true vocation of our race. It is one of the merciful designs of Providence, that, in carrying out the divine sentence, our prosperity and our happiness should be alike promoted. Let every man who lives in the country till the earth. No matter how limited the surface on which his toil is expended. If it be but a garden or a grass-plot, let him cultivate it. His health, his feelings, and his character will all be improved.

And, finally, let us remember that, in maintaining the dignity of agricultural labor, enlightening its application and embellishing its abodes, we shall give new importance and stability to the arts of peace. If there were no other reason, agriculture ought to rank first in the order of human occupations because its genius is pacific. Nothing could be more disastrous to us than a spirit of aggression or aggrandizement taking possession of the minds of our people. I know there is much in the extension of empire which appeals to the strongest impulses of our nature, to the ambition of some, the cupidity of others, and the national pride of all. But if we may trust to the teachings of history, there is nothing in wide-spread dominion which promises either lasting security or strength. The most extended empires are those which have fallen most suddenly and hopelessly into poverty and impotence. Gentlemen, there is a nobler national pride, -one more worthy of our origin and our destiny, in elevating our internal condition, and developing our resources, in those improved applications of the mechanic arts which have just given us two distinguished triumphs in the face of the assembled world, in presenting to the other nations of the earth an example of order and high civilization at home, and in maintaining in our intercourse with them a sacred regard for all the dictates of truth, honor, and international duty.

GROWTH OF NEW YORK CITY.

The following Lecture, on the Growth, Destinies, and Duties of the City of New York, was delivered before the New York Historical Society, at Metropolitan Hall, on the 6th of January, 1853.

MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES, AND GENTLEMEN: In the opening lecture of the series in which I have been invited to take part, you were addressed with great eloquence and force on the culture of Art, with a special reference to this city. So far as the application is concerned, I propose to follow the example of the distinguished speaker, but in a much more humble sphere. I shall, with your indulgence, devote the hour allotted to me to a brief review of the growth of this city, some glances into the future, to see, if we can, what are its probable destinies, and the discussion of a few topics of domestic interest and social duty.

It is a remarkable circumstance that the Hollanders, who laid the foundations of this city, should have foreseen, more than two centuries ago, the commercial preëminence to which it was destined. In December, 1652, forty-three years after the landing of Henry Hudson, the directors of the West India Company, in a letter to Peter Stuyvesant, the Director-General, urged on him the importance of promoting commerce with the settlers in New England and Virginia, by which means, they say, "must the Manhattans prosper," and their trade and navigation flourish.

"For

when," the letter adds, "these once become permanently established, when the ships of New Netherland ride on every part of the ocean,- then numbers, now looking to that coast with eager eyes, will be allured to embark for

your island." If these sagacious adventurers could have looked forward to the changes which the lapse of two hundred years has wrought, their language could hardly have been more prophetic or descriptive of the reality. Great discoveries, it is true, have been made in the application of physical powers to the practical uses of mankind, which were not at that day revealed to human foresight. The luxuries which always follow in the train of commerce, the resistless power of our enterprise, the manifestations of industry in an endless variety of forms, the genius with which architecture has elaborated this ball, all denote a spirit of development in civilization and in art which no vividness of the imagination would have attributed, even at this day, to the wilderness on the skirts of which that feeble and precarious lodgment had been made.

Indeed, it was not until the United States had thrown off the colonial shackles, by which the spirit of their enterprise was repressed, and the central government had given strong evidence of its ability to sustain the weight of the system it was designed to uphold, that the elements of this city's growth became fully developed. Since that time its progress has had no parallel in the history of modern improvement.

Fifty years ago, Canal Street was entirely beyond the settled precincts of the city. The place of public execution was in Franklin Street, selected, as all such theatres of the vengeance of the law were at that day, on account of its distance from the abodes of the people and the busy haunts of commerce and industry. Thirty years ago, the spot on which I stand was an unoccupied space far from the bustle and the activities of the town. Now at least eight of the twenty-two square miles of surface which the island contains are covered, the population has risen, in half a century, from 60,000 souls to 550,000, and is increasing with augmenting rapidity. A quarter of a century ago, in a pamphlet which I wrote while a student at law on the resources of the city of New York, I expressed the belief that in 1878 twenty

five years hence, the inhabitants would number nearly a million and a half, and that the whole island would be covered with dwellings, and buildings devoted to trade, the mechanic arts, and the various other uses which a large commercial population requires.

ress.

The estimate was by most persons thought extravagant at the time it was made, and was by many derided as a wild and unwarrantable speculation. And yet it has been thus far outrun by the progress of the city. All past estimates, however unsupported they may have appeared to be by sober calculations, are mere laggards in the race which we are running against time and the impediments to human progIt is not probable that I shall live to see my prophecy fulfilled, but there are, no doubt, many within the sound of my voice who will. Setting apart the spaces needed for squares, reservoirs, railway appurtenances, shops, warehouses, manufactories, and public edifices, and the island will not conveniently contain more than a million and a half of people. But this is by no means the limit to its growth. Its population will flow into surrounding spaces. The process has already commenced. It has crossed the East River, the North River, and the Harlem. Brooklyn, Williamsburgh, Jersey City, and Morrisania are all dependencies of the great metropolis, and, for every practical purpose, parts of it. A circle with a radius of four miles in extent, and with its centre at Union Square, will now inclose seven hundred and fifty thousand people. If the population of the city and the surrounding districts referred to increases as rapidly during the next twenty-eight years as it has during the last twentyfive, it will number in 1865 a million and a half of souls, and in 1880 three millions.

If our peaceful relations with other countries continue uninterrupted, I see no reason why there should be any check to this increase. The rapid improvement of the country, the extension of our commerce, the tide of immigration, the numberless lines of communication pointing to this city as to a

centre of radiation, all combine to confirm, and indeed to accelerate its growth. In the pamphlet referred to, published in 1827, I remember to have stated that the inhabitants of the States of New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and of the territory of Michigan, whose industry was subservient to the commercial interests of the city, and dependent on it for foreign products, numbered nearly a million and a half of souls; and I estimated that the number would in 1849 amount to nearly three millions, and in 1878 to more than five millions and a half. This estimate also has already been vastly exceeded by the result. Taking the same basis, modified by the railway communications which have been opened to the city, and the population of interior districts now dependent upon us for their commercial supplies cannot number less than five millions and a half, - about equal to the number estimated for the year 1878. We are a quarter of a century in advance of this estimate, and with no apparent limit to the growth of the districts thus connected with us. This extraordinary extension of the internal trade of the city is due, in some degree, to railways, which did not enter into the estimate of its increase twenty-five years ago, because they had not then been introduced into this State. Our communication with Lake Erie and the agricultural supplies it receives from the Northwestern States, is now more speedy and more certain than our intercourse was with Dutchess county fifty years ago. Five hundred miles are now more easily and speedily overcome, both as regards travel and transportation, than fifty miles were at the commencement of the present century. One of the practical effects of these facilities of intercourse is to place the products of the interior of this State and of the States I have referred to at the very outskirts of the city, and to bring the immense variety of the products of other countries, which centre here, into virtual contact with the interior.

Who shall venture to assign limits to this extension? London, with far inferior capacities for commerce, foreign or