RAPID GROWTH OF AMERICA.
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Every one who visits America has something to say of the rapidity with which towns spring up in the West. Sir Charles Lyell, however, mentions some facts which remind us very forcibly how close to our own times was the settlement of the first English colony upon the continent. At Plymouth he sees the tombs of the first pilgrims, who came out in the Mayflower. Some of the houses which they built of brick brought from Holland, are still remaining, with their low rooms and paneled walls. In some private houses he saw many venerated heir-looms, kept as relics of the first settlers; among others, an antique chair of carved wood, which came over in the Mayflower, and which still retains the marks of the staples which fixed it to the floor of the cabin. He also saw a chest, or cabinet, which had belonged to Peregrine White, the first child born in the colony. Part of the rock upon which the pilgrim fathers landed has been removed to the centre of the town, and, with the names of forty-two of their number inscribed upon it, inclosed within an iron railing. This is the American Roll of Battle Abbey. But to return to Peregrine White, the first child born in the colony: Colonel Perkins, the munificent founder of the asylum for the blind, where we found our friend Laura Bridgman, informed Sir Charles Lyell, in 1846, "that there was but one link wanting in the chain of personal communication between himself and Peregrine White." White was known to a man of the name of Cobb, whom Colonel Perkins visited, in 1807, with some friends, who still survive. This Cobb remembered when there were many Indians near Plymouth; the inhabitants of the town frequently firing a cannon to frighten them, to which cannon the Indians gave the name of "Old Speakum." So that, in this case, one link is sufficient to connect men now alive with the first whites born in New England, and with the time when Indians were in the neighborhood of the first town that was settled.
As a pendant to this, we may mention something connected with the originals of that other continent which our race is peopling at the antipodes. A few weeks ago, we were dining at the table of a naval officer, well known in the scientific and literary world, upon which occasion he mentioned, that being off the infant town of Sydney, in New South Wales, in the year 1806, he ate some of the first home-bred bullock which was killed in the colony. The son of the first governor having just returned from the colony, which he had now made his home, happening to be of our party, added, that "since that time their progress had been so rapid, that this year they were to melt down two million sheep for their tallow."
There are three events in the history of the world which will bear comparison with this rapid extension of the English race. The first—and this has always appeared to us to be the most striking occurrence in history—is the marvelous manner in which a handful of Greeks, under Alexander and his successors, overran and held for a long period the whole of the East. The wonder is increased when we consider the difficulty of maintaining communications in that part of the world. They, in a great measure, changed the language and ideas of the East. The Gospel was written in Greek; and the law of Moses, the writings of the Hebrew prophets, were translated into Greek on the banks of the Nile. A Greek kingdom was ever able to maintain itself for a long period of time on the very confines of Tartary; and specimens of the Græco-Bactrian coinage are even to this day abundant in that part of the world. All this, however, passed away, and has not left any very obvious traces on the present state of things. The second event was the establishment of the Roman empire. Strongly as we are disposed to maintain that, on a general view of human affairs, every thing happens for the best, yet we may say of the Roman empire that it was in many respects a giant evil. No man of great original genius ever spoke the Roman language; in the sense in which many Greeks, and among ourselves Bacon, Shakspeare, and Newton, were men of original genius. There was a time when there were men of spirit and ability in every Greek city: there was a time when the Roman empire governed the world and there was not one great man from Britain to the Euphrates. Having fulfilled its destiny—which seems to have been the introduction into the Western World of the ideas of unity, law, and order, though unintentionally on its part, for it was nothing but a military despotism—it perished as it deserved, and its language is now nowhere spoken.
The third event was the irruption of the Barbarians. That a higher civilization followed this every body knows; but how many centuries did it take to civilize the Barbarians?
Now these, the three great events of past history, are all dwarfed very much when compared with what we are now, doing. We are sending out every year, literally, hundreds of thousands of civilized men to people two continents in opposite hemispheres, and on opposite sides of the globe. In North America there are already twenty millions of our race. This population doubles every twenty-two years. Australia will inevitably become "the Queen of the South." Now that literature has given permanency to language, no other tongue than ours will ever be spoken upon these continents. We can see no limit to the spread of our laws, literature, and language. Greek and Roman greatness are really, in comparison, nothing to this. And, compared with the millions of civilized men which we have sent and are sending to occupy so large a portion of the earth's surface, how insignificant becomes the irruption of some savage, or half-savage hordes, into Italy, France, Spain, and England!
At a time when civilization is at a standstill, if not retrograding, upon the continent of Europe, it is very delightful, particularly to an Englishman, to have such a picture to contemplate.—Frazer's Magazine.