The proportion of paper money in these States is not greatly now in excess of that of 1830, but the quantity of specie held by the banks is much larger. In the twelve years which have elapsed, many of the States, particularly Alabama, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Louisiana, have gone through all the vicissitudes attending the creation, culmination, and final liquidation of an immense amount of bank capital. They have now commenced a new commercial cycle, with the experience of the past for their guide and caution, not again to embark in such hazardous monopolies. It has been fully tested, that corporate banking institutions do not facilitate regular trade. Their only effect is first to monopolize business and ruin private exchange dealers; they then stimulate speculation, create a fictitious animation in trade, generate revulsion, leave the community powerless and without remedy in the hands of usurers, and the exchanges in a perfect chaos of disorder. The liquidation of the banks and the withdrawal of their paper from circulation, have effected, in accordance with the laws of trade, an equalization of the exchanges more perfect than they have heretofore approximated. It has been a prevalent idea with the community, when habituated to a paper currency, that if that paper is withdrawn, they will be without a circulation, but no sooner is it effected, than specie flows in and supplies its place as if by magic. The banks of the country have also con

60,595,098 42,875,096 21.944.097 23,646,329

ducted most of the mercantile collections through their mutual correspondence. In the Atlantic cities the imports and domestic goods were sold by merchants at from six to twelve months, for the notes of the country dealers, payable at the place of their residence. These notes for the most part were discounted with the sellers' endorsements by the city banks, and remitted at maturity for collection to the country banks. This was looked upon as an indispensable machinery for the conduct of mercantile affairs. It was apparently an easy and prompt manner of collecting debts, but it contained an inherent vice which wrought out inevitable destruction. The same institutions which facilitated the collection of debts for the New York merchants, enabled the country dealer to avoid payment. The note was in most cases renewed, or met by the discount of another. Hence, although the individual merchant received nominal payment for his goods, the actual discharge of the debt did not take place, but a balance accumulated in favor of the Atlantic border, a great portion of which was never paid. The facility with which notes were discounted, led the merchant to sell as great an amount of goods on time as possible, and a competition as to length of credit grew up. The country dealer was guided in his purchases less by the probable amount that he could actually sell, than by what he could meet by the aid of discounts. Hence the amount purchased invariably exceeded that

which could be paid for by the product of industry in each year. The above table indicates the rise, progress, and downfall of the system. The accumulating balance due the Atlantic States, crushed the banks. The system is now of necessity changed. As the banks pass from existence, individual houses, of skill and integrity, take their places, and step into the business. Affiliated houses, spread over the Union, corresponding with New York, as the great centre, can collect bills and equal ize the exchanges to far greater perfectior, than can be done by corporate associations. The country dealer knowing that he can have no assist ance from banks, to perfect his payments at maturity, carefully limits his purchases to an amount which he is confident he can actually sell, prior to the maturity of his paper. When his

note falls due, it is presented to him in the form of a draft, or acceptance, through an individual house. This must be met by his actual collections from the neighborhood, the amount of which is paid in the discharge of his draft, and is remitted to New York, in the shape of a bill against produce, gone forward, which bills always find ready sale with the collecting house. In this state of affairs, no door is left open to overtrading, because the country dealer has no means of extending his purchases beyond the ability of his own customers to buy, whose ability is always equal to the amount they have to export.

During the past year, several causes have operated to reduce the business of New York, the commerce of which has been as follows:

speak. On this subject we must await further developments. It would cer tainly be in the highest degree satisfactory to witness a cordial co-operation between the two countries for the mutual and reciprocal reduction of their tariffs, though, so far at least as regards this country, it is not by the simple treaty-making power that important legislation of this kind can be enacted, consistently with the princi ples of our Government. However, we have little doubt that the next Congress will be willing enough to meet England half-way-(and we trust a little further)-in this kind of commercial retaliation.

Miss Bremer's popular novels, of which we have here given the titles of three, deserve a more extended notice than we can now give them, and a more critical judgment than we are as yet prepared even to form. We have not as yet quite made up our minds as to their precise value. We have read them, as have so many others, with very great pleasure; and have supposed ourselves to be pleased without determining precisely why or how. There is an indescribable charm about these quiet, simple tales of domestic life, that one rarely meets in our own more elaborate novels,-a sweet, gentle, and loving spirit breathing through them, that it does one good to commune with. We really do not know whether they should be called works of a high order of genius or not; but this much we do know, that we rise from the perusal of one of them with gentler feelings, better satisfied with the world, better pleased with our friends and neighbors, better content with our lot in life, and more sensible of and grateful to our Heavenly Father, for the innumerable blessings that we daily and hourly receive at his hand.

One great charm of these tales is in the very lively pictures they give us of Swedish domestic life, of which we have hitherto known so little; but we believe the readers of the "Neighbors" were very generally surprised to find how very much, after all, Swedish every-day life is like our own. Differences there doubtless are, but the whole ground-work, judging from these novels, is exceedingly English. This fact, had we time to dwell on it, would lead to some very interesting speculations concerning the perpetuation and transmission of National Life, and its various manners and customs.

