If a test of civilisation be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of that half of society over which the other half has power,—from the exercise of the right of the strongest. Tried by this test, the American civilisation appears to be of a lower order than might have been expected from some other symptoms of its social state. The Americans have, in the treatment of women, fallen below, not only their own democratic principles, but the practice of some parts of the Old World.

The unconsciousness of both parties as to the injuries suffered by women at the hands of those who hold the power is a sufficient proof of the low degree of civilisation in this important particular at which they rest. While woman's intellect is confined, her morals crushed, her health ruined, her weaknesses encouraged, and her strength punished, she is told that her lot is cast in the paradise of women: and there is no country in the world where there is so much boasting of the “chivalrous” treatment she enjoys.

The first gentleman who greeted me on my arrival in the United States, a few minutes after I had landed, informed me without delay, that I had arrived at an unhappy crisis; that the institutions of the country would be in ruins before my return to England; that the levelling spirit was desolating society; and that the United States were on the verge of a military despotism. This was so very like what I had been accustomed to hear at home, from time to time, since my childhood, that I was not quite so much alarmed as I might have been without such prior experience. It was amusing too to find America so veritably the daughter of England.

I looked around me carefully, in all my travels, till I reached Washington, but could see no signs of despotism; even less of military. Except the officers and cadets at West Point, and some militia on a training day at Saugerties, higher up on the Hudson, I saw nothing that could be called military; and officers, cadets, and militia, appeared all perfectly innocent of any design to seize upon the government.

Religion has suffered from nothing, throughout all Christendom, more than from its science having been mixed up with its spirit and practice. The spirit and practice of religion come out of morals; but its science comes out of history also; with chronology, philology, and other collateral kinds of knowledge. The spirit and practice of religion are for all, since all bear the same relation to their Creator and to their race, and are endowed with reason and with affections. But the high science of religion is, at present at least, like all other science, for the few. The time may come when all shall have the comprehension of mind and range of knowledge which are requisite for investigating spiritual relations, tracing the religious principle through all its manifestations in individuals and societies, studying its records in many languages, and testing the interpretations which have been put upon them, from age to age.

The eastern and northern boundaries of Tobago consist of a series of basaltic rocks formed into mountains of considerable elevation. The heated matter in a fluid state must, therefore, have been stopped here, in its progress under the bed of the ocean, and has found its way to the surface, elevating at the same time, and modifying by its action, the earthy deposits through which it had to pass, and causing them to form acute or obtuse angles, according to their nearness or distance from the moving force. The mountain masses, however, of this now cooled and crystallized substance, show to what extent, even here, it burst forth, and has overflowed those previously superincumbent strata, while in a heated and liquid form.

As these elevations cooled down and became solid masses, they would naturally interrupt the current of the ocean, and, by causing eddies or stagnant pools, allow a new deposition of earthy particles to take place, which, in progress of time, have filled up the intervening spaces that now form the plains and valleys that so beautifully diversify the surface of this island. The tongue of low land that stretches to the southwest, and may in after-ages reach the shores of Trinidad, is a continuation of the alluvial deposits from the detritus of the earthy masses, as well as from the interrupted current of the sea.