buque in 1788. The rich deposits of Missouri were discovered by La Motte, in 1720, but were not worked till 1854.

The Galena region is our largest source of domestic supply. It is more developed than the Missouri districts, as transportation from it is easy, both by railroad and the Mississippi river. The Granby region in South-west Missouri is exceedingly rich, and a single block of pure ore weighing two thousand pounds has been taken out. The ore averages 80 per cent. of lead. It is found from 10 to 75 feet below the surface, and raised in buckets worked by horse power, or by windlass and crank. The mining is chiefly confined to a few hundred acres, but the lead deposits in that region underlie a very large extent of country. At present, the lead has to be hauled in wagons over the mountains for nearly two hundred miles to the railway at Rolla, or to the head of navigation on the Osage river; but the South-west Pacific Railroad is building toward the lead region, and whenever the locomotive reaches it, the product will be greatly increased. Considerable lead is also produced along the Iron Mountain Railway, in South-eastern Missouri. All the American lead is remarkable for its softness and purity. The annual returns of lead product are very imperfect and unsatisfactory, but the annual yield of the three chief lead producing countries is estimated as follows: Great Britain, 153,298,880 lbs.; Spain, 67,200,000 lbs.; United States, 38,000,000 lbs. The imports into the United States exceed considerably the domestic product.

QUICKSILVER.

There are records of the existence of this metal nearly three hundred years before Christ, and its use in amalgamating gold was known early. The chief ore is cinnabar. The estimated annual yield is as follows: Spain, 20,000 cwt.; Austria, 2,500 cwt.; California, 35,500 cwt.; Peru, 3,000 cwt.; total, 61,000 cwt. The chief demand is for mining uses, calomel, vermilion, and manufactures. Between the Almaden mine in Spain, and the New Almaden of California, there is a lively rivalry. The old Almaden supplies the most of Europe, and ships some quicksilver as far west as the city of Mexico. Until recently it controlled the Chinese market, but the manager of the New Almaden shipped 10,000 flasks to Hong Kong, and sold them so far below cost as to drive the European quicksilver back to Spain. Since then, California has supplied China; but Spain, by the same tactics, keeps the California quicksilver out of the London market. The Idria mine in Austria, sends its product chiefly to the silver mines of Hungary. Its miners are a uniformed corps, numbering 500.

The New Almaden mine of California was long known to the Indians, but was not worked until 1845. It produces annually about 24,000 flasks of 76 pounds each; the New Idria of California, 10,000-flasks; and the Reddington, 10,000 flasks. As the demand for quicksilver remains about the same, whether the price is high or low, the owners of these three mines form a combination and produce only what the market requires, not "unning their works much beyond half their capacity. Their product is consumed by our Pacific States and Teritories, Mexico, South America, and China. Cinnabar

has been found in Idaho, and some of our other new states, but as yet, is not worked.

TIN.

Tin seems to have been kown from the remotest antiquity. It is mentioned in the Bible, among the plunder taken from the Midianites, as a metal to be purified by fire. It is frequently alluded to in the Iliad, and seems to have been familiar to Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans. The Phœnicians obtained it from Britain, which, according to some philologists, means "Tin Island." The Romans had the art of coating copper with it, but its application to iron was not discovered until the 17th century. The chief tin mines of the world are in Cornwall, England, and upon the isle of Banca, in the Malay Archipelago, though tin is found in smaller quantities in several other European and South American countries, in Mexico and in a few states of our Union. Some deposits in California are thought to be promising, but as yet, no metal is taken out.

ZINC.

Zinc was first obtained as a metal during the 13th century. In the 17th, Europe imported it from India, under the name of spelter. The first zinc was produced in this country in 1838, for the brass standard weights and measures ordered by Congress. Pennsylvania, New York, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Missouri, New Jersey and Tennessee all yield it. A block from New Jersey weighing 16,400 pounds was exhibited at the World's Fair in London in 1851. Great Britain, Belgium, Spain and other European countries also produce it. Of the entire product of the world, Prussia yields 58 per cent., Belgium, 27, Russia, 7, and the United States, 3.

