frain from examining the subject, and offering such comments as it naturally demands. We are sensible that a discussion relative to a country so remote, having within its limits but few objects to excite the curiosity, and only connected with the civilized world by an extremely limited commerce, might not ordinarily, awaken much general interest. But it is also well known that particular causes have heretofore drawn to it the attention, both of statesmen and philosophers, and we are not sure that the attempts to discover a northwest passage, or the dispute respecting Nootka sound, involved more serious consequences than the efforts now making by Russia, in that quarter of the globe, to monopolize commerce and usurp territory. A trade to the northwestern coast of America, and the free navigation of the waters that wash its shores, have been enjoyed as a common right by subjects of the United States, and of several European powers, without interruption, for nearly forty years. We are by no means prepared to believe, or admit, that all this has been on sufferance merely; and that the rights of commerce and navigation in that region, have been vested in Russia alone. If such be the fact, however-if Russia has always possessed the right to interdict this trade, we cannot but wonder at her forbearance in permitting it to be carried on for so long a time, manifestly to the injury of her own subjects. Had a monopoly of the fur trade, which Russia now aims at, been secured to the 'Russian American Company' thirty years ago, that company, with any prudent management, might have attained at the present time the second rank, for wealth and power, in the commercial world, and been worthy not only of imperial protection, but of imperial attributes. A short account of this trade, and sketch of its present state, may assist our readers in forming some estimate of the importance of this subject to the United States, merely in a commercial view, and independent of any question of territorial rights which it may be thought to involve. The third voyage of Cook having made us acquainted with countries of which little was before known; several enterprising individuals, allured by the prospect of a profitable traffic with the natives, engaged in voyages to the northwest coast as early as 1784. The citizens of the United States, then just recovering from the entire prostration of their commerce by the revo glaciers of the Alps, within sight of Mr Von Fellenberg's observatory, have been pouring a stream of snow water into the ocean, since the world began, and still it is salt. Certainly if all the schools in the world turned out good boys, the promise for humanity, on the most favorable doctrine, could be no better than it is by nature. Children without sin become corrupt; and seventh form boys and senior sophisters are not to be educated into a more permanent purity than that of new born babes. It is evidently trying to disadvantage an experiment, which, under the best auspices, has failed. But, on the other hand, Mr Von Fellenberg is not to be derided. His establishments, it is true will not regenerate Europe; nay, not even the smallest canton in his own Switzerland; and though his eighty rich young men and forty poor ones go out into society pure as rain drops, they will be lost like drops in the great ocean of the European population, which will continue to be actuated by passions and interests, beyond the control of his thirty instructers. But his operations, as far as they go, are most deserving of praise. Of an ancient family and good fortune, he has given all up to forming the characters of the young, bettering the condition of the poor, assuaging the hardships and directing the labors of the peasantry, and his money and influence are certainly better employed than in laying out pleasure grounds, shooting grouse, fighting duels, or fitting out huge pipes of wine to circumnavigate the world. The lovers of sentiment will be shocked to hear Mr Simond say that Clarens is a dirty village, less prettily situated than any in the neighborhood, and chosen by Rousseau for no better reason, than a well sounding name; otherwise he would have chosen the beautiful village of Moutreux, hard by. Not a gentleman's house could we see, fit to lodge the Baron d'Etange, unless it were the chateau de Chatelard, a good deal above it.' Here, however, we are constrained to differ from Mr Simond, and think the village as good as its inhabitants, whom all the eloquence of Rousseau, himself vulgar in grain, has not written into gentlemen and ladies. We are not disposed to make uncharitable comparisons between the morals of his heroes and heroines, and those of the haut ton at Paris and London; but we cannot but think St Preux and his mistress exceeding sorry people, and wonder they have been admitted into good company. It would be arrogant in us to dispute the fidelity with which Rousseau drew from life. We cannot help thinking in fact there is a little more fidelity than he or his admirers admit; and that he painted only from the pretty gross associations of his own experience. In describing Gibbon's house at Lausanne, Mr Simond, if we mistake not, has omitted a circumstance that struck us as the most singular about it. We refer to small bits of tin, on which are painted, in black letters, certain striking phrases and remarkable quotations, and which are nailed up on the walls of the rooms, and of the passages and the posts of the piazza. Gibbon,' says our author, has not left here a pleasing remembrance of himself. Whimsically particular about his hours, very selfish, disgusting in his appearance, an English traveller published an account of him and his mode of life, absurd and rather offensive. Yet a gross mistake he had committed was so gratifying to Gibbon, that he forgave all the rest, he said that the historian rode on horseback every morning' a thing rendered impossible by the personal infirmity under which he labored. Mr Simond's remarks on Madame de Stäel are highly interesting; he appears to us to have done good justice to her character in some contested particulars.