members, there were none but savage aboriginal tribes. The Russian settlements in the far north had nothing but a paltry trade in furs with Kamschatka, that barely defrayed its own expenses. Neither was there any encouragement to make a short cut to the innumerable islands of the Pacific. The whole of Polynesia lay outside of the pale of civilization. In Tahiti, the Sandwich group, and the northern peninsula of New Zealand, missionaries had barely sowed the first seeds of morals and enlightenment. The limited commerce of China and the Eastern Archipelago was engrossed by Europe, and took the route of the Cape of Good Hope, with the exception of a few annual vessels that traded from the sea-board states of the North American Union to Valparaiso and Canton. The wool of New South Wales was but coming into notice, and found its way to England alone round the Cape of Good Hope. An American fleet of whalers scoured the Pacific, and adventurers of the same nation carried on a desultory and inconsiderable traffic in hides with California, in tortoise-shell and mother of pearl with the Polynesian Islands. Till the discovery of the new gold country how contentedly they dawdled round Cape Horn; creeping down one coast, and up another: but now such delay is not to be thought of. Already, indeed, Panama has become the seat of a great, increasing, and perennial transit trade. This can not fail to augment the settled population of the region, its wealth and intelligence. Upon these facts we rest the conviction that the time has arrived for realizing the project of a ship canal there or in the near neighborhood. That a ship canal, and not a railway, is what is first wanted (for very soon there will be both), must be obvious to all acquainted with the practical details of commerce. The delay and expense to which merchants are subjected, when obliged to "break bulk" repeatedly between the port whence they sail and that of their destination, is extreme. The waste and spoiling of goods, the cost of the operation, are also heavy drawbacks, and to these they are subject by the stormy passage round Cape Horn. Two points present themselves offering great facilities for the execution of a ship canal. The one is in the immediate vicinity of Panama, where the many imperfect observations which have hitherto been made, are yet sufficient to leave no doubt that, as the distance is comparatively short, the summit levels are inconsiderable, and the supply of water ample. The other is some distance to the northward. The isthmus is there broader, but is in part occupied by the large and deep fresh-water lakes of Nicaragua and Naragua. The lake of Nicaragua communicates with the Atlantic by a copious river, which may either be rendered navigable, or be made the source of supply for a side canal. The space between the two lakes is of inconsiderable extent, and presents no great engineering difficulties. The elevation of the lake of Naragua above the Pacific is inconsiderable; there is no hill range between it and the gulf of Canchagua ; and Captain Sir Edward Belcher carried his surveying ship Sulphur sixty miles up the Estero Real, which rises near the lake, and falls into the gulf. The line of the Panama canal presents, as Humboldt remarks, facilities equal to those of the line of the Caledonian canal. The Nicaragua line is not more difficult than that of the canal of Languedoc, a work executed between 1660 and 1682, at a time when the commerce to be expedited by it did not exceed What, then, would have been the use of cutting a canal, through which there would not have passed five ships in a twelvemonth? But twenty years have worked a wondrous revolution in the state and prospects of these regions. The traffic of Chili has received a large development, and the stability of its institutions has been fairly tried. The resources of Costa Rica, the population of which is mainly of European race, is steadily advancing. American citi zens have founded a state in Oregon. The Sandwich Islands have become for all practical purposes an American colony. The trade with China to which the proposed canal would open a convenient avenue by a western instead of the present eastern route-is no longer restricted to the Canton river, but is open to all nations as far north as the Yang-tse-Kiang. The navigation of the Amur has been opened to the Russians by a treaty, and can not long remain closed against the English and American settlers between Mexico and the Russian settlements in America. Tahiti has become a kind of commercial emporium. The English settlements in Australia and New Zealand have opened a direct trade with the Indian Archipelago and China. The permanent settlements of intelligent and enterprising Anglo-Americans and English in Polynesia, and on the eastern and western shores if it equaled-that which will find its way of the Pacific, have proved so many dépôts for the adventurous traders with its innumerable islands, and for the spermaceti whalers. Then the last, but greatest addition of all, is California: a name in the world of commerce and enterprise to conjure with. There gold is to be had for fetching. Gold, the main-spring of commercial activity, the reward of toil-for which men are ready to risk life, to endure every sort of privation; sometimes, alas! to sacrifice every virtue; one most especially, and