THE city of Baltimore, of which we have been enabled to enrich our present number with a spirited enengraving, now contains 81,000 inhabitants, and ranks in point of elegance and size as the third city in the Union. The rapidity of its growth would in any other country be deemed incredible, for it has risen to its present importance in a single century, having been laid out in the year 1729. Here, however, where it is no uncommon occurrence for the individual who felled the first tree and erected the first log cabin in a settlement, to live to see a stately city grow up about him, it, is hardly sufficient to excite remark and is merely regarded as the natural and every day result of public spirit improving a situation more than commonly favorable for manufacturing and commercial enterprise. The situation of Baltimore is admirably calculated for the prosecution of both these species of industry, and it is accordingly the centre of a large capital employed in both pursuits. Built around a spacious and commodious harbor constantly filled with shipping of all nations, and connected by excellent roads, by navigable streams and by splendid internal improvements, with an immense extent of the richest country in the world, it forms a focus for business of every description, and attracts to itself the whole trade of Maryland, a great portion of that of Pennsylvania, with a large share from Ohio and the other western states. Besides these advantages of situation, it possesses water privileges of

The City of Baltimore.

great extent which render it an unrivalled seat for manufacturing establishments requiring hydraulic power. The chemical works are celebrated throughout the United States; its cotton factories are numerous and valuable, and it is the greatest flour market in the world.

Baltimore is well built, the houses being generally of brick, and those recently erected displaying considerable elegance and taste. The newer parts of the city are separated from the old town by a river called Jones' Falls, which is crossed by several beautiful stone bridges. The streets are spacious and well paved; the principal one, called Baltimore or Market street, is a mile long and eighty feet wide, running parallel with the water, and intersected by the other streets at right angles. The inhabitants are blessed with an abundant supply of that first necessary and greatest luxury of life, good water; which is distributed from four public fountains fitted up in a highly ornamental style. several public institutions, among which we may menBaltimore contains tion the university of Maryland, whose medical school is one of the most celebrated in the country, and the Catholic college of St. Mary's, a well endowed institution, with a library of 10,000 volumes. about 40 places of public worship, of these the Roman There are Catholic cathedral, St. Paul's church, and the Unitarian church are the most spacious and elegant. The Exchange and the Union Bank are also handsome buildings; the former contains within its walls the Custom House, the United States' Branch Bank, and an extensive coffee house.

in Baltimore is the Washington monument, a lofty One of the most interesting objects structure of stone, 50 feet square at the base, and upwards of 160 feet high, on the summit of which the statue of Washington is to be placed. There is also another called the Battle monument, erected to commemorate the attack made on the city during the late war, by the British under General Ross, this is of marble, about thirty-five feet high, and upon its columns are inscribed the names of those who fell in the defence of the city.

The inhabitants of Baltimore, like those of the south

ern cities in general, are remarkable for their hospitality and polite attention to strangers, so much so that we have seldom met a traveller who visited their city that did not mention them in terms of gratitude and praise. They are still favored by the residence among them of the only surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, the venerable Charles Carrol of Carrolton whose manor, a short distance from the city is visited by many a votary of liberty, and who furnishes, in the cheerful contentment, the elegant hospitality, and the active virtues that adorn his age, a noble specimen of the worthies that established our land among the nations, and an invaluable example to those whose proud duty it has been to maintain it there.

CIRCLE OF THE SCIENCES, WITH SUITABLE REFLECTIONS.

ASTRONGMICAL SKETCHES-FIXED STARS.