The Swedish and Anglo-Saxon families are branches of one and the same family, and had originally very much the

same kind of life. Change of place has not destroyed altogether the original identity or similarity. The same thing occurs again when we compare our own domestic life with that of the mother country. When we read one of Miss Austen's novels, we do not seem to ourselves to be holding intercourse with strangers three thousand miles off, but with our own neighbors and every-day acquaintances. We pass into Mexico, and we feel that we are in New Spain. Wherever we choose to go, habits, manners, customs, modes of thinking and feeling, are transmitted from generation to generation, by a law as uniform and as certain in its operation, as that by which the cast of the features is transmitted from parents to children. No matter where he is born, or where brought up, an Englishman is always an Englishman. The remarkable tenacity of national character and national physiognomy we observe in the Jews, would, were it not for intermarriages with other varieties, be equally remarkable in the Englishman, or even the Frenchman. The tenacity of races is a great fact in history. We owe cur political institutions, nearly all the arrangements of our public, social, and domestic life, to our English ancestors. If these had not been, as it were, a part and parcel of our inmost nature, we could never have successfully adopted and maintained them. France, Spain, and Spanish America, make sad work in attempting to Anglicize their manners and institutions. Here is involved a fact, which our politicians and speculators on the origin and foundation of government would do well to study. What is common to us all, what we as Americans are every day living, and what we perhaps believe to have been original with us, may very possibly be traced to our English ancestors, through them to the bands led in by Hengist and Horsa, and through them to the original Saxon family, and thence into the night of ages.

But we return to Miss Bremer's charming novels. Of the three we have mentioned, we think The Neighbors, the first that was published in this country, will continue to be the greatest favorite. The active, pleasant, frolicksome, serious, affectionate, charming little wife, who always does and says the very thing she should, and has the faculty of making all comfortable and joyous around her, who has a smile or a tear for all, as one or the other is proper, and always energy to aid

all who are in trouble, and that too without obtruding her sympathy, or suspecting herself of being a prodigy, is one of the finest female characters in the whole range of fictitious literature. Serena, in the same work, married to Bruno, intended for a perfect character, is less interesting, less lovely, than Bear's little wife. Bear himself is a noble character, admirably drawn and sustained throughout. Ma Chère Mère and Bruno are too Byronish, too melodramatic, as well as the episode of Hagar. They remind you perpetually of the Corsair, and Lara, and the Riscoque by George Sand, and are, after all, blemishes rather than ornaments of the work.

The HFamily is of a different character from The Neighbors, although, we see, it is from the same hand, and has many of the same excellences. This is translated by a young gentleman in Boston; and though as a translation it may not possess the ease, grace, and freshness of Mary Howitt's, it yet strikes us as being very cleverly done.

The President's Daughters is superior to the H- Family, and hardly, if at all, inferior to The Neighbors. It gives us a glance into more elevated scenes of Swedish life, and is therefore less novel and interesting, as the manners and customs of the highest classes of society in all European countries are very much the same. National peculiarities are to be found always, and everywhere, mainly in the great mass of the people, and what are termed the lower classes. Nevertheless, this is a very interesting tale, full of serious and even profound thought, often expressed with no little brilliancy and force. It is written with a high aim, and will bear more than one reading. If The Neighbors pleased us the most, this certainly interested us the most in the author, and gave us the highest idea of her capacity. This, translated by an accomplished lady of Boston, is exceedingly well done, and will as a translation by no means suffer even by a comparison with Miss Howitt's.

We owe our thanks also to the publishers, Messrs. Munroe & Co. of Boston, for publishing these works in a form in which they are readable, and may be preserved. The cheap method of publishing recently adopted, has its recommendations to those who regard their purses more than their eyes; but we aver, that we ourselves find a good book much the better in a good large type, on a fair page, with a broad margin.

The Doctrine of Life, with some of its Theological Applications. Boston: Benjamin H. Greene. 12mo. pp. 74.

This is a work by William B. Greene, son of the accomplished and talented gentleman who lately filled the office of postmaster of Boston. Educated at the Military Academy at West Point, and late of the U. S. Army, he a short time since resigned his commission, and is now, we believe, studying theology at the Baptist Seminary at Newton, Mass. The work itself gives promise of an author of a very high order. Mr. Greene, here, shows himself, assuredly, to possess very remarkable powers of philosophical apprehension, and also of expression. A little more practice, and he will give an example of as good a style of writing and expression for philosophical subjects as the language affords. It is clear, forcible, dignified, eloquent, and well sustained.

Mr.

As to the subject matter of this little work, this is not the place to speak. The doctrine of Life here set forth has the air of being that set forth by Rev. O. A. Brownson, in his Letter to Dr. Channing, on the Mediatorial Life of Jesus, though it is by no means the same. Mr. Brownson's doctrine is, that Life is the product of the joint action of two forces, Subject and Object-or Me and Not Me; and that its character is determined by one and the other. Change the subject, and you change the character of the act; change the object, and you also change it. Greene assumes Life to be a struggle between two forces; that it consists in antagonism, and that its character is abso. lutely determined by the object. Which last seems to imply fatalism, and at least denies free agency; because, if it be true, then the character of my acts does in no wise depend on me, but absolutely on the object in opposition to which I act. Moreover, we apprehend this doctrine, that the act is absolutely determined by the object, is not true. The action of a man and of a horse, when led up to a stack of hay, will not be exactly the same. Why not? Is not the object the same? The difference of action can, then, be accounted for only on the ground of the difference of the subjects, that is to say, the difference between the nature of the horse and the nature of the man.

Nevertheless, though we could find some fault with the book, yet we regard it as a remarkable production, and as indicating on the part of its author very extraordinary powers, and a serious aim, which will one day give us a philosophical and theological writer of a very high order.