that is patience. They will away with her now. across the Isthmus; when great part of the maritime country was as thinly inhabited by as poor a population as the Isthmus now is; and when the last subsiding storms of civil war, and the dragonnades of Louis XIV., unsettled men's minds, and made person and property insecure. The cosmopolitan effects of such an under taking, if prosecuted to a successful close, it is impossible even approximately to estimate. The acceleration it will communicate to the already rapid progress of civilization in the Pacific is obvious. And no less obvious are the beneficial effects it will have upon the mutual relations of civilized states, seeing that the recognition of the independence and neutrality in times of gen [From the Dublin University Magazine.] THE GERMAN MEISTERSINGERS eral war of the canal and the region through WE which it passes, is indispensable to its establish ment. We have dwelt principally on the commercial, the economical considerations of the enterprise, for they are what must render it possible. But the friends of Christian missions, and the advocates of universal peace among nations, have yet a deeper interest in it. In the words used by Prince Albert at the dinner at the Mansion House respecting the forthcoming great exhibition of arts and industry, "Nobody who has paid any attention to the particular features of our present era, will doubt for a moment that we are living at a period of most wonderful transition, which tends rapidly to accomplish that great end-to which, indeed, all history points -the realization of the unity of mankind. Not a unity which breaks down the limits and levels the peculiar characteristics of the different nations of the earth, but rather a unity the result and product of those very national varieties and antagonistic qualities. The distances which separated the different nations and parts of the globe are gradually vanishing before the achievements of modern invention, and we can traverse them with incredible speed; the languages of all nations are known, and their acquirements placed within the reach of every body; thought is communicated with the rapidity, and even by the power of lightning." Every short cut across the globe brings man in closer communion with his distant brotherhood, and results in concord, prosperity, and peace. TRUTH IN PLEASURE.-Men have been said to be sincere in their pleasures, but this is only that the tastes and habits of men are more easily discernible in pleasure than in business; the want of truth is as great a hindrance to the one as to the other. Indeed, there is so much insincerity and formality in the pleasurable department of human life, especially in social pleasures, that instead of a bloom there is a slime upon it, which deadens and corrupts the thing. One of the most comical sights to superior beings must be to see two human creatures with elaborate speech and gestures making each other exquisitely uncomfortable from civility; the one pressing what he is most anxious that the other should not accept, and the other accepting only from the fear of giving offense by refusal. There is an element of charity in all this too; and it will be the business of a just and refined nature to be sincere and considerate at the same time. This will be better done by enlarging our sympathy, so that more things and people are pleasant to us, than by increasing the civil and conventional part of our nature, so that we are able to do more seeming with greater skill and endurance.-Friends in Council. VOL. I.-No. 1.-F HANS SACHS. E once chanced to meet with a rare old German book which contains an accurate history of the foundation of the Meistersingers, a body which exercised so important an influence upon the literary history, not only of Germany, but of the whole European Continent, that the circumstances connected with its origin can not prove uninteresting to our readers. The burghers of the provincial towns in Germany had gradually formed themselves into guilds or corporations, the members of which, when the business of the day was discussed, would amuse themselves by reading some of the ancient traditions of their own country, as related in the old Nordic poems. This stock of literature was soon exhausted, and the worthy burghers began to try their hands at original composition. From these rude snatches of song sprung to life the fire of poetic genius, and at Mentz was first established that celebrated guild, branches of which soon after extended themselves to most of the provincial towns. The fame of these social meetings soon became widely spread. It reached the ears of the emperor, Otho I., and, about the middle of the ninth century, the guild received a royal summons to attend at Pavia, then the emperor's residence. The history of this famous meeting remained for upward of six hundred years upon record among the archives of Mentz, but is supposed to have been taken away, among other plunder, about the period of the Smalkaldic war. From other sources of information we can, however, gratify the curiosity of the antiquarian, by giving the names of the twelve original members of this guild: These gentlemen, having attended the royal summons in due form, were subjected to a severe public examination before the court by the wisest men of their times, and were