him to send the agriculturist to point out
to him what was first to be set about. He
faithfully made good his engagement, and
did everything as he was directed; and when
turnips were ripe, I lent him, out of the sum
placed at my disposal for that purpose, some
money to buy a cow—the family had
previously lived on potatoes and salt, and for
even this he was in debt. This was his
commencement, and in the short space of about
eighteen months afterwards, I found his
house clean and comfortable looking, and
the place about equally so; in fact, I could
not put my foot upon a spot that was not
either in crop, or in preparation for one; and
he himself, with his health restored, actively
employed in wheeling up earth in a wheel-
barrow from the bottom to the top of a hill
in his land, where the soil was shallow, in
which his daughter, a fine stout little girl,
was helping him, pulling by a rope in front;
and the whole was a picture of activity and
successful exertion. He has continued to
pay up all his arrears; and although his diet
and that of his family is of necessity at
present confined almost exclusively to potatoes
and milk, they are all healthy, happy, and
contented. His rent is four pounds eight shillings
and threepence, which the butter from his
cow will generally pay, leaving him his pig
and his crop, and the produce of his loom to
himself. And yet this is the man who, upon
the same piece of land, and subject to the
same rent, was so lately upon the verge of
beggary and starvation."

Those of our readers who desire to
pursue this subject, not merely to prove a theory,
or to defend a grievance from refutation,
will find a mass of information gathered
from all available sources in the small work
entitled "The Mother Country; or, the Spade,
the Wastes, and the Eldest Sow," by Sidney
Smith. The authorities there quoted are not
amateur philanthropists, or theoretical political
economists, but landowners, land stewards,
rural clergymen, bishops, farmers, and
peasants, who give chapter and verse for all their
facts, and narrate facts which not only match,
but go beyond, the achievements of our "Ace
of Spades."

At this crisis of agricultural transition,
with fifteen millions of acres of waste lands in
these islands capable of improvement; during,
moreover, the operation of the Encumbered
Estates Bill in Ireland, under such a governor
as the Earl of Clarendon, the subject cannot
be too copiously illustrated, or too generally
investigated.

THE SHORT CUT TO CALIFORNIA.

MORE red tape! It has been an
established notion, ever since the days of Cortez,
that a communication between the Pacific and
Atlantic oceans would be of great benefit to
the whole world. Since the discovery of the
treasures of California, the necessity for a
ship canal (as we pointed out in an early
number of this journal) has increased a
hundredfold. The mere engineering of the
project has been proved practicable, nay, easy.
Cash is ready to leap from the purses of
capitalists in both hemispheres; and nothing
whatever stands in the way but red tape.

The construction of the canal, we may remind
our readers, is in the hands of the "Atlantic
and Pacific Ship Canal Company," of New
York. This company, in August, 1849,
purchased of the Nicaraguan Government
exclusive rights, but is ready to bind itself that
the canal, on completion, shall be thrown open,
on equal terms, to all the world. The English
Government claims, in the name of the King
of Mosquito, a part of the river San Juan,
claimed by Nicaragua, together with the port
of San Juan, at the Atlantic end of the
proposed canal. This claim has been a source of
chronic irritation. When we last spoke about
Central America, there arrived, in the same
week, intelligence from that quarter of unusual
interest. Of course, according to the local
correspondence, "things were fast coming to a
crisis." The English were blockading San
Salvador to enforce a claim. As retaliation
for the blockade, San Salvador and Honduras,
under Vasconcelos, President of San Salvador,
were preparing to attack Guatemala with an
army of seven thousand men, Guatemala being
a head quarter for "the English interest."
It was thought "that this time Canera could
not escape." A new National Convention
was assembling in Chinendega, but "cannot
accomplish much, having no faith in America."
Mr. Chatfield, the English consul, was
recalled, and all were triumphing at that. Lord
Palmerston wanted to annex San Juan to
Costa Rica. The Ship Canal Company were
only playing at surveys; but they were clearing
some rapids in the River San Juan, and getting
a vessel up into the Lake of Nicaragua. Then,
by the last advice before the starting of that
mail came positive intelligence, that the
engineers of the Canal Company had only
seemed to be idle; that under Mr. Oscar
W. Child, their chief, who left New York in
July last, the corps of engineers had actually
completed four surveys; that an entirely new
route from Lake Nicaragua to the Pacific had
been discovered, and selected as superior even
to the route which would have had its terminus
at Redlejo; that this route was better, easier,
and cheaper than all others; and that the
digging would commence directly, if not
already begun.

Our eyes and ears were quickened by these
tidings, and we looked with interest for the
arrival of more special information by another
mail. The next mail comes, and tells us that
Guatemala was not to be aggressed upon, but
was itself a conspirator, with a great deal
more of a like incomprehensible nature. Mr.
Chatfield, seemingly not recalled at all, had
written a long letter about the King of
Mosquito's boundary, and a claim on Nicaragua
for damage done to somebody, concluding