the year 1775, as 100 to 146; it may not be materially different in the United States, since Sweden, though salubrious to middle life, is destructive to infancy, one half dying before the age of ten years, or more exactly forty-eight and two-thirds per cent forty-three per cent dying before the age of 5 years. Now 100,000 white persons in the United States have 17,433 under the age of 5 years; 46 per cent advance on this number gives 25,452 as the number of births in 5 years, or 5090 per year, or one to twenty of the population-a proportion too large for truth. Probably one birth in twenty-five or thirty of the population is about the truth. In New England the proportion is about one in thirty-six or thirtyeight of the population, a very large proportion of whom being beyond middle life, much larger than in the United States. Countries which contribute most to the prolongation of life, have this proportion the smallest.

It is proper to observe before the close of this examination, that should we draw inferences from these tables concerning longevity in different sections of the United States, without those qualifications or apologies that have been advanced for some sections, the differences among the sections would be no greater than are known to exist between parts of countries in Europe, bearing no comparison in extent of territory with the United States. The circumstances of difference depending not so much on mere latitude, as on those conditions of soil which generate febrile diseases the chief source of the destruction of a majority of all lives in some regions. M. Bossi gives the following table, illustrative of the comparative influence on lives, of the peculiarities of the surface of the country in different sections of France:

There are nearly as great differences presented by the counties of England, according as they are hilly or fenny. In the whole country there is one death annually among 58.7 inhabitants. The counties reported in parliamentary returns as essentially fenny, are Kent, (1 death in 41,) Essex, (1 in 44,) and the East Riding of Yorkshire, (1 in 47,) and in these counties the mortality is much above the average. The mortality of the town of Boston" situated in the fens," is 1 in 27; the town of Stamford," in the dry upland," one in 50. Not only were the above counties reported as "fenny," but as "subject to agues."

The only reason why the male sex only is embraced in most of the allusions to the census, and in the large tables here given, is, that the sexes stood distinct in the compendium of the census made use of, and the labor was much less than to have presented combined results. The male sex is more subject to the influences of climate, and these results are perhaps more important than had they regarded both sexes; especially since separate results would exist, if the census of the other sex should undergo any similar analysis. The following comparison of the two sexes of the white population, for the country as a whole, presenting results appreciable by the eye, which may be expected to undergo but very little variation, (being deduced from so many millions of persons,) is calculated to give an approximative view of the relative lengths of life of the sexes in this country.

If we may infer any thing concerning the relative mortality of the sexes it is greater male mortality under 15 years, and greater female mortality during early adult life; greater male mortality in later adult life, and finally greater female mortality between the years 90 and 100, leaving more males than females to die above the age of 100. There are, generally, more males born than females, and more females living at a time than males.

With reference to the comparative duration of life of the white and black population of the country at large, the following table has been prepared.

It is here assumed that one-half of the white population between 40 and 50, are over 45, and that one half between 50 and 60 are over 55, which is evidently too great an allowance; consequently, the per cent of the whites here given as over 45 and 55 are larger than truth, though they are still less than the corresponding per centages of the free blacks. In New England, however, the whites have as great a proportion over these ages, as the free blacks of the United States have.

The great contrast through the above table between free blacks and slaves, will strike attention, which we leave to suggest its own comments. But the relative proportion of whites and blacks over 100, is the greatest peculiarity. There is, indeed, a greater proportion of blacks over 100, than of whites over 90 or even 85, but not over 80. There is about the same per cent of free blacks over 100 as of whites over 84; and were we to regard the south only, for whites and blacks, instead of 84, the age of whites must be put considerably lower, to embrace that equal per centage, and somewhat higher than 84, regarding New England for whites, and the country for blacks.

The preceding investigations are offered as a contribution towards a liberal intelligence concerning the population of this widely extended and widely extending country.

The following table is here presented (constructed on precisely the principle of one that has been explained,) relating to counties in New

England, the male population of 1840 being that regarded. The order of rank will be perceived. The counties of Vermont, however, have been

mislaid since they were first prepared, a year ago, also those of Rhode Island.

Art. II.-PROGRESS OF RAILROADS IN MASSACHUSETTS.

NATURE has not been liberal to Massachusetts in soil, climate, or navigable streams. Her territory, confined within narrow limits, is generally rugged and unequal-her winters long and severe. With the exception of the Merrimac, no great rivers have their outlets in her ports; and the Merrimac, by its bars and rapids, gives little encouragement to navigation; and yet with all these drawbacks, with no articles for export but ice and granite, her progress has been rapid and astonishing. Her harsh climate has invigorated her hardy sons-her ungrateful fields have given them lessons of. frugality and enterprize-her forests have been moulded into ships to pursue the cod, the seal, and the whale, have sought wealth in foreign climes, and become the great carriers of the Union. With the funds thus gathered on the deep, or in richer lands accumulating in frugal hands, they have made the very roughness of nature subservient to art. The streams have been arrested in their precipitous fall to the sea, and compelled to toil, to spin, and to weave. The boulders and ledges which defaced the fields have been lifted from their beds to build the foundations of factories, or to line the wells and cellars of a growing population, imparting to her fields the fertility originally denied by nature.

