with us? You should have seen that beautiful tower of St. Paul's, sitting on its fresh hillside, like a young queen just emerging from her minority. You should have seen the gay scrambling at our landing there, for carriages and wagons, and every species of locomotive, to take us to our terminus at St. Anthony's Falls. You should have seen how, disdaining luxury or superfluity, we-some among us accustomed to cushioned coaches at home-could drive merrily over the prairie in lumber-wagons, seated on rough boards. You should have seen the troups and groups scattered over St. Anthony's rocks (what a picturesque domain the saint possesses!) and you should have witnessed the ceremony performed with dignity by Colonel Johnson, of mingling the water taken from the Atlantic at Sandy Hook, one week before, with the water of the Mississippi; and there and then have remembered that, but three hundred years ago, DeSoto, after months of wandering in trackless forests, was the first European discoverer of this river. What startling facts: What confounding contrasts!

You have so long been a Western explorer that you may have forgotten the excitement of seeing, for the first time, ploughing on a prairie. In returning from St. Anthony's to St. Paul's, we all left our vehicle to follow the wheelplough as drawn by six noble oxen; it cleared the tough turf, and upheaved it for the first time for the sun and the hand of man to do their joint fructifying work upon it. The oxen (not the man) looked like the natural lords of the soil. It was the sublime of ploughing. When will our Poets write their bucolics?

Our next sight, and hard by the ploughing, was one of nature's perfect works the falls of the Minnesota, poetically called by the Indians, Minnehahalaughing water. Miss Bremer says they deserve their picture, song and tales. So perfect is this Fall in color; in form so graceful, so finished, that by some mysterious accident of association, it brought to my mind at once the Venus de Medici. The last incident of this day's most pleasant circuit, was an unlooked-for visit to the old border fortress of Fort Snelling. We were received with great kindness. Courtesy and gallantry are twin-virtues in military life. The fort has a very beautiful position on a bluff overlooking the meeting of the Minnesota and the Mississippi. A pretty town lies below it. Its naine, Mendota,

means the meeting of the waters. The inhabitants of St. Paul's, with the unstinted Western hospitality that had everywhere awaited us, gave a ball in the evening to the thousand excursionists. Unhappily, long prefatory speeches and the punctual departure of the boats at 11 P.M., cut short its hilarity.

Before we reached Rock Island on our return, our entertainers' generosity having grown by what it fed on, it was announced to us that the excursion was extended to St. Louis. This episode itself deserves an epic! Some of our company could not resist the inviting aspect of the beautiful town of Davenport, and loitered there a day, others posted off by rail, via La Salle. My party preferred the luxurious and dreamy descent of the Mississippi, and winding amidst its islands and embroidered shores, we arrived at St. Louis at dawn on Monday morning.

St. Louis with its old French heart, and thriving young limbs, has more the air of a great and consolidated capital than any other city of the West. Its future destiny may be augured from the fact that in 1830 it had but 12,000 inhabitants-it has now more than 100,000-and that its position is within 300 miles of the centre of North America.

Time in the West is no longer the old man with a single forelock, and a scythe in his hand. He should be painted with the emblems of speed, construction and accumulation. We were astonished at the shipping at the wharves of St. Louis, at its towering warehouses, broad avenues, brilliant shops, and beautiful private residences. And there, where everything is living and stirring-and there would seem to be no place for the dying, no remembrance of the dead-we were shown a cemetery (it has indeed few tenants), not surpassed by Mount Auburn, hardly by Greenwood. We were received at a suburban villa where its proprietor lives with the simplicity of a republican gentleman in the midst of his 1200 acres of Park-land; and at another, adorned with a terraced or hanging garden, made in one of those dimples in the land, peculiar, I believe, to that neighborhood, and there designated by the unhappy name of sink. No wonder that the smiling appellation of dimple should have been suggested by the urbanity of our host, who welcomed us to a testable that I have never seen equalled in New England, where we fancy we have

a prescriptive right to excel in that prevailing hospitality. Perhaps what most pleased us in St. Louis, and most naturally, was the absence of all obtrusive signs of what we consider the only misfortune of Missouri-the only obstacle to its future pre-eminence--slavery. But this disease has made so little progress there, that there is much reason to expect the heathful young state will throw it off. Some of its best citizens are opposed to it, and we met and heard one, a young man eloquent," who is just entering, with sure promise, political life, and who has the generous boldness to throw himself in the scale against it-God speed him!

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St. Louis was, to my own party, a marked place in our great route. We experienced there what has made happy epochs ever since the day that Joseph's brethren fell upon his neck and weptthe most cordial reception from old friends, besides seeing new ones who had almost the flavor of old ones! And finally, each day adding some varying circumstance, some new pleasure, we passed our last Sunday at Niagara, and came out by those glorious and shining gates by which we had entered the West.

Do you ask me if I would live in the West? I answer without hesitation, no!

