oble eminence, reflect that this growth of our
national prosperity has happened within the short period of the life of
man. It has happened within sixty-eight years. There are those alive
whose memory might touch the two extremities. For instance, my Lord
Bathurst might remember all the stages of the progress. He was, in
1704, of an age, at least, to be made to comprehend such things. Suppose
that the angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing the many virtues
which made him one of the most amiable, as he is one of the most
fortunate, men of his age, had opened to him in vision, that when, in
the fourth generation, the third prince of the house of Brunswick had
sat twelve years on the throne of that nation, which by the happy issue
of moderate and healing councils was to be made Great Britain, he should
see his son, Lord Chancellor of England, turn back the current of
hereditary dignity to its fountain, and raise him to a higher rank of
peerage, whilst he enriched the family with a new one. If amidst these
bright and happy scenes of domestic honor and prosperity that angel
should have drawn up the curtain and unfolded the rising glories of his
country; and, whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then
commercial grandeur of England, the genius should point out to him a
little speck, scarce visible in the mass of the national interest, a
small seminal principle, rather than a formed body, and should tell him,
"Young man, there is America, which at this day serves for little more
than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet
shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that
commerce which now attracts the envy of the world. Whatever England has
been growing to by a progressive increase of improvement, brought in by
varieties of people, by succession of civilizing conquests and
civilizing settlements in a series of 1,700 years, you shall see as much
added to her by America in the course of a single life!" If this state
of his country had been foretold to him, would it not have required all
the sanguine credulity of youth, and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm,
to make him believe it? Fortunate man, he has lived to see it!
Fortunate, indeed, if he live to see nothing to vary the prospect, and
cloud the setting of his day!

AMERICA THE CONTINENT OF THE FUTURE.

EMILIO CASTELAR, one of Spain's most noted orators and statesmen.
His masterly articles on Columbus in