Platinum, nickel, antimony, cobalt and other minor metals, are found in various parts of the United States. In the precious metals, our product is already far in advance of that of any other country, and under the stimulus of the first Pacific Railroad, to be completed across the continent in the early summer of 1869, a few years will suffice to quadruple it. In coal, iron, copper, quicksilver and lead, the resources of our continent are almost boundless. With the increase of population and railways, mining will grow rapidly into a gigantic national interest, and America will lead the world in the value and variety of her mineral products.

Until recently our vast mineral resources have obtained only desultory notice from time to time in the press of the country. There are now, however, three weekly journals devoted exclusively to the subject, "The American Journal of Mining," an unusually full and careful record, published in New York, and edited by R. W. Raymond, Ph. D., a mining engineer, who is also U. S. Commissioner of Mining Statistics; "Hillyer's U. S. Mining Journal," also of New York, and "Dewey's Mining and Scientific Press," of San Francisco.

LITERATURE AND LITERARY INFLUENCES OF THE DAY.

BY EVERT A. DUYCKINCK.

It would not be a practicable task to present with adequate consideration and detail, within the limits of a brief essay, the various points and reflections which so comprehensive a theme as the literature of the times, on the instant suggests. The literary culture of the age is linked with every fibre of a vast and complex civilization; absorbing the ever increasing past, affected by the genius of all nations and a sympathetic activity in all arts and labors which has no bounds but those of the globe itself. The great subject—a worthy history of Literature has thus far baffled the energy of the most assiduous scholars. The most neglected topic in our literature, in an age of criticism, is the complete analysis of the literature itself. That is a work for long years of preparation and long years of execution. Here we

can give but a few passing thoughts of the moment bearing upon influences of the hour.

The claim of America to the possession of a National Literature is still occasionally discussed in English journals, and much nonsense is written on the subject. The complaint is made that there is little sufficiently distinctive in our literature; and it is generally put in the form that while the country has a virgin soil, huge forests and gigantic rivers, freshness of nature unlimited, our books seldom reflect or emulate these physical features; that being a new people we should have a new literature. When one of our authors produces a finished book, its qualities are apt to be pronounced European, and it is censured as an imitation. It does not seem to be what is expected at our hands. The foreign critics would appear to be better pleased with something, as coming from America, vague, disjointed, grandiose, the skeptical in religion, the reckless in morals, the experimental in society, than with good grammar, elegant diction, profound learning, mature philosophy, faithful citizenship, and sound Christianity. Give us vigor, these pseudo critics cry out; give us originality. Your Irvings, Prescotts, and Longfellows, we admit, would be very excellent writers for the old world, but we look for something different from the new. All this is worse than idle. There are undoubtedly climatic and other physical causes at work in America which may have their influence on the persons and character of its inhabitants; but the effect is hardly to be appreciated in the higher region of authorship, of morals and ideas, where there must be a community of privileges, and the starting point, under a general and liberal system of education, must be the same with that of the cultivated classes of Europe. An American can not, if he would, separate himself from the literature of the past in any effort of literary production. He can not, without destroying his whole system of common school education, ignore his Homer and Virgil, his Shakespeare, Bacon, and Milton. Why should it be a reproach to him that the flavors of a foreign culture linger in his style? Every great author of modern times is indebted to his predecessors, and the farther back our researches in history extend, the farther back the debt is carried. Are Amer

icans alone to be cut off from this classic reproduction; to be driven to the crude, the odd, and the eccentric, that they may be admitted to recognition as semi-barbarians only by the men of letters of Europe? The position is sufficiently absurd. There should be no difference at the present time in the standard of authorship in England and America. The latter is not entitled to, nor need she ask, indulgence on the score of youth. The great formative influences act alike upon both worlds. The law of literary production is simply this: The best educated community, the most faithful to law and religion, the most truthful, the most sincere, the most susceptible to all noble and generous influences in life and action, will produce the most and best authors irrespective of the breadth of the rivers and the circumference or elevation of the trees of the forest. Every genuine book will, of course, have its individual character, like its writer, and will have its peculiar subject matter. These will give originality to the volume; but no greater difference is to be expected between American and English authors than between separate authors of either nation. The American, as it often happens, may be elegant, refined and conservative; the Englishman may be rough, uncouth and radical; specimens of both may be found in either land. Pray, Messrs. British Critics, think of us Americans, as living not in the days of Hengist and Horsa, but like the rest of the world, in the Nineteenth Century!

