hurry now! Pity they have got above Sunday-schools, for writing was attended to in them. I wish I could convey to you an idea of the writing of a friend whose note lies before me, all scratches, blots, little lines, short strokes. I think I have heard this style described as the footsteps of a tipsy fly who had fallen into the ink-bottle, and just scrambled out again. I will say for the ladies that they keep to the old sharp angular writing, detestable as it once was; but we are going to dots and blots, and microscopic characters that don't suit my eyes and age at all. Hebrew, Sanscrit, Chinese, double Dutch, Fijean-it might be any or all of these for all that it looks like English. And as for punctuation, there is no such thing recognised in modern correspondence! A frightful catastrophe had nearly happened in Potter's family the other day through the affected style of modern writing. Mrs. Potter's eldest daughter, Julia, is engaged to a young man in the City, Mr. Augustus Spooner, an exemplary clerk, of moral principles, who is a member of the Christian Young Men's Association, and of several mutual improvement societies, who, after he has left business and had his tea, goes every evening to his Bible class, and thence comes to visit his adored one. Lately, however, there have been misgivings in the Potter household of this good young man having got into evil company, for he had fallen in with a harum-skarum schoolfellow, Bob Graceless, who, Mrs. Potter sadly feared, was a cracked vessel that would not hold the oil of goodness. Their worst fears were confirmed when, one evening, Augustus did not appear at the usual tea, but in his place came a letter in the well-known handwriting, which Julia opened, stared at, and fell speechless to the ground, for these were the first words of the Christian young man: My dearest will, I trust, forgive me if I do not come to her, for I have been prevailed on by Graceless to go to sea.' These words knocked her down, stunned and speechless, and you may guess the scene that followed. Mrs. Potter, leaving her two youngest daughters to bring the stricken one to life again, caught up the letter. "Oh, the vile wretch!" she exclaimed; "the mercenary, Mammonworshipping wretch! Here it's all explained. This is why he has gone off to sea: 'I cannot love till you sell your property;' and then there's something else, and then he says something, and something-and what's this?-Our-our "Looks like 'baby,'" suggests the stolid Potter. you "You're a brute as well as a fool, Potter," cries his amiable wife; "and then the mercenary wretch goes on, You know how I love and worship gold! Give me a thousand pounds and I would select you,'then a line or two that I can't read, and then--what's this at the finish? What? what? Love to fat Sal! Well to be sure, is that proper respect to your wife, Mr. Potter? If you were anything of a man, you would resent this; you would not breathe or eat till had followed up this vile deceiver!" and a great deal more to the same purpose. Potter breathed, but did not eat before he took a cab and was off to Mr. Spooner's father's, and rolled off with the old gentleman to Mr. Graceless's apartments, whither the good young man had said he was going, and where they surprised him and his friend in a great debauch of mild cigars and ginger-wine-and-water. The letter was soon explained. It was all a mistake: all for the want of a stroke to the t's, a dot to the 's, and a stop to the sentences. He had merely wished to announce that he was going to tea with Graceless, not to sea; and the sentences appearing to betray an avaricious disposition composed a rhapsody beginning, "I cannot, love, tell you tell you properly-how intense my love is," and ending, "Give me a thousand friends and I would select you." It was a long while, however, before Mrs. Potter could be persuaded that the closing sentence of the letter was not personally offensive to herself, but the simple and friendly sentence, "Love to you all!" Perhaps the worst, however, is the loss poor Racketter has sustained through the odious habit of bad writing. Wishing, as he says, to fortify his banker's account, as he does not like keeping a balance of less than 500l., he required a temporary advance of cash on his unexceptionable personal security, and applied to a large and philanthropic capitalist at a neighbouring tavern, who, addressing "the embarrassed" in large capitals in the cheap papers, holds out one hand with "Loans of five to a thousand pounds," and the other for a bill for principal and interest. I was very sorry to hear that Racketter had had anything to do with a bill, or that he should have had such a false delicacy about his banker's balance as to put his hand to one of those nasty, dangerous things! I never touched one in my life-I infinitely prefer doctors' or even lawyers' bills! Well, the bill was drawn, and Racketter accepted it, payable at seventy days after date, when his salary from the Review would come due, but before three weeks had expired the bill was presented and the amount demanded. In vain Racketter pleaded the time was seventy days-the large and philanthropic capitalist declared it was twenty; and so it appeared to the learned judge, who directed judgment on it. I was, however, thankful to find Racketter cheerful and prepared with the moneyfor so I infer, for he laughed and winked as he said, “Never mind, old boy! twenty days or seventy-it's all the same to me," and jerked his thumb over his shoulder, as much as to say the money was all right in the next room. I trust these instances of the evils and dangers of bad writing will operate as a warning. I am a very distinct and plain writer myself, and the result, as you see, is the absence of typographical errors; and, as I am most particular in dotting my i's and crossing my t's, it would indeed be strange if the printer should make any meslakes. THE CANAL OF NICARAGUA.