I saw nothing there so lovely to my eye as the hillsides, the deep, narrow valleys, the poor little lakes, and the very small river of our own Berkshire. But at these hearth-stones our affections were nurtured, and here in our cemeteries rest and are recorded our holiest treasures. Besides, the old tree uprooted from a sterile hill will not thrive in level ground-be it ever so rich. No. Let the young go. They should. They do go in troops and caravans, and in the vast prairies of the valley of the Mississippi may they perfect an empire of which their Puritan Fathers sowed the seeds on the cold coast of the Atlantic. But let them remember their fathers were proof against poverty. May they be against riches!

In conclusion, permit me to wish long life and happiness to Messrs. Furnum and Sheffield, and their coadjutors in this unprecedented hospitality. If it be more blessed to give than to receive, what must be the amount of their satisfaction? Was ever a company so assembled and so blessed by heavenly and earthly Providence! Day unto day, and night, proclaimed their enjoyment from beginning to end, and no death-no illness-no disaster.

Lenox, 1854.

C. M. S.

Fifty Years in both Hemispheres, or Reminiscences of the life of a former Merchant. By VINCENT NOLTE, late of New Orleans. (Redfield.)

A COSMOPOLITE, ma'am, is a gentle

man whose title is Greek, without that fact, however, making him a Greek nobleman. Κοσμου means "of the world" oλravos "a citizen;" consequently kosmopolitanos means “citizen of the world," an idea which is supposed to be clearly expressed to the Anglo-Saxon mind by the modified word which immediately follows the article a in the title of this excellent contribution.

I grant you, my dear madam, the name is a paradox: for the world, not being a city, it is morally impossible for a man to be a citizen of it. All that, however, will be arranged to suit you so soon as we get the Universal Republic.

At present we Americans have a little stretched the Greek in saying citizen of the United States: "citizen of the world" is but a step farther.

You would prefer me to define more briefly: well then. A Cosmopolite has no country in particular, but makes himself at home in all. As he easily unlearns prejudices, he as easily adapts himself to the most varied practices. While he would possibly prefer a cent franc par téte dinner at Vevour's yet he could, on a pinch, reconcile himself to raw beefsteaks in Abyssinia. He is never astonished at anything, for he has paid periodical visits to France since 1793. He is easy in his manners, for he has conversed with potentates and great men from the bestarred European, to the simply but improperly costumed native of the Fee

jee Islands. He is accomplished—a bit of an artist in music, painting and literature--knows many languages pretty well-is full of quaint fresh anecdote, and odd atoms of fact overlooked by the class of romance writers fondly called historians.

But, in forgetting his prejudices, he is apt to forget his principles: in becoming cosmopolitan, he generally loses love of country. He is passionately addicted to scandal; and serves you up a character with sauce of a pleasant tartness. He is disposed to caricature--he has an eye considerably keener for faults than for virtues: he is not troubled by modesty: and his infacility of being humbugged has begotten in him a too general irreverence, incredulousness and distrust. He reverses our common law maxim, and supposes every man to be guilty until he has proved him to be innocent. If you will allow me, I will illustrate my remarks by some passages in the life of Mr. Vincent Nolte.

This excellent American was a German, born in Italy, on the 21st of November, 1779. On the first page of his autobiography, he compliments his mother on her punctuality-she having been married on the 224 of February. He then mentions that virtue as being characteristic of his family. He is convinced that the family is of Italian origin, a creed which he predicates upon the fact that his remotest genealogical researches have traced them distinctly to Sweden. He, of course, found no support for his conviction until he reached his seventieth year, when a Hungarian informed him that, in the days of Gustavus Adolphus, an Italian officer in the Austrian service, bearing the name of Nolte, had deserted to the camp of the Lion of the North.

Leghorn is the city which claims the glory of his birth, where his father, a Hamburgher, was partner in the house of his uncle, Otto Franck. But when Vincent had attained the age of nine years, the family went home to Hamburgh, where he lived for a while with a senatorial grandfather." Our philosopher never neglects any dignity which sheds, however subdued, a lustre upon himself. At Hamburgh, Vincent was sent to school to a Jerseyman called Geris, who was a drunken old pedagogue, improperly fond of his housekeeper; an indolent, ignorant man, under whom the boy acquired nothing save a high proficiency in the science of robbing orchards

and vineyards. It only took eighteen months, however, to render him an adept in this predatory life; so of course his time was not lost. Papa Nolte, a calm, unimaginative man, endowed with an obese correctness of deportment, and the slow Gerinan capacity of being tickled by a joke, soon took Master Vincent to the uncle at Leghorn. Vincent, on leaving home, had a Sunday coat of crimson and gold; and as this happened to be the Hamburgh consular uniform-Uncle Otto being consul-the boy availed himself of carnival to go to the theatre in a travestied consular uniform, wherein he caricatured Uncle Otto to the delight of the author of his being and the unpardoning disgust of his aunt.

