hat will be seen a hundred years
hence, when many hundred millions of men are on the earth, English in
speech and feeling, whatever may be their local and political
distinctions! The gratification which one experiences in contemplating
facts of this kind, transcends the power of language. To all
appearance, our English tongue is the expression of civil and
religious freedom--in fact, of common sense; and its spread over the
globe surely indicates the progress of civilised habits and
institutions.

In referring to the qualities which are usually found in connection
with the prevalence of English as a vernacular, we are led to
anticipate prodigious strides in the popularising of literature during
the next twenty years. What, also, may we not expect to see done for
the extension of epistolary correspondence? Intercourse by letter has
advanced only one step of its progress, by the system of inland
penny-postage. Another step remains to be effected: the system of
carrying letters oversea on the same easy terms. That this Ocean
Penny-Postage, as it is termed, will be carried out, at least as
regards the larger British colonies, within a period much under twenty
years, is exceedingly probable. When this grand achievement is
accomplished, there will ensue a stream of intercommunication with
distant lands, of which we can at present form no proper conception,
and which will go far towards binding all parts of the earth in a
general bond of brotherhood.

Such are a few of the things which we may be said to be warranted in
looking for within a reasonably short period of time. Other things,
equally if not more contributive to human melioration, are less
distinctly in expectation. The political prospects of the continental
nations are for the present under a cloud. With all the glitter of
artistic and social refinement that surrounds them, the bulk of them
appear to have emerged but little beyond the middle ages; and one
really begins to inquire, with a kind of pity, whether they have
natural capacities for anything better. The near proximity to England
of populations so backward in all ideas of civil polity, and so
changeful and impulsive in their character, cannot but be detrimental
to our hopes of national advancement among ourselves; so true is it
that peace and happiness are not more matter of internal conviction
than of external circumstances.

Unfortunately, if there be something to lament in the condition of our
neighbo