* THE extreme narrowness of the isthmus that joins North America to South is so manifest, that the idea of cutting an interoceanic canal appears to date as far back as the first peopling of the territory. When Fernando Cortez, the conqueror of Mexico, first saw the Pacific from its western shores, he was so struck with the possibility and utility of an interoceanic communication, that he actually made researches in the hopes of discovering that something of the kind was already in existMany Spanish residents memorialised their government upon the same subject subsequent to the colonisation of the country; nor did they fail to signalise the existence of a magnificent lake, from which issued a river large enough to serve as a basis for an interoceanic canal; but Spain was to Central America what the Hudson's Bay Company has been to the North—an incubus, ever hostile to all kinds of progress and improvement. ence. Some time after the king of the Mosquitos, in Honduras, placed himself under the protection of the crown of Great Britain, and in the days of Pitt the same project became associated with that enlightened minister's plans for securing the maritime and commercial aggrandisement of the country, and an expedition was sent in 1780 to the river San Juan, in which Nelson figured as captain of the Hinchinbrook. Since that epoch a number of schemes and projects have been advocated, the justly renowned traveller Humboldt having led the way by pointing out no less than five different lines feasible for roads, railways, or interoceanic canals. Our own times may be essentially designated as the age of action as tontrasted with that which has preceded it, and which has been almost too solely devoted to preliminary geographical and scientific inquiries. The discovery of gold in California solved the problem of ages so far as interoceanic communication was concerned, and it is probable that many of us will live to see the problem of interoceanic canalisation solved in a similar satisfactory manner, both in the West and in the East. It is very much to be regretted, however, that the epoch for action in this long-discussed question having arrived, difficulties of a political nature should have arisen, and have come to interfere with what ought to have been a purely scientific and commercial enterprise. It is, indeed, deeply to be regretted that while the acts of the predatory bands of flibustiers† are disavowed by the government of the United States, that government should persist in disregarding existing treaties and arrogating to itself rights such as no other European power ever laid claim to, placing itself thereby, and by its open advocacy of the Monroe doctrine-a doctrine which apportions all America to the United States, and which repels all European interference-beyond the pale of international courtesies and of Percement de l'Isthme de Panama par le Canal de Nicaragua. Exposé de la Question. Par M. Félix Belly. Paris. Flibustier, or aventurier, is a French word. The old predatory outlaws by land and sea on the Spanish Main-the Zee Rovvers of the Dutch-were better known as Buccaneers, from the Indian term, "boucan," dried meat. a general civilisation. It is not, further, very promising to the future that France-however great and enlightened that country may be in a military, artistic, and literary point of view, still notoriously unsuccessful as a maritime and colonial power, and by no means the most wealthy of the nations of Europe-should have taken in hand at the same time the two most interesting, most important, as also the two most difficult and expensive geographical undertakings that the globe presents— an Atlantic and a Pacific, and a Mediterranean and a Red Sea, interoceanic canal. It must not be supposed that the native government has remained indifferent all this time to the importance of an interoceanic communication. On the contrary, no sooner was the young republic of Nicaragua constituted, than a member, Don Antonio de la Cerda, took the initiative in proposing a decree to carry out so desirable an object. The means of the country were not, however, equal to so vast an enterprise. The United States then came forward, and several companies were started with the view to carrying out the project. The Nicaraguan government laid the bases at that time-that is, as early as in 1823-of the principles which were to guide them in the concessions made to foreign companies to carry the said project into effect. A Mr. Palmer, of New York, obtained the first concession in 1826. The period, however, within which labours were to be commenced according to the terms of the grant, went by without a single step having been taken, and the project only led the way in that long series