Merchants' Magazine and Commercial Review

in the clouds, from the minutest insect to the hugest leviathan, from the dew-drop to the ocean, we see the whole mass acting by established laws and in beautiful harmony. It is clear to every philosophic mind that these laws were not self-created, but derive their origin from a higher power, and that this power is God. The operations of this grand frame, running into so many forms of existence, are as beautiful and uniform as a piece of clockwork. All created matter in its innumerable combinations, the revolution of the seasons, day and night, each perform their appropriate offices; and even the moral causes which operate upon men speak a language, if we would but understand it, that is destined for our guidance and improve. ment. Indeed the smallest particle of matter contains a moral, if properly understood and applied, calculated to make men wiser and better. In the present work, the object is faithfully carried out, to trace the meaning of all these forms of matter and motion, as conspiring to the general happiness of mankind. Mr. F. W. P. Greenwood, the accomplished pastor of Kings Chapel, in Boston, has found time to adapt this edition to American readers, expunging all those parts which in the English work were sectarian in their tendency. He has performed well his task, and has given us a book replete with instruction and full of wise counsel, tending to advance the cause of true religion.

5. Seventh Annual Report of the Seaman's Aid Society of the city of Boston. Written by Mrs. SARAH J. HALE, and read at the annual meeting, January 8, 1840. Boston: James B. Dow, Washington street.

The society before which this address was delivered, is a charitable institution, established in the city of Boston for the aid of the wives and families of indigent seamen. Its members comprise the most respectable ladies of that city, whose sympathies are enlisted for the sailors, a noble and important, though somewhat improvident class of men. In most cases poor, cast about by waves and storms from point to point upon the ocean, they become as unstable as the element upon which they float, and acquire habits which too often leave their families in destitution, if not deprived entirely by shipwrecks, of their legal protectors. This institution has already been of important service to that unfortunate class of our citizens. By the Report, we perceive that during the past year, it has paid the females of seamen for needlework, $1,644 59; to the women who cut and sell clothes, $356. It has assisted Mr. Taylor, the eloquent advocate of seamen, in sustaining the mariner's house, devoted to their benefit; it has dispensed in bounties to sick and shipwrecked seamen, $334 96, and to seamen's widows, $137. We commend its object to the charities of the community. Its design is benevolent, its operations are effective, and its members cannot fail to meet a full reward.

6. Essay on the Character and Influence of Washington in the Revolution of the United States of America. By M. GUIZOT; translated from the French. Boston: James Monroe & Co. 1840.

The world is indebted to Mr. Jared Sparks for a complete edition of the Life and Writings of Washington. Living, as he did, through the most important period of the American revolution, himself the pilot who guided

the ship of the republic through the storm, we need not at this late day be informed that the character of Washington, as a man, a warrior, a states. man, and a patriot, exhibits the most perfect model of lofty dignity, and masculine morality, that any age has produced. It is a peculiar feature connected with the memory of Washington, that while the reputation of other men is dimmed by time, his own has become more widely diffused as time has advanced, and has even grown brighter by age, so that it is now even more vivid in the remembrance of mankind than at the day of his death. It is only recently, however, that strict justice has been done to the character of Washington in England, by the masterly sketch of Lord Brougham, contained in his gallery of the portraits of the contemporaries of George III. and IV., which was originally published in the Edinburgh Review. The design of the work of M. Guizot, which is prefixed as an introduction to a French version of Sparks' Life and Writings of Washington, is to exhibit to the French people, in a prominent light and true proportion, the father of his country. The author has done justice to his subject. His essay is concise and philosophical, showing a right appreciation of the man, and his influence upon the great revolution with which he was connected, destined as it is to change the face of the world.

7. Faust: A Dramatic Poem. By GOETHE; translated into English prose, with notes, &c., by A. HAYWARD, Esq. Lowell: Daniel Bixby. 1840.

ture.

A mania has recently sprung up in this country respecting German literaFor our own part, we deem its general character too often wild, airy, fantastical, metaphysical, and obscure. When we open the pages of a Ger. man work like the present, we seem to be transported to a region of twi light, occasionally illuminated by flashes of lightning-a region in which the laws of nature are abrogated, like that fairy island, where Ariel floated and Caliban growled. We have in such works, no clear, precise, philosophical, and continuous thought, but what appears to us an overstrained and unnatural train of fragmentary reflections, as from a giant mind in the intervals of its madness. Perhaps we have not arrived at that state of intellect. ual culture in which we can appreciate this peculiar form of German litera. ture. Be it so; yet we freely admit that, measuring it by our own standards, many of its imaginary parts appear to us incomprehensible. Literature, in every form, we think, should be true to nature, and to facts, precise and intelligible, so that it may increase knowledge, gratify the mind, and im prove the taste; and when it departs from these objects, it leads us into a land of uncertain shadows, where we grasp at phantoms, and move among flitting shadows. This work of Goethe has passed by the period of criticism, and now stands in the literature of the world as a monument. It is the most remarkable of its kind. To pass our judgment upon it at this time, would be like commending the architectural grandeur of the Coliseum, or like eulogizing the magnificent proportions of the columns of the PartheThis first American edition of Goethe is printed in a beautiful form, and a remarkable fact connected with its publication, is the circumstance that it is thus issued amid the clattering of American machinery, and the din of the cotton mills of the city of Lowell.

non.

COMMERCIAL TABLES.

PROFORMA ACCOUNT OF COFFEE FROM NEW YORK TO HAVRE. Prepared expressly for the Merchants' Magazine, by a Merchant of Charleston, S. C.

Marine insurance on $3,895 15, including 10 per ct. imaginary

profit at 1 per ct...

Policy

Commission for purchasing, 2 per ct..

do for drawing 1 per ct. on $3,726 68

4 75

3 20

22 75

$3,541 05

$38 95
1 25

40 20

$3,581 25 89 53

55 90

$3,726 68

Receiving, landing, cartage to Entrepot, 1 month storage, labor,

and delivering

Weighing at delivery, 22 cent. per 100 k.

100 00

35 90

N. B.-The interest gained by drafts at 60 days sight, is nearly compensated by the loss of time in landing, and by keeping the coffee for about one month.

100 lb. nett at New York, produce 45.38 k. nett at Havre.