as to form a purse. "But monument. when we look at the buildings erected by the white ants of tropical climates, all that we have been conveying dwindles into insignificance. Their industry appears greatly to surpass that of our ants and bees, and they are certainly more skilful in architectural contrivances. The elevation also of their edifices is

There is much that is worthy of admiration in these insects. Their unwearied industry and indomitable perseverance, the arduous and sincere exertions of every individual toward the common object, their regulated labor, the alacrity and zeal with which the over-burdened are assisted, their care in observing the times and seasons, the judgment with which they avail themselves of favorable circumstances, and the grand evidence which even these minute creatures are enabled to offer of the effects producible by the co-operation of numbers in a good and useful object,-are all circumstances which explain and enforce the injunction of the sacred writer: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways and be wise."

LISTENERS.

GOLDEN opinions are often to be gained by discreet silence. Some people delight exceedingly to hear themselves talk, but above all things are captivated with the respectful attention of a steady listener; and whoever has the patience to sit and hear them out more than five hundred times the height of the buil- (that is, not absolutely to wait until they stop of their ders. Were our houses built according to the same own accord-for perhaps there is no well-authentiproportions, they would be twelve or fifteen times cated instance of anything of that kind-but till somehigher than the London Monument, and four or five thing occurs to interrupt them), obtains their good-will times higher than the pyramids of Egypt, with cor- far more certainly than if he had communicated to responding dimensions in the basement of the edifice. them a vast variety of important information, or taken These statements are perhaps necessary to impress a world of pains to correct their mistaken notions. A apon the mind the extraordinary labors of ants, for we ure all more or less sensible to the force of comparisons." The nests just mentioned are frequently welve feet high, and some have been mentioned so aigh as twenty feet, and large enough to contain welve men. This is an exterior shell containing an interior building, in which are formed a vast number of apartments, galleries, and magazines. In the same region also does the smaller white ant erect its strong pillar with its overhanging roof or capital, in

the form of a mushroom. These erections are about three feet high, the interior being divided into numerous angular cells which furnish lodging to the indus

character for the most engaging modesty falls inevitably to the lot of him who possesses the power of holding his tongue; the praises of his discernment are everywhere sounded; nay, he often acquires a reputation for conversational abilities: it is true, with regard to this latter point, that doubts are sometimes expressed by some who have been whole nights in his company without hearing him utter more than a few syllables; but the interminable talker-the neverfailing patron of silent gentlemen-forgetful of his own fame in his zeal for that of his client, declares that good talents for conversation do not consist in the multiplication of sentences, but in speaking succinctly to the purpose. Advantages more substantial than favorable regards do also frequently accrue to the possessor of this qualification; it were endless to recount how many large fortunes have been secured by persons, male and female, in the fifth, sixth, and seventh degrees of kin, who day after day for years had the fortitude to submit their ears to the recital of the same stories and remarks from an old invalid bachelor relation. And far be it from us to maintain that in this respect the effect did not most naturally and most justly follow the cause. People who have become rich in this manner enjoy indeed no high repute with the world; they are commonly reproached with having meanly subjected their minds for a number of years to a servile acquiescence with all the caprices of him whom they courted through no attachment to his person, but with the precarious expectation of coaxing from him a munificent legacy. This

no doubt is more or less the case. We believe, how- | down to the resolution which he in vain attempted to ever, that, when two persons live long together, their persuade the "numerous and respectable company." intercourse for the most part assumes a kindlier char- to adopt; concluding with a supplementary address acter than that between a haughty lord and an obse- to yourself, to prove the ruinous consequences that quious dependant. The wants to which we daily ad- must inevitably ensue from the rejection of his propo minister beget in us pity for him who needs assist-sal. Having fully disburdened his mind upon you, ance-satisfaction with ourselves in being able to re- notwithstanding your looks of agony, and the unsetlieve them—and a degree of affection for the individ- tled manner in which you occupy your chair, he then ual who thus engrosses so much of our care. Grati- perhaps recurs to the matter in dependance between tude in the other party for dutiful services and in- you and him, and you obtain a satisfactory arrangecreased comforts is a still stronger aud more obvious ment, which would certainly have been postponed if bond of union. This is true, whether the services you had been altogether refractory, and declined to performed have regard to the case of a decayed body, hear the mighty matter with which his mind was laor the amusement of a mind that can not find employ-boring. ment within itself. If single gentlemen who have merchant, in very extensive business, to his son, made quarter-plums, half-plums, and plums, without cultivating elegant tastes, the exercise of which might relieve the weariness of an unoccupied old age, were to retire from the bustle of action or business, and to find nobody upon whom to bestow their garrulity, their days would be dreary and wretched in the extreme. Whoever, therefore, lightens the tedium of their after-king a joke of a man's profession. The sons of the noons confers upon them whatever happiness they enjoy, and they can not extend their liberality to any one who better deserves it.

