6

sell them, in every point to which they can penetrate. The 'Pacific Fur Company,' the scheme of John Jacob Astor, commemorated by Washington Irving, those of Captain Wyeth, and many other American adventurers, have failed against the strength and perseverance of the old monopoly. Its traders supply the demand, such as it is, both of Indians and white hunters for European goods over all the north-west; for they are said to sell twenty or thirty per cent cheaper than the Americans; and there seems a certainty,' says Mr Farnham, that the Hudson's Bay Company will engross the entire trade of the North Pacific, as it has that of Oregon.' So powerful is this body on the Continent, that it has actually established a kind of gamelaws over a region twice as large as Europe, regulating the quantity of trapping' to be done in particular districts, and uniformly diminishing it whenever the returns show a deficiency in its production of animals. It keeps both savages and whites in order, by putting into serious practice the threat of 'exclusive dealing.' Mr Farnham met with an American in Oregon, who informed him that, in consequence of some offence taken, (very unjustly of course,) the Hudson's Bay Company refused, for a number of years, to sell him a shred of clothing; and, as there are no other traders in the country, 'he was compelled, during their pleasure, to wear skins!'

6

We have purposely abstained from all discussion of the question now pending between Britain and America as to the sovereignty of Oregon. We have been anxious, on the present occasion, only to point out the existence, and the capabilities, of this region-the remotest nook of the world, and the last vacant space, as we have said, for the plantation of a new people. The land which is to command the North Pacific, and give the law to its myriad islands, cannot long remain unoccupied. It calls loudly on those who have foresight on those who can estimate the promise of the future-to forecast its destiny. The Americans never show themselves deficient in this branch of political wisdom. They are familiar with what we can scarcely realize -the rapid march of time in the western world. Almost before we have satiated ourselves with the mere contemplation of a newly-discovered portion of the wilderness-before its lines are mapped out, and the names of its natural features become familiar to our ears-the wilderness is gone, the mountains stripped of their forests, the rivers alive with navigation. The Far West will change as rapidly as the East has done. In the words of Washington Irving-The fur-bearing animals extinct, a com'plete change will come over the scene; the gay fur trapper

and his steed, decked out in wild array, and tinkling with bells and trinketry; the savage war chief, plumed, and ever on the prowl; the traders' cavalcade, winding through defiles and over naked plains, with the stealthy war party luiking on its trail; the buffalo chase, the hunting camp, the 'mad carouse in the midst of danger, the night attack, the scamper, the fierce skirmish among rocks and cliffs-all this 'romance of savage life, which yet exists among the mountains, will then exist but in frontier story, and seem like the fictions of chivalry or fairy tale.'

Surely it well behoves us, who have an interest in every new corner of the earth, to note the signs of these changes, and turn them to our profit when we may. And one thing strikes us forcibly. However the political question between England and America, as to the ownership of Oregon, may be decided, Oregon will never be colonized overland from the Eastern States. It is with a view of pointing out the entire distinctness of the two regions that we have gone, perhaps at tedious length, into a description of the geographical peculiarities of the vast space which separates them. It is six or seven hundred miles from the westernmost limit of the fertile part of the Prairies, to the cultivable region of the Columbia. Six months of the year, the whole of this space is a howling wilderness of snow and tempests. During the other six, it exhibits every variety of hopeless sterility;-plains of arid sand, defiles of volcanic rock, hills covered with bitter shrubs, and snowy mountains of many days' journey; and its level part is traversed by the formidable predatory cavalry we have described-an chemy of more than Scythian savageness and endurance, who cannot be tracked, overtaken, or conciliated. We know and admire the extraordinary energy which accompanies the rambling habits of the citizens of the States; we know the feverish, irresistible tendency to press onward, which induces the settler to push to the uttermost limits of practicable enterprize, regardless of the teeming and inviting regions he may leave behind. Still, with these natural obstacles between, we cannot but imagine that the world must assume a new face before the American waggons make plain the road to the Columbia, as they have done to the Ohio. In the mean time, the long line of coast invites emigration from the over-peopled shores of the old world. When once the Isthmus of Darien is rendered traversable, the voyage will be easier and shorter than that to Australia; which thirty thousand of our countrymen have made in a single year. Whoever, therefore, is to be the future owners of Oregon, its