pronounced masters of their art; enthusiastic encomiums were lavished upon them by the delighted audience, and they departed, having received from the emperor's hands a crown of pure gold, to be presented annually to him who should be selected by the voice of his fellows as laureate for the year. Admission to these guilds became, in process of time, the highest literary distinction; it was eagerly sought for by numberless aspirants, but "WALTER VON DER VOGELWEID. When he left this world of ours, the ordeal through which the candidate had to of the original Meistersingers, made rather a pass became so difficult that very few were curious will-a circumstance which we find found qualified for the honor. The compositions charmingly narrated in the following exquisite of the candidates were measured with a degree ballad: of critical accuracy of which candidates for literary fame in these days can form but little idea. The ordeal must have been more damping to the fire of young genius than the most slashing article ever penned by the most caustic reviewer. Every composition had of necessity to belong to a certain class; each class was distinguished by a limited amount of rhymes and syllables, and the candidate had to count each stanza, as he read it, upon his fingers. The redundancy or the deficiency of a single syllable was fatal to his claims, and was visited in addition by a pecuniary fine, which went to the support of the corporation. Of that branch of this learned body which held its meetings at Nuremberg, Hans Sachs became, in due time, a distinguished member. His origin was obscure the son of a tailor, and a shoemaker by trade. The occupations of his early life afforded but little scope for the cultivation of those refined pursuits which afterward made him remarkable. The years of his boyhood were spent in the industrious pursuit of his lowly calling; but when he had arrived at the age of eighteen, a famous minstrel, Numenbach by name, chancing to pass his dwelling, the young cobbler was attracted by his dulcet strains, and followed him. Numenbach gave him gratuitous instruction in his tuneful art, and Hans Sachs forthwith entered upon the course of probationary wandering, which was an essential qualification for his degree. The principal towns of Germany by turns received the itinerant minstrel, who supported himself by the alternate manufacture of verses and of shoes. After a protracted pilgrimage of several years, he returned to Nuremberg, his native city, where, having taken unto himself a wife, he spent the remainder of his existence; not unprofitably, indeed, as his voluminous works still extant can testify. We had once the pleasure of seeing an edition of them in the library at Nuremberg, containing two hundred and twelve pieces of poetry, one hundred and sixteen sacred allegories, and one hundred and ninety-seven dramas-a fertility of production truly wonderful, and almost incredible, if we reflect that the author had to support a numerous family by the exercise of his Jowly trade. The writings of this humble artisan proved an era, however, in the literary history of Germany. To him may be ascribed the honor of being the founder of her school of tragedy as well as comedy; and the illustrious Goethe has, upon more than one occasion, in his works, expressed how deeply he is indebted to this poet of the people for the outline of his immortal tragedy of "Faust." Indeed, if we recollect aright, there are in his works several pieces which he states are after the manner of Hans Sachs. The Lord of Vogelweid, whose name we find occupying so conspicuous a position in the roll Under Wurtzburg's minster towers. Gave them all with this bequest- "Saying, 'From these wandering minstrels They have taught so well and long.' And, fulfilling his desire, Sang their lauds on every side; ""Till at length the portly abbot Murmured, 'Why this waste of food; From the walls and woodland nests, Clamorous round the gothic spire, "Time has long effaced the inscription By sweet echoes multiplied, And the name of Vogelweid." EDUCATION.-The striving of modern fashionable education is to make the character impressive; while the result of good education, though not the aim, would be to make it expressive. There is a tendency in modern education to cover the fingers with rings, and at the same time to cut the sinews at the wrist. The worst education, which teaches selfdenial, is better than the best which teaches every thing else, and not that.--Tales and Essays by John Sterling. THE IN not to his advantage. Ashamed of being only a bourgeois, he was squandering his fortune at Paris under an assumed title. His temper was severe and gloomy: he knew mankind too well, he said, not to despise and avoid them. He wished to see no one but me, and desired from me, in return, a similar sacrifice of the world. I saw, from this time, the necessity, for his own sake as well as mine, of destroying his hopes by HE occurrence related in the letter which we are about to quote, is a remarkable instance of those apparently supernatural visitations which it has been found so difficult (if not impossible) to explain and account for. It does not appear to have been known to Scott, Brew-reducing our intercourse to terms of less intister, or any other English writer who has collected and endeavored to expound those ghostly