* He gives us among others, the following pretty anecdote. While at Coppet an anecdote told us by an intimate friend of the family (M. de Bonstetten) recurred to me. He was then twenty five or six years old; and walking about the grounds, as we were then doing, he was struck with a switch behind a tree. Turning round he observed the little rogue laughing; mamma wants me, cried she, to learn to use my left hand, and I was making a beginning.' She stood,' continues Mr Simond, in great awe of her mother, and was very familiar with her father, as well as dotingly fond of him. One day, after dinner, as the former rose first and left the room, the little girl, till then on her good behavior, all at once seizing her napkin, threw it across the table, in a fit of mad spirits, at her father's head; then ran round to him, and hanging about his neck allowed him no opportu * We have scarce thought it worth while, in making our extracts from Mr Simond's work, to quarrel with a few inaccuracies which we have noticed. The following may, however, be mentioned as an inconstancy of remark somewhat curious. Page 287, Mr S. remarks, it is a common aphorism, and a wise one as all aphorisms are,' &c. in a paragraph relating to Madame de Stäel. Page 341, speaking again of Madame de Stäel, we find the phrase, a living contradiction of the witty, but false aphorism,' &c. We might easily grant that a false aphorism, can be witty, but not wise, as all aphorisms, in the first extract are alleged to be. nity for reproof. Mr Necker was-no one would have guessed it from his writings-full of humor, and apt to see things in a ludicrous point of view. He did not hold forth as Madame de Stäel was wont to do. He was even rather silent, but made sly remarks and sharp repartees. He wrote several witty plays, as M. de Bonstetten, who saw them, assured me ; but when appointed a minister of state, thinking it against the bienséance of the situation to publish any thing but a compte rendu or grave works of morality, and afraid of being drawn into temptation, he burned his plays.' Mr Simond's visit to Chamouni is highly engaging, and in fact we know of nothing in the world more likely to be attractive, in the hands of an intelligent traveller, than the various phenomena that present themselves on the summits of the Alps. There are two appearances in those regions, to each of which Mr Simond alludes, but without favoring us, that we have observed, with an explanation. One of these is the moving of the glaciers in a mass. An accurate idea of this phenomenon can scarcely be had, except by ocular inspection: a satisfactory explanation of it we have never seen. The portion of the Alpine ridge, at the foot of which the vale of Chamouni is situated, consists of several lofty and pointed elevations of granite called needles; of which the highest, but the least pointed, is Mont Blanc. Between these several summits or needles, there are of course vast chasms, which would be called vallies, were there any vegetation on their sides. Instead of vegetation the summits of the needles, when not too pointed, and the sides of these clefts or chasms are covered with snow. In the summer season, the intense heat of the sun melts, in the day time, a portion of these snows, though the water thus formed, immediately settling into the mass of eternal snow beneath, is converted into ice. By this process, the snow in these chasms is gradually converted into ice, and the glacier is formed. Every summer, although a part of the volume of the glacier melts and flows down, and goes off in various rivers, an addition is made to the glacier, by the melting of new snows and by the congelation of the water thus formed, till the chasm between two adjacent needles is in part or wholly filled up by the Now this mass of ice thus imbedded in its rocky matrice, frozen down to its rough basis by gradual congelation, often miles in length, and hundreds of feet in width and depth, and of course enormously heavy, is satisfactorily ascertained mass. to move or travel forward in a mass. Travellers and geologists briefly answer that it is detruded by its own weight. In some cases, however, as in the glacier of Montanvert, which is at once the largest and most apparently in motion, the declivity on which it moves is very inconsiderable; not great enough to give the body of ice motion, even were there no resistance. But when we consider the enormous resistance, which must arise from the manner in which this prodigious mass, some miles long and hundreds of feet deep and high, was gradually frozen into its bed, we shall be led to examine carefully this hypothesis, before we adopt it. The chief agent in producig this motion appears to be the new ice formed at the higher part of the glacier by the melting of the snows; which, instead of accumulating on the top, as we should be prepared to expect, forms at the bottom, dislodges, and heaves up the old ice. By the constant repetition of this process the mass of the glaciers becomes cleft with frightful transverse fissures; and by the time it reaches the outlet of the chasm, in which it has been formed, is broken into chaotic masses, and presents an aspect of primeval desolation. The other appearance, of which a satisfactory explanation is yet wanted, is that of the moraines, as they are called. This is a sort of shore or bank of rocks and fragments of rocks, which the glacier brings down from the mountain, and which are heaped up in a regular row on either side of the glacier, like the sea-wreck on the beach after a high tide. The glacier of Montanvert, just above Chamouni, which is justly called the sea of ice, presents this appearance in its most imposing form. There are, on one side of the glacier, two and even three parallel moraines, running each five or six miles (for this mighty glacier is so long) along the edge of the sea of ice, with an interval between them. This appearance may have been produced by the glacier having in a warm or rainy summer melted very much, and left its line of wreck high on the side of the valley. Less copious thaws, after a long lapse of years, may have formed a second and third range; giving the whole the appearance of rude and ruinous walls, dividing the glacier into parallel portions. It is easy to see, however, that there are considerable difficulties in this explanation, which, as we cannot remove them, we will not consume time in stating. Nothing can give a more lively idea of desolation, than these moraines. They are partly composed of enormous and shapeless blocks |