Valuable listeners are seldom to be found of an advanced age. When people get established in life, and have amassed a share of substance and experience, they begin to feel their own weight-to think their opinions merit consideration as well as those of others, and that they are entitled to "deliver their sentiments at length on the subject." As their wealth and wisdom are farther increased, what they say assumes the tone of incontrovertible maxims rather than that of persuasion or argument. By-and-by they can not bear to be contradicted, and in a little time longer you will hear it whispered that they have become intolerable prosers. This gradation is not in every instance true to the letter: multitudes of veterans retain the candor, the simplicity, and almost the vivacity of youth, to their latest years. But somehow or other a man of that period of life is never pitched upon as a person proper to receive the full details of a very long story, which in general can not be heard with a zest of attention and admiration sufficient to gratify the narrator, unless by the inexperience of the young, which "holds each strange tale devoutly true.'

I remember hearing the advice of a wine

which is very much to the present purpose. It is very well known that many of the transactions of wholesale merchants with their country customers are managed by "travellers," as they call themselves, or "bagmen," as they are derisively termed by those whose wit is not too refined to prevent them from ma

merchants themselves are often employed in this manner, not only to give them a knowledge of every part of their profession, but to introduce them to a personal acquaintance with those who deal with "the house." From a journey of this kind the young man alluded to had just returned; and his father asked him, among other things, "Well, Tom, and how much are we to send to my friend the provost." "He did not favor me with an order," replied Tom, evidently a little chagrined to confess his want of success in that quarter. "Did not favor you with an order!" exclaimed his father. "There must have been some

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very particular reason for that." Why," was the answer, “when I told him our vintages, he would talk of nothing but provincial politics. The conduct of Deacon Farlane at the last election, he assured me, was perfectly infamous. I begged him to look over the catalogue, and select such supplies as he required. He begged to refer to me if it was not a most base thing in a man first to pledge himself to one party, and then to vote for the other; and went on to enumerate a host of his fellow-citizens who had been guilty of that delinquency. Perceiving there was no end to his vehemence, I informed him civilly, that, as I had a number of other calls to make, it would be obliging if he would honor me with any orders he had to Yet there is a method by means of which talkers give. Very well, young man,' he said 'nothing frequently contrive to enlist auditors of any age; you is wanted at present; but give my respects to my old have a piece of urgent business, and going to the per- friend your father, who did not use to speak of mason with whom it is to be transacted, lay the whole king other calls the first night he came to my house' affair before him: it may be of equal importance to And so," concluded Tom, "I took my leave." him, but perceiving of what consequence it is to you," Tom, Tom!" said his father, on hearing this explaand being a proser, he answers, "Well, well; we'll nation, "I don't know what you'll make of the busitalk of that presently: but did you hear of our famous dinner last night?" You in vain endeavor to get off by saying that you read a full account of the proceedings in the newspapers this morning; he protests there was never such a negligent or partial set as the reporters-they have omitted or misrepresented the whole of his speech: and he goes on mercilessly to inflict upon you the entire oration, from the-" Gentlemen, unacquainted as I am with public speaking,"

ness when it comes into your hands; but if you wish to sell wine with success, you must be content to listen to a great deal that people have to say on other subjects; and if you do so respectfully, ten to one but they will take a larger quantity than they at first intended. It will not do to go about, and cry, Wine, wine!— how much shall we send you?' I must set out to Sybo to-morrow, and keep the worthy provost a customer of the house, as long at least as I am a partner in it.”

"I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they were desolate, The fire had resounded in the halls, and the voice of the people is heard no more; the stream of Clutha was removed from its place by the fall of the walls; the thistle shook there its lonely head, the moss whistled to the wind, the fox looked out of the windows, the rank grass of the wall waved round its head,-desolate is the dwelling of Molina, silence is in the house of her fathers; raise the song of mourning, oh bards, over the land of strangers! They have but fallen before us, for one day we must fall. Why dost thou build the hall, son of the winged days? thou lookest from thy towers to-day; yet a few years and the blast of the desert comes, it howls in thy empty court and whistles round thy half-worn shield; and let the blast of the desert come, we shall be renowned in our day. Raise the song, send round the shell, let joy be heard in my hall, when thou son of heaven shalt fail, if thou shalt fail thou mighty light, our fame shall survive thy beams."-OSSIAN.

