liness, a cheerfulness, which calls upon the heart to be gay. The Neapolitan is, in truth, constantly preached to by nature, to sing and dance and be happy. It is impossible for any one to resist this influence of the climate of the earth and the sea and the air-in this region of enchantment. It appears that the ancient Romans felt and yielded to its force. In the vicinity was Puzzuoli, a renowned watering-place, the hills around being still studded with *the vestiges of villas once inhabited by the Roman patricians; near by was Cumæ, long a seat and center of taste and luxury; close at hand was Baiæ, the Baden Baden of fashion in the time of Cicero-its ruins abundantly attesting the luxury as well as the licentiousness of those days. In the mouth of the bay was Capri, chosen by Tiberius as the scene of his imperial orgies, in consideration of its delicious climate and picturesque scenery. The whole region is indeed covered over with monuments of Rome in the day of its glory, testifying to the full appreciation of the beauties of the sky and the climate, on the part of its patrician population.

As to the city of Naples itself I shall not speak ; though its people, its institutions, its repositories of art, its Museum of vestiges taken from the buried cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, would furnish interesting subjects of description. I have only to add that after a stay of a month, I left it with reluctance, and returned to Paris. When I arrived, the

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Great Exposition was on the eve of being opened. I remained till July, and had several opportunities to examine this marvelous array of the world's art and industry. On the fourth of the same month I departed for the United States, and arriving in New York, found anchorage for myself and family in that city.

LETTER LXIII.

Leave-taking-Improvement everywhere-In Science-Geology, Chemistry, Agriculture, Manufactures, Astronomy, Navigation, the Domestic ArtsAnthracite Coal-Traveling-Painting-Daguerreotypes-The Electric Telegraph-Moral Progress-In Foreign Countries: in the United States. MY DEAR C******

I have now come to my farewell. Leave-takings are in general somewhat melancholy, and it is best to make them as brief as possible. Mine shall consist of a single train of thought, and that suggestive of cheerful rather than mournful feelings. Like a traveler approaching the end of his journey, I naturally cast a look backward, and surveying the monuments which rise up in the distance, seek to estimate the nature and tendency of the march of events which I have witnessed, and in which I have participated.

One general remark appears to me applicable to the half century over which my observation has extended, which is, that everywhere there has been improvement. I krow of no department of human

knowledge, no sphere of human inquiry, no race of men, no region of the earth, where there has been retrogradation. On the whole, the age has been alike fruitful in discovery, and the practical, beneficial results of discovery. Science has advanced with giant strides, and it is the distinguishing characteristic of modern science that it is not the mere toy of the philosopher, nor the hidden mystery of the laboratory, but the hard-working servant of the manufactory, the workshop, and the kitchen. Geology not only instructs us in the sublime history of the formation of the earth, but it teaches us to understand its hidden depths, and to trace out and discover its mineral treasures. Chemistry, the science of atoms, teaching us the component parts of matter, as well as the laws of affinity and repulsion, has put us in possession of a. vast range of convenient knowledge now in daily and familiar use in the domestic arts. We have even express treatises upon the "Chemistry of Common Life." Astronomy has not only introduced to us new planets and the sublime phenomena of the depths hitherto beyond our reach, but it has condescended to aid in perfecting the art of navigation, and thus contributed to make the sea the safe and familiar highway of the nations.

We can best appreciate the progress of things around us, by looking at particular facts. Take anthracite coal, for instance, which, when I was a boy, was unknown, or only regarded as a black, shining, useless

stone; Low six millions of tons are annually dng up and distributed Think of the labor that is performed by this mass of matter, that had slumbered for ages-hidden, senseless, dead, in the bosom of the earth! It now not only cooks our food and warms our houses so as in winter to give us the climate of summer, but the sleeper, waked from its tomb, like a giant impatient of the time he has lost, turns the whizzing wheel of the factory, sends the screaming locomotive on its way, drives the steamboat foaming through the waves. This single mineral now performs, every day, the labor of at least a hundred thousand men!

On every hand are the evidences of improvement. What advances have been made in agriculture-in the analysis of soils, the preparation of manures, the improvement of implements, from the spade to the steam-reaper; in the manufacture of textile fabrics by the inventions of Jacquard and others in weaving, and innumerable devices in spinning; in the working of iron-cutting, melting, molding, rolling, shaping it like dough, whereby it is applied to a thousand new uses; in commerce and navigation, by improved models of ships, improved chronometers, barometers, and quadrants-in chain-pumps and wheel-rudders; in printing, by the use of the power-press, throwing off a hundred thousand impressions instead of two thousand in a day; in the taking of likenesses by the daguerreotype, making the Sun himself the painter of miniatures; in microscopes, which have revealed new

worlds in the infinity of littleness, as well as in tele scopes which have unfolded immeasurable depths o space before hidden from the view How has travel. ing been changed, from jolting along at the rate of six miles an hour over rough roads in a stage-coach, to the putting one's self comfortably to bed in a steamboat and going fifteen miles an hour; or sitting down in a railroad car at New York to read a novel, and before you have finished, to find yourself at Boston! The whole standard of life and comfort has been changed, especially in the cities. The miracles of antiquity are between each thumb and finger now; a friction-match gives us fire and light, the turn of a cock brings us water, bright as from Castalia. We have summer in our houses, even through the rigors of winter. We light our streets by gas, and turn night into day. Steam brings to the temperate zone the fresh fruits of the tropics; ether mitigates the agonies of surgical operations; ice converts even the fires of Sirius into sources of luxury.

These are marvels, yet not the greatest of marvels. Think-instead of dispatching a letter in a mail-bag, with the hope of getting an answer in a month-of sending your thoughts alive along a wire winged with electricity, to New Orleans or Canada, to Charleston or St. Louis, and getting a reply in the course of a few hours! This is the miracle of human inventions, the crowning glory of art, at once the most ingenious, the most gratifying, the most startling of discoveries. I