of failures which have attended upon those which have hitherto been entertained, whether by the people of the United States or by others, for carrying out the same great enterprise. The next in the field was no less a personage than William I., king of Holland, who had resolved upon devoting even the greater part of his private fortune in order to effectually carry out this favourite scheme, but the revolution of 1830 and the separation of Belgium put a stop to these cosmopolitan good works. William was not the only one of princely birth who allowed himself to be seduced by the contemplation of this most desirable undertaking. The prisoner of Ham occupied a portion of his constrained leisure in studying the subject under its various phases, and he associated the opening of an interoceanic canal with the foundation of a great maritime and independent power in Central America. He foresaw rising on a point of the isthmus, between the two lakes of Nicaragua and Managua, which he designated as two natural havens, the Constantinople of the future world, with a new Bosphorus opening the Atlantic to the Pacific. "Son projet,” says M. Félix Belly, "porte l'empreinte de ce grandiose qui semble être le cachet du génie Napoléonien." The United States, less prone to theorise, have ever continued to entertain the most ardent desire to carry out the same magnificent project, and to monopolise power in Central America. It will probably never be without a struggle that they will yield a scheme so long and so covetously dwelt upon, to be carried out by others. On the 27th of August, 1849, the company, designated as that of White and Vanderbilt, concluded a new treaty with the government of Nicaragua, which comprised the privileges of canalisation with those of a free navigation of the San Juan, and the opening of a road to the Pacific whilst the works were going on. The terms of the concession were that the works were to commerce within a year, and to be brought to a completion within twelve. The contract was guaranteed by the government of the United States, which reserved to itself the right of navigating the imaginary canal with ships of war, as also other exclusive privileges. This treaty experienced, however, the same fate as others, with the exception that it led to trouble. In the words of M. Félix Belly, the treaty of 1849 had no other results than to have caused certain levellings and soundings to be carried out by an engineer Mr. Child-which completed previous studies. The state of Nicaragua never touched a dollar of that share of the benefits which was reserved to it. The company violated with the most flagrant bad faith all the engagements that it had contracted with respect to that state, and finally, in order the better to compensate the Nicaraguan government for its forbearance, the United States, after having provoked in 1854 the bombardment of Greytown (San Juan de Nicaragua), by which five hundred families were ruined and 20,000 millions (franes!) of merchandise were destroyed, lent its steamers in 1855 to Walker's flibustiers, in order that they might obtain possession of Granada, thus making common cause with a banditti to destroy a state which had enriched it. Nicaragua and its canal have thus ever remained in the position of one of those legendary castellated abodes where wealth, power, and pleasure await the youthful hero, but to arrive at which there are enchanted forests to traverse, with rivulets that swell to torrents, holes that open like fathomless pits, rocks ready to fall and crush, and trees that belch forth flames of fire; or there are fruits guarded by vicious dwarfs, or flowers over which roam lions with manes of snakes, or ravines guarded by giant ogres, or gilded saloons, with wine, and food, and beauty to tempt astray. M. Félix Belly is in the present day what Perceval, who combated the said giants, dragons, and sorcerers to conquer the magic lance and basin, was to the Knights of the Round Table, Peredor to the Gauls, and Peronnik to the Bretons. Nicaragua and its lakes, rivers, rocks, and forests, its tropical sun, its pestilential swamps, its rude natives, its powerless government, and its coveted spoil, is the modern apple of discord, the actual castle of romance. It remains to be seen if, even backed by "the man" who, to use our doughty champion's grandiose language, has been reserved by Providence for a destiny so high that it is sufficient for him in the present day simply to will in order that the greatest things shall be accomplished, M. Félix Belly-twin hero with M. de Lessepswill succeed in his rival exploit. The elaboration of the idea is, we are told, complete. It has traversed all the phases that are necessary to carry a conception from its first crude birth up to the perfection of becoming a scientific deduction. The question of practicability will no longer admit of discussion. The labours carried out for the last thirty years by English, French, and American engineers, notoriously by Bailly, Garella, and Child, present sufficient bases on which to found a regular project in which all possible difficulties shall be anticipated. All explorations confirm a mean amount of expense. the conditions demanded by capitalists meet at a certain point in the actual state of the question. It is as ripe as far as multiplied calcula All |