THE RUINS OF ANCIENT CITIES.-No. II. | sublime Artist could make them; and they speak of buildings whose domes courted heaven and drank in the golden flood of living light from the sky; they tell us of oracles, but they give forth no response; of temples, but they ring with no chant; of the palace, but the shout of revelry is hushed there; of the hall, but the warrior's voice hath not left an echo. Yet a hollow sound comes from the chambers of the grave, and it peals over the cromlech stone, and the triumphal arch, the bust and the pillar, the frieze and the relief, the pillared obelisk and the proud sarcophagus, declaring "vanity of vanities!" The chart of time is before me-I stand amid the dateless tombs of thousands of years, the dynasties of all time rush on my vision. I turn a backward glance and I see all the world's mighty empires, they crowd on each other, each in his own sepulchral grandeur, the world's melancholy funeral procession; the sceptre is snapped, the throne is prostrate, the power is gone. Babylon is there-Babylon, whose Semiramis called forth its high and haughty splendor; Babylon, where Nitocris kindled the beamings of softer glory. We have read of its hundred gates of solid brass, its six hundred and seventy-six squares, its unimaginable walls eighty-seven feet broad and three hundred and fifty feet high, its magnificent bridges, its costly palaces, its subterranean glories, and its hanging gardens: its fifty streets, each fifteen miles long and one hundred and fifty feet broad, its Temple of Belus six and its observatory on the summit. It was here that hundred feet high, its eight towers, its golden image, the evolutions of the mighty planets which wheel the men, called from Chaldean plains, first watched through space, and formed imaginary figures in the sky; those stars still roll on, little reck they of change; but the scene on which they smiled is passed away; of all this primeval splendor scarce a single his tent, the houses are full of doleful creatures, the relic meets the eye,—the Arabian pitches now there wild beasts of the desert are there, there the satyrs hold their revels, and the pall of destruction envelops the whole.

RUINS! there is something in the word, even without the spectacle, which awes the spirit and kindles the intellect a pile where the artist called forth all the skill and ingenuity of a dormant immortality has fallen! there was a time when, bright in the majesty of its finished splendor, it rose to court the sunbeam of its finished splendor, it rose to court the sunbeam and to avert the storm,-is it a temple? there was a day when the chant rose high and loud on its consecration, and the white-stoled priest called the fire from heaven to bless the sacrifice, is it a senate? there was a day when it rung with the thunder of applause, and the fires of eloquence burned brightly in its midst; but now in ruins, the ivy and the lichen, and the wallflower, wreath it with a grave-like beauty, every wind wakes for it a mournful requiem, and each column and architrave tell in their melancholy appearance how rapidly they are passing to dust.

Now such are some of the lessons and there are none more affecting-than those which time teaches to man by his silent and imperceptible march, by the mighty and effective changes which are transpiring from the touch of his finger, and the wide sweep of his scythe. These ruins tell us of change, mighty change, existing all around us, stamped visibly on every object. History tells us of the ravages of conquerors, she points to the remnants of shattered glory and faded powers, she tells us what the sword has done but far more impressive is the lesson conveyed to the mind in that ruined shrine, once burning literature in all its ramifications, art in all its beauties, Egypt the land of science in all its branches, with religious fire, something far more eloquent in the is changed. The Nile rolls onward still as it rolled hootings of the bird of night in that trembling tower round which in the days of its grandeur and its pride in the days of Cheops, and Sesostris, and the haughthe eagle did not disdain to wheel its flight, and the ty Rameses, and the lotus still hangs over their stream creeping ivy as it steals over the gray ruin and the and beauty still walks in the sky,-but Egypt is proud Gothic pile has a pathos and a power which changed; Hermopolis is changed, its temples exhibits appeal yet more to the sense than the classic verbi- marbled forms, and its architecture the richness and age of the best historian and the immortal strains of the beauty of an ancient hand; its winged globes are the first of poets, they tell of the desolation and the still there, and the stars still fret its ceiling-but they ruin which, as a ploughshare, pass over the earth-give forth no fire; and Apollonius Magna with its they tell of the various stages of society which grad-galleries and porticoes, and covered naves of entire ually rise and flourish; and as they meet the eye in rock; its collossal figures, its paintings and its hierotheir impressive loveliness, they speak of

glyphics-Typhon has conquered Isis, the wreck proclaims it, and the temple is far more expressive of his dwelling than in the days of its glory and power.

"Time the beautifier of the dead, restorer of the ruin." But ruins!-why what is our world but one vast But Thebes, O what a change is there! the lyre Carthage, and what are we who inhabit it, but the of Memnon is hushed, and his statue, once clothed Marius, sitting amid the evidences of its decay! in all the drapery of beauty, is mutilated; and its Again we refer to history, and lay our hands upon temple, where pomp and magnificence yet linger, Herodotus or Diodorus Siculus, they tell us of stu- exhibits likewise all the evidences of ruin and decay pendous piles all glorious as the hand of the most-where shall the eye repose in searching for some