The statistics of literary production in the two countries prove that we are proceeding pari passu with England. The number of books or distinct publications including, we presume, pamphlets of importance, published in the United States in 1867, is stated in a valuable statistical article in Appleton's Annual Cyclopedia for that year, as 2,110 against an estimate for Great Britain during the corresponding period, of 4,144. The American estimate embraces some 300 reprints or translations, a proportion of only about oneseventh of the whole, which leaves a highly favorable exhibition for original American productions. The number of books written in England and republished in the United States is, we are inclined to think, becoming relatively less from year to year-a result directly attributable to American progress, to the material development of the country and its consequent increased mental wants; to the stimulus given to education, furnishing the means of supplying these wants. The country is, in fact, by the simple law of its necessities, becoming constantly less and less dependent upon Europe for its literature. Its books are the natural growth of its own life; and as that life becomes, as it inevitably must, under the pressure of a population advancing without precedent, more and more earnest, with greater responsibilities and heavier duties, so must the literature, in the words of an old poet, "make wing and get power."

The most numerous classes of books, in both England and America, are first, religious works; second, works of fiction and books for children; after which come technical works, including school books; while poetical and historical literature, (including biography), and criticisms, and travels, are in about equal minor proportions. As in all other forms of production, the every day wants are first supplied; afterward, the luxuries and refinements.

Generally speaking, according to population, it would appear that the relative aggregate literary productiveness of the two countries, is not very unequal. The school-master, whom Lord Brougham, a half-century ago started on his travels, is evidently still "abroad" wherever the English language is spoken. If we were to look into these six thousand publications of the year, we would doubtless find them, with allowance for the usual per centage of mediocrity, creditable to the intellectual progress of both nations, while we might be compelled to admit that few really great original works which would long survive, were in the catalogue. The general impression, indeed, made by a survey of the literature of the day is, that there is a falling off in eminent authorship from the first half of the century. If we call the roll of authors of that period in England, who, at the present hour, supply the places of Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Moore, Crabbe, Campbell, Lamb, Sydney Smith, Hood, Hallam, Macaulay, and their companions? But one poet now stands prominently forth in England, the accepted of all cultivated English speaking people-Alfred Tennyson; while one novelist, Charles Dickens, maintains the humor, so characteristic a feature of the literary prowess of the last generation. In America, we are relatively rather better off, for our foremost writers came late into the field; and though the literary world mourns Cooper, and Irving, and Halleck, and Prescott, and Hawthorne, yet we have still Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, Emerson, Bancroft, Simms, Motley, each in his way, a master in his department. In neither country do we see the indications of much rising greatness; though in both are to be perceived an advancing literary standard. There is an average level with no mountain elevations; but in the upheaval of society the table-land of to-day is higher than the dead-level of the last century. The new mediocrity is a better article than the old, for there is generally more activity in the world; the interests which engage the attention of men are of greater moment; the forces are greater; the strife and competition are stronger; men must know more, and be prepared to think rapidly, to act with quickness and decision. The cultivation of the laboring and less wealthy classes is greatly improved. The number of persons who can neither read nor write, is much smaller. The education of the mass reacts upon the few above them. Every day science is raising the standard of knowledge; and though consummate wisdom may be rare as ever, follies of active growth, it may be observed, are of shorter life. In regard to the higher departments of literature, the present time, concerned almost entirely with the practical and immediate, may be but the necessary period of preparation for another great harvest of the works of genius. The temper of the people is being tried and facts are being accumulated in great wars, in political conflicts, in social organization, in discoveries in nature, in explorations of new lands, in an unprecedented development of the supplies and incentives of civilization. The poet, in nature's own time, will brood upon these and there will spring forth the epic of the new centuries. Nothing in the past has been lost to literature and art, and there is nothing of worth in our present that will not be absorbed and live on the printed page hereafter. As Homer gathered up the early life of Greece,