phenomena. Clairon was the greatest tragedian that ever appeared on the French stage; holding on it a supremacy similar to that of Siddons on our own. She was a woman of powerful intellect, and had the merit of affecting a complete revolution in the French school of tragic acting; substituted an easy, varied and natural delivery for the stilted and monotonous declamation which had till then prevailed, and being the first to consult classic taste and propriety of costume. Her mind was cultivated by habits of intimacy with the most distinguished men of her day; and she was one of the most brilliant ornaments of those literary circles which the contemporary memoir writers describe in such glowing colors. In an age of corruption, unparalleled in modern times, Mademoiselle Clairon was not proof against the temptations to which her position exposed her. But a lofty spirit, and some religious principles, which she retained amidst a generation of infidels and scoffers, saved her from degrading vices, and enabled her to spend an old age protracted beyond the usual period of human life, in respectability and honor. She died in 1803, at the age of eighty. She was nearly seventy when the following letter was written. It was addressed to M. Henri Meister, a man of some eminence among the literati of that period; the associate of Diderot, Grimm, D'Holbach, M. and Madame Necker, &c., and the collaborateur of Grimm in his famous "Correspondence." This gentleman was Clairon's "literary executor;" having been intrusted with her memoirs, written by herself, and published after her death. With this preface we give Mademoiselle Clairon's narrative, written in her old age, of an occurence which had taken place half a century before. "In 1743, my youth, and my success on the stage, had drawn round me a good many admirers. M. de S, the son of a merchant in Brittany, about thirty years old, handsome, and possessed of considerable talent, was one of those who were most strongly attached to me. His conversation and manners were those of a man of education and good society, and the reserve and timidity which distinguished his attention made a favorable impression on me. After a green-room acquaintance of some time I permitted him to visit me at my house, but a better knowledge of his situation and character was macy. My behavior brought upon him a violent illness, during which I showed him every mark of friendly interest, but firmly refused to deviate from the course I had adopted. My steadiness only deepened his wound; and unhappily, at this time, a treacherous relative, to whom he had intrusted the management of his affairs, took advantage of his helpless condition by robbing him, and leaving him so destitute that he was obliged to accept the little money I had, for his subsistence, and the attendance which his condition required. You must feel, my dear friend, the importance of never revealing this secret. I respect his memory, and I would not expose him to the insulting pity of the world. Preserve, then, the religious silence which after many years I now break for the first time. "At length he recovered his property, but never his health; and thinking I was doing him a service by keeping him at a distance from me, I constantly refused to receive either his letters or his visits. "Two years and a half elapsed between this period and that of his death. He sent to beg me to see him once more in his last moments, but I thought it necessary not to comply with his wish. He died, having with him only his domestics, and an old lady, his sole companion for a long time. He lodged at that time on the Rempart, near the Chaussée d'Antin; I resided in the Rue de Bussy, near the Abbaye St. Germain. My mother lived with me; and that night we had a little party to supper. We were very gay, and I was singing a lively air, when the clock struck eleven, and the sound was succeeded by a long and piercing cry of unearthly horror. The company looked aghast; I fainted, and remained for a quarter of an hour totally insensible. We then began to reason about the nature of so frightful a sound, and it was agreed to set a watch in the street in case it were repeated. "It was repeated very often. All our servants, my friends, my neighbors, even the police, heard the same cry, always at the same hour, always proceeding from under my windows, and appearing to come from the empty air. I could not doubt that it was meant entirely for me. I rarely supped abroad; but the nights I did so, nothing was heard; and several times, when I came home, and was asking my mother and servants if they had heard any thing, it suddenly burst forth, as if in the midst of us. One night, the President de B-, at whose house I had supped, desired to see me safe home. While he was bidding me 'good night' at my door, the cry broke out seemingly from something be- | Barrière blanche, I got into a hackney-coach at tween him and me. He, like all Paris, was eleven o'clock with my maid. It was clear moonaware of the story; but he was so horrified, that his servants lifted him into his carriage more dead than alive. light as we passed along the Boulevards, which were then beginning to be studded with houses. While we were looking at the half-finished buildings, my maid said, 'Was it not in this neighborhood that M. de S died?' 