people will come from Europe. The Americans have taken up the question in earnest; their Press teems with writings on the subject: we need only mention the able Memoir of Mr Greenhow, Translator to the Department of State,' in which their claim is historically deduced with much ingenuity. French writers, as may be supposed, are already advocating the American view. Let us abandon ours, from motives of justice, if the right be proved against us; from motives of policy, if it be proved not worth contesting-but not in mere indolence. Let us not fold our hands under the idle persuasion that we have colonies enough; that it is mere labour in vain to scatter the seed of future nations over the earth; that it is but trouble and expense to govern them. If there is any one thing on which the maintenance of that perilous greatness to which we have attained depends, more than all the rest, it is Colonization; the opening of new markets, the creation of new customers. It it is quite true that the great fields of emigration in Canada and Australia promise room enough for more than we can send. But the worst and commonest error respecting Colonization, is to regard it merely as that which it can never be a mode of checking the increase of our people. What we want is, not to draw off driblets from our teeming multitudes, but to found new nations of commercial allies. And, in this view, every new colony founded, far from diverting strength from the older ones, infuses into them additional vigour. To them as well as the mother country it opens a new market. It forms a new link in the chain along which our commercial inter-communication is carried-touching and benefiting every point in the line as it passes. Thus, in former days, the prosperity of the West India Islands was the great stimulus to the peopling of North America; the newer colony of Canada has flourished through its connexion with our settlements in the States; the market of New Zealand will excite production in Australia. The uttermost portions of the earth are our inheritance; let us not throw it away in mere supineness, or in deference to the wise conclusions of those sages of the discouraging school, who, had they been listened to, would have checked, one by one, all the enterprizes which have changed the face of the world in the last thirty

years.

ART. VII.-The Life of Joseph Addison. By LUCY AIKIN. Two volumes. 8vo. London: 1843.

SOME OME reviewers are of opinion that a lady who dares to publish a book renounces by that act the franchises appertaining to her sex, and can claim no exemption from the utmost rigour of critical procedure. From that opinion we dissent. We admit, indeed, that in a country which boasts of many female writers, eminently qualified by their talents and acquirements to influence the public mind, it would be of most pernicious consequence that inaccurate history or unsound philosophy should be suffered to pass uncensured, merely because the offender chanced to be a lady. But we conceive that, on such occasions, a critic would do well to imitate that courteous Knight who found himself compelled by duty to keep the Lists against Bradamante. He, we are told, defended successfully the cause of which he was the champion; but, before the fight began, exchanged Balisarda for a less deadly sword, of which he carefully blunted the point and edge.*

Nor are the immunities of sex the only immunities which Miss Aikin may rightfully plead. Several of her works, and especially the very pleasing Memoirs of the Reign of James the First, have fully entitled her to the privileges enjoyed by good writers. One of those privileges we hold to be this, that such writers, when, either from the unlucky choice of a subject, or from the indolence too often produced by success, they happen to fail, shall not be subjected to the severe discipline which it is sometimes necessary to inflict upon dunces and impostors; but shall merely be reminded by a gentle touch, like that with which the Laputan flapper roused his dreaming lord, that it is high time to wake.

Our readers will probably infer from what we have said that Miss Aikin's book has disappointed us. The truth is, that she is not well acquainted with her subject. No person who is not familiar with the political and literary history of England during the reigns of William III., of Anne, and of George I., can possibly write a good life of Addison. Now, we mean no reproach to Miss Aikin, and many will think that we pay her a compliment, when we say that her studies have taken a different direction. She is better acquainted with Shakspeare and Raleigh, than with Congreve and Prior; and is far more at home among

Orlando Furioso, xlv. 68.

VOL. LXXVIII. NO. CLVII.

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age,

the ruffs and peaked beards of Theobald's, than among the Steenkirks and flowing periwigs which surrounded Queen Anne's teatable at Hampton. She seems to have written about the Elizabethan because she had read much about it; she seems, on the other hand, to have read a little about the age of Addison, because she had determined to write about it. The consequence is, that she has had to describe men and things without having either a correct or a vivid idea of them, and that she has often fallen into errors of a very serious kind. Some of these errors we may perhaps take occasion to point out. But we have not time to point out one half of those which we have observed; and it is but too likely that we may not have observed all those which exist. The reputation which Miss Aikin has justly earned stands so high, and the charm of Addison's letters is so great, that a second edition of this work may probably be required. If so, we hope that every paragraph will be revised, and that every date and statement of fact about which there can be the smallest doubt will be carefully verified.

To Addison himself we are bound by a sentiment as much like affection as any sentiment can be, which is inspired by one who has been sleeping a hundred and twenty years in Westminster Abbey. We trust, however, that this feeling will not betray us into that abject idolatry which we have often had occasion to reprehend in others, and which seldom fails to make both the idolater and the idol ridiculous. A man of genius and virtue is but a man. All his powers cannot be equally developed; nor can we expect from him perfect self-knowledge. We need not, therefore, hesitate to admit that Addison has left us some compositions which do not rise above mediocrity, some heroic poems hardly equal to Parnell's, some criticism as superficial as Dr Blair's, and a tragedy not very much better than Dr Johnson's. It is praise enough to say of a writer, that, in a high department of literature, in which many eminent writers have distinguished themselves, he has had no equal; and this may with strict justice be said of Addison.

As a man, he may not have deserved the adoration which he received from those who, bewitched by his fascinating society, and indebted for all the comforts of life to his generous and delicate friendship, worshipped him nightly, in his favourite temple at Button's. But, after full enquiry and impartial reflection, we have long been convinced, that he deserved as much love and esteem as can be justly claimed by any of our infirm and erring Some blemishes may undoubtedly be detected in his character; but the more carefully it is examined, the more will it appear, to use the phrase of the old anatomists, sound in the noble

race.