When we pass from the planetary system to other regions of creation, we have to traverse, in imagination, a space so immense, that it has hitherto baffled all the efforts of science to determine its extent. In these remote and immeasurable spaces, are placed those immense luminous bodies usually denominated the fixed stars. The nearest stars are, on good grounds, concluded to be at least twenty billions of miles distant from our globe-a distance through which light (the swiftest body in nature) could not travel in the space of three years; and which a ball, moving at the rate of 500 miles an hour, would not traverse in four millions five hundred thousand years, or 750 times the period which has elapsed since the Mosaic creation. But how far they may be placed beyond this distance, no astronomer will pretend to determine. The following consideration will prove, to those unacquainted with the mathematical principles of astronomy, that the stars are placed at an immeasurable distance. When they are viewed through a telescope which magnifies objects a thousand times, they appear no larger than to the naked eye; which circumstance shows, that though we

were placed at the thousandth part of the distance from them at which we now are, they would still appear only as so many shining points; for we should still be distant from the nearest of them, twenty thousand millions of miles: or, in other words, were we transported several thousands of millions of miles from the spot we now occupy, though their numbers would appear exceedingly increased, they would appear no larger than they do from our present station; and we behooved to be carried forward thousands of millions of miles further in a long succession, before their disks appeared to expand into large circles, like the moon. Dr. Herschel viewed the stars with telescopes magnifying six thousand times, yet they still appeared only as brilliant points, without any sensible disks or increase of diameter. This circumstance incontestably proves the two following things: 1. That the stars are luminous bodies, which shine by their own native light; otherwise they could not be perceived at such vast distances. 2. That they are bodies of an immense size, not inferior to the sun; and many of them, it is probable, far exceed that luminary in bulk and splendor.

The stars on account of the difference in their appa. rent magnitudes, have been distributed into several classes or orders. Those which appear largest are called stars of the first magnitude; next to those in lustre, ..stars of the second magnitude, and so on to stars of the sixth magnitude, which are the smallest that can be distinguished by the naked eye. Stars of the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, &c. magnitudes, which cannot be seen by the na ked eye, are distinguished by the name of telescopic stars. Not more than a thousand stars can be distinguished by the naked eye, in the clearest winter's night; but by means of the telescope, millions have been discovered. And, as it is probable, that, by far the greater part lie beyond the reach of the best glasses which have been, or ever will be constructed by man-the real number of the stars may be presumed to be beyond all human calculation or conception, and perhaps beyond the grasp of angelic comprehension.

In consequence of recent discoveries, we have now the strongest reason to believe, that all the stars in

the universe are arranged into clusters, of groups, which astronomers distinguish by the name of NEBULÆ, or STARRY SYSTEMS, each nebulæ consisting of many thousands of stars. The nearest nebulæ is that whitish space or zone which is known by the name of the Milky Way, to which our sun is supposed to belong. It consists of many hundreds of thousands of stars. When Dr. Herschel examined this region, with his powerful telescopes, he found a portion of it only fifteen degrees long, and two broad, which contained fifty thousand stars large enough to be distinctly counted; and he suspected twice as many more which, for want of sufficient light in his telescope, he saw only now and then. More than two thousand five hundred nebule have already been observed; and if each of them contain as many stars as the Milky Way, several hundreds of millions of stars must exist, even within that portion of the heavens which lies open to our observation.

It appears, from numerous observations that various changes are occasionally taking place in the regions of the stars. Several stars have appeared for a while in the heavens, and then vanished from the sight. Some stars which were known to the ancients, cannot now be discovered; and stars are now distinctly visible, which were to them unknown. A few stars have gradually increased in brilliancy, while others have been constantly diminishing in lustre. Certain stars, to the number of 15, or upwards, are ascertained to have a periodical increase and decrease of their lustre, sometimes appearing like stars of the 1st or 2d magnitude, sometimes diminishing to the size of the 4th or 5th magnitude, and sometimes altogether disappearing to the naked eye. It also appears, that changes are taking place among the Nebula-that several nebulæ are formed by the decomposition of larger nebule, and that many nebula of this kind are at present detaching themselves from the nebula of the Milky Way. These changes seem to indicate, that mighty movements and vast operations are continually going on in the distant regions of creation, under the superintendence of the Sovereign of the Universe, upon a scale of magni