But commerce and art demand easy communication, and so essential has Massachusetts deemed it to its progress, that she has bent herself to supply the absence of navigable waters. Commencing with a noble system of town and country roads, she early embarked in turnpikes, diverging in all directions from her metropolis; coaches and wagons were soon in motion, connecting her with the interior, and Boston became distinguished for lines of stages, unrivalled in speed and comfort, throughout the Union. But a new agent began to exert a mighty influence. The genius of Fulton gave to the water an ascendency over the land, and the fast coach and the slow wagon were vanquished by the steamboat. Armed with the power of steam, New York made the East and the North rivers the arteries of commerce, and extending these great routes by navigable canals, she grasped not only the west, with Vermont and Canada on the north, but pierced the very heart of Massachusetts, pushing her improvements up the valleys of the Connecticut, and the Blackstone, to Spring field and Northampton, and even to Worcester, but forty miles west of Boston. The steamboat, in alliance with the canals, running down the natural watercourses, seemed destined to make Massachusetts a mere tributary; a vortex was opened whose attraction was irresistible; how could the manufacturer or the artisan of the interior afford to pay five cents per mile for conveyance by the coach, or fifteen cents per mile a ton for the transit of his goods to Boston, when steamboats and canals had reduced the transit to New York from fifty to eighty per cent, and made her the eastern outlet of the prolific West?

Massachusetts had tried canals in advance of all the states; she was first in the race; she had surmounted the summit between the Merrimac and Boston, by the Middlesex Canal, before the war of 1812, and she remembers with pride that the commissioners of the Erie Canal, before commencing that great work, came to Massachusetts to learn the rudiments of canaling. But canals were not adapted to the rugged surface of the state from the intervening of ridges between Boston and the interior.

The

manufacturer, too, could poorly await for the melting of a channel ice-bound half the year. Between the close of 1825 and the beginning of 1831, gloom and despondency seemed to settle down upon Massachusetts. Her sons left her to build up rival states and cities, and her fairest and richest daughters were courted away to grace more prosperous lands. The grass began to invade the wharves and pavements of her commercial centre, and the paint to desert the fronts of her villages; her pride was in the glories of the past, and in these she will ever be rich-not in the achievements of the present or the promise of the future. She seemed to stand at the ancestral tomb, sorrowing that she could not partake of the progress of the age, or to be dropping a tear beside the old hive as it grew yearly darker, or crumbled away, while swarm after swarm left it for sunnier skies. But her spirit, though chilled, was not subdued; a new era was at hand; art was preparing for another bound; the east was about to requite the west for the discoveries of Fulton, and to make steam more powerful on land than he had made it on the water. A star, the presage of future progress, broke forth in the east when Robert Stephenson applied the modern locomotive to the rail, and gave to England and the world the finished railroad. The noble viaduct which spans the Tyne, at Newcastle, on the main route from London to Edinburg, is soon to bear a costly statue dedicated to the great genius of modern times-to the master-spirit who is revolutionizing the whole intercourse of the world; and Massachusetts owes him a statue also for his discovery, which, more than aught else in modern times, makes her what she is, and is to be.

So chilled was her spirit by the adverse current from 1825 to 1831, that she could scarcely see, in the twinkling star rising beyond the ocean, the beacon that was to light her onward. Wedded to the systems of the past, she could not realise that men and merchandize were to be whirled through her granite hills and deep ravines, winter and summer, regardless of frost and snow; and those who first ventured to name the fire-horse and the rail in her streets, journals and legislative halls, encountered the smile of derision, and the name of visionaries and enthusiasts. There are those still on the stage who remember the obscure chamber and studied privacy in which the first measures were concerted to enlighten the community. The glowing zeal of Allen, who saw in advance "a car from each town join the train as the caravan came along," the enlarged intellect of Segwick, and keen forecast of Degrand, could not shield them from the shafts of ridicule. The transition from darkness to light was too sudden, the mental eye could not, for months, accustom itself to the new field of

vision.

But the incredulity of Massachusetts had its prototype in England, as we learn from the lips of Robert Stephenson himself. When he went to London, as the engineer of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, to obtain a charter, he was cautioned as to his testimony. "Be sure," said the counsel, "when you testify before the committee, not to say your locomotive will make more than ten miles per hour. I know you honestly believe you can attain fifteen, but the public are not prepared for it, and will not believe it, and we may be laughed out of Parliament." Stephenson went before the committee; he proved his case, and claimed a speed for his machine of ten miles per hour, but when the opposing counsel asked him, in his cross examination, with a significant smile, "do you not believe you can run this fire-horse of yours even twenty, or five and twenty miles