ys been the seat of government, though
it consisted of but a few buildings. But, since the revolution of 1836,
it has expanded into a population of about seven hundred souls. The town
occupies a plain, bounded by a lofty ridge. The dwellings are the
reverse of pompous, being all built of mud bricks. The houses are
remarkable for a paucity of windows, glass being inordinately dear; even
parchment almost unattainable, and the artists in window-making charging
three dollars a-day!

But, to the Californians, perhaps this privation of light is not an
evil. While it makes the rooms cooler, it cannot, by any possibility,
interfere with the occupations of those who do nothing. The bed affords
a curious contrast to the rest of the furniture. While the apartments
exhibit a deal-table, badly made chairs, probably a Dutch clock, and an
old looking-glass, the bed "challenges admiration by snowy white sheets,
fringed with lace, a pile of soft pillows, covered with the finest linen
or the richest satin, and a well-arranged drapery of costly and tasteful
curtains." Still this bed is "but a whited sepulchre," with a wool
mattress--"the impenetrable stronghold of millions of----." We leave the
rest to the imagination.

The history of "Political Causes and Effects" would make a curious
volume; and it would admirably display, at once the profound agency of
Providence, and the shortsightedness of human policy. It would scarcely
be supposed that the devastation of Europe, and the sack of Berlin,
Vienna, and Moscow, found their origin in a Spanish treaty, on the banks
of the Mississippi, half a century before.

The power of France in the interior of America, which had extended from
Canada to Louisiana, and which formed a line of posts for its boundary
along this immense internal _frontier_, kept the British Colonies in a
state of constant alarm; and, by consequence, in a state of continual
dependence on England. But the English possession of Canada, in 1763,
and the cession of Louisiana to Spain at the same period, as they
lessened the alarms, loosened the allegiance of the British colonies.
The next steps were more obvious. The war of the United States, in which
France was an auxiliary, inflamed the French population with the hope of
breaking down the strength of England and the aristocracy of France. But
the expense of equipping the French allied force fell heavy on an
exchequer already burthened by the showy extravagance of the Regent
O