'From what I have heard,' I answered, 'I think it should be there'-pointing with my finger to a house before us. From that house came the same gun verse our carriage, and the coachman set off at full speed, thinking we were attacked by robbers. We arrived at Mademoiselle Dumesnil's in a state of the utmost terror; a feeling I did not get rid of for a long time." "Another time, I asked my comrade Rosely to accompany me to the Rue St. Honoré to choose some stuffs, and then to pay a visit to Mademoiselle de St. P- —, who lived near the Porte Saint-Denis. My ghost story (as it was called) was the subject of our whole conversa-shot that I had heard before. It seemed to tration. This intelligent young man was struck by my adventure, though he did not believe there was any thing supernatural in it. He pressed me to evoke the phantom, promising to believe if it answered my call. With weak audacity I complied, and suddenly the cry was heard three [Mademoiselle Clairon gives some further times with fearful loudness and rapidity. When details similar to the above, and adds that the we arrived at our friend's door both of us were noises finally ceased in about two years and a found senseless in the carriage. half. After this, intending to change her resi"After this scene, I remained for some months dence, she put up a bill on the house she was without hearing any thing. I thought it was all | leaving; and many people made the pretext of over; but I was mistaken. looking at the apartments an excuse for gratify"All the public performances had been trans-ing their curiosity to see, in her every-day guise, ferred to Versailles on account of the marriage the great tragedian of the Théâtre Français.] of the Dauphin. We were to pass three days "One day I was told that an old lady desired there, but sufficient lodgings were not provided to see my rooms. Having always had a great for us. Madame Grandval had no apartment; respect for the aged, I went down to receive and I offered to share with her the room with her. An unaccountable emotion seized me on two beds which had been assigned to me in the seeing her, and I perceived that she was moved avenue of St. Cloud. I gave her one of the beds in a similar manner. I begged her to sit down, and took the other. While my maid was un- and we were both silent for some time. At dressing to lie down beside me, I said to her, length she spoke, and, after some preparation, "We are at the world's end here, and it is dread-came to the subject of her visit. ful weather; the cry would be somewhat puzzled "I was, mademoiselle, the best friend of M. to get at us." In a moment it rang through the de S, and the only friend whom he would room. Madame Grandval ran in her night-dress see during the last year of his life. We spoke from top to bottom of the house, in which nobody of you incessantly; I urging him to forget you, closed an eye for the rest of the night. This, he protesting that he would love you beyond however, was the last time the cry was heard. the tomb. Your eyes which are full of tears "Seven or eight days afterward, while I was allow me to ask you why you made him so chatting with my usual evening circle, the sound wretched; and how, with such a mind and such of the clock striking eleven was followed by the feelings as yours, you could refuse him the consoreport of a gun fired at one of the windows. Welation of once more seeing and speaking to you?" all heard the noise, we all saw the fire, yet the "'We can not,' I answered, 'command our window was undamaged. We concluded that sentiments. M. de S had merit and estisome one sought my life, and that it was neces-mable qualities; but his gloomy, bitter, and oversary to take precautions again another attempt. bearing temper made me equally afraid of his The Intendant des Menus Plaisirs, who was present, flew to the house of his friend, M. de Marville, the Lieutenant of Police. The houses opposite mine were instantly searched, and for several days were guarded from top to bottom. My house was closely examined; the street was filled with spies in all possible disguises. But, notwithstanding all this vigilance, the same explosion was heard and seen for three whole months always at the same hour, and at the same window-pane, without any one being able to discover from whence it proceeded. This fact stands recorded in the registers of the police. "Nothing was heard for some days; but hav-sight would have rent my heart; because I feared ing been invited by Mademoiselle Dumesnil * to join a little evening party at her house near the *The celebrated tragedian. company, his friendship, and his love. To make him happy, I must have renounced all intercourse with society, and even the exercise of my talents. I was poor and proud; I desire, and hope I shall ever desire, to owe nothing to any one but myself. My friendship for him prompted me to use every endeavor to lead him to more just and reasonable sentiments: failing in this, and persuaded that his obstinacy proceeded less from the excess of his passion than from the violence of his character, I took the firm resolution to separate from him entirely. I refused to see him in his last moments, because the to appear too barbarous if I remained inflexible, and to make myself wretched if I yielded. Such, madame, are the motives of my conduct-motives for which, I think, no one can blame me ' |