Then Vincent went back to Hamburgh, was intrusted to the pedagogical care of Gymnasiums-Professor Karl F. Hipand astonished that excellent man by learning all he could teach in a preposterously short time. But soon he was sent back to Italy to Uncle Otto, to exchange Schiller for liquorice, soap, oil, brimstone and account-books. It was a very hard case, but he worried through it by the help of making fun of Uncle Otto, and love to the two ballet girls who lived opposite the livery stables. A slight tailor's bill for one year, containing the items of twelve coats of all colors, and twenty-two pairs of small clothes, suggests the possibility of his being addicted to dress. Here he saw Bonaparte for the first time-"a diminutive, youthful-looking man, of pallid and almost yellow hue, whose sleek, yet black hair, like that of the Tallapoochee Indians, hung down over both ears; with a perpetual smile upon the lips, and cold, unsympathising eyes." Murat was with him in his gorgeous uniform, and Hullin, executioner of d'Enghien. Business was at a stand-still: in every piazza altars were erected, topped with a statue of Liberty, and at every daily parade the representatives, Garat and Salicetti, made speeches to the soldiery. Uncle Otto's cashier gave Vincent what money he demanded, which was readily expended at a time when his most serious Occupation was sketching the French soldiers in the street. I do not esteem it wonderful that when the books were made up, four years afterwards, a deficit of sixty thousand pezza was discovered.

At the age of eighteen, Uncle Otto sent his family to a country seat, near Florence, next door to Villa Pandolfieri. Now, in this villa lived a banker and his

It took several days to get to shore, and there were vessels in the distance which did not relieve them, and cloud banks taken for lee-shores and all the regular thing, you know, and then they arrived. Then there was the desolate sand-beach, and that sort of arrangement, and finally he shipped with some wreckers; caught turtle for three weeks in the neighborhood of Nassau, and so got to New Orleans, where he stayed for a few months, and then took a flying leap to Holland.

During this period he had time to draw cleverly, but with more or less caricature, portraits of Ouvrard, the Barings, the Hopes, Labouchère, Isonard the musician, the Parishes, Moreau, Governor Claiborne, Edward Livingston, Fulton, General Wilkinson, Gouverneur Morris, John Jacob Astor, Stephen Girard, and several eminent Spaniards, whose fame has not in other ways reached my ears, nor probably yours.

After a slight run over creation in general, Mr. Nolte went back to New Orleans. Let us say here that he lent his father in Hamburgh some 30,000 marks, and had a catarrhal fever; and finally agreed to pay, and did pay, 6,000 annual marks to the venerable authors of his being. Backed by the Barings and the Hopes, and accompanied by a partner called Edward Hollander, who came from Livonia, wherever that may be, our friend reached New Orleans. He had sailed in the "good ship Flora from Amsterdam," and made a fortunate passage of forty-eight_days, and "only lost two masts;" and then without stopping at New York, went on to Pittsburgh, where he met and caricatured Audubon, and freighted two flat-boats with flour enough to pay for his expenses to the city of beautiful creoles. I might mention that at Louisville, as he "was sitting sketching a caricature of President Madison, with Mrs. Madison arrayed in the red breeches which her predecessor Jefferson had brought from Paris," he felt a great disturbance, and was told on inquiring into the cause thereof, that "it was the earthquake by jingo!"

It was exceedingly improper on the part of Congress to declare war with Great Britain, just as Nolte had taken and furnished his house; but Lord bless you, Congress is always doing something. The fact is, that the war was declared, and our friend had only time to make a hundred thousand dollars or so, break a leg, arrange the affairs of the

bank of New Orleans, fight a duel with paymaster Allen, and arrange preliminaries for a second with Mr. Shields, when General Jackson came furiously down upon Louisiana and put a stop to all amusements. One reason for the General's action was the arrival of the British fleet off the mouth of the Mississippi.

"In point of fact," the battle of New Orleans was about to take place. Nolte had a nice little vessel loaded with cotton, A. No. 1, which Old Hickory took to build his breast works. Nolte had a broken arm and a broken leg, but, as he was suspected of being a British partisan, he joined the carabineers and fought like a trump. He got a certificate of bravery from the General, and twelve cents a pound for his cotton. He saw two civil adjutants lying behind a garden wall to keep out of the way of the British cannon-shot, and an Irish regiment on the B. side run away, gallantly headed by its colonel. He heard Jackson make the following remark to Gov. Claiborne, whose duty it was to furnish powder and ball, which duty, it appears, he neglected" By the almighty God, sir, if you don't send me powder and ball immediately, I'll chop your head off and have it rammed into one of these fieldpieces;" whereupon the Governor did send in the munitions immediately.

He remained in New Orleans until 1826, when, in consequence of a commercial crisis, in an attempt to understand which I got a headache, he concluded to go away. He had amassed millions; had caricatured and ridiculed man, woman and child, notably Jackson and Edward Livingston; had spent his money like a king; had had his face slapped, his shoulders caned, his back spit upon; had worked six months to get a shot at one individual, and succeeded in getting shot by another; and bad finally failed and disappeared from the American continent, only to reappear under unfavorable circumstances for a few weeks, and so to relapse back into Europe for ever. He had, however, visited that province, with the neighboring states of Asia and Africa, during this period. For instance, he was in Paris when the Allies arrived, and during the Hundred Days (1815); he took "a trip to Europe" in 1818, to overlook the congress of Aix; and another trip in 1822, and another in 1824; and accumulated in that time biographical sketches of General Jackson, Major Keller, Winfield Scott, Mr. Francis Bar