so that manufacturing speculators can make use of their intelligence and skill, the despotism of Russia makes the people untrustworthy, gives them a tendency to lie, to deceive, and to steal, and in this way the business of manufacturing is rendered difficult and sometimes impossible. Enlightened manufacturers withdraw their families from the neighborhood of their factories, which demoralize the people; at this time, the manufacturing business in Russia seems like a Stygian flood, into which no one ventures who can keep out of it, unless driven thither by insatiable thirst for gain.

Such is the melancholy state of the law, and the yet more miserable administration of justice by its courts, and such the uncertainty of property, if not of the person, that those social evils are not needed to deter men from undertaking to establish manufactures on a solid basis. In the higher classes of society, the difficulties of a Russian manufacturer are so well known that he cannot become even respectable, and the degradation naturally increases the disagreeable qualities in any man who is not perfectly indifferent as to the mode by which he makes his money. When we remember that, for successful manufacturing, it is necessary that whole generations, in uninterrupted succession, shall contribute their experience and their capital, it becomes plain that manufactures in Russia must be in a very bad state, for men only aim at this: to get money enough, as soon as possible, to escape into a foreign land, or else to secure for their children admission into the service of the state. Thus, in Russia, the business of manufacturing assumes the character of a mere shift for the time, and does not rest on a solid foundation.

After saying so much in general, by way of corroboration, let us now say a word on the special manufacture of leather, tallow, hemp, flax, silk, woollen, and metals. The manufacture of leather, instead of advancing, has gone back; at least some articles have lost their former reputation, and the manufacturers of the best carriages in Russia must get their leather from abroad. Japanned leather is no longer manufactured, and glove leather is of a much inferior quality. Fine manufactures of tallow, hemp, and flax fail almost wholly in Russia, and we might say the sale of the raw material continues chiefly by the fact that it is indispensable, and because in this article deception is more easily prevented. If machinery should be extensively used in the manufacture of linen, the Russian sailcloth must unavoidably decline.

The inferior quality of Russian silks is well known; but, independent of their quality, the obvious bad taste of the article is sufficient to prevent them from competing with the superior fabrics of other countries. The woollen manufactories of Russia, nearly six hundred in number, can only compete with other countries in the manufacture of the poorest articles, and at the lowest prices, by transporting them to China. In the manufacture of metals, there is an almost total want of invention; hence the Russians are excluded from the very markets which they might so easily inundate with their goods. The degrading influence of the government, which puts the people down and holds them down, appears everywhere in Russia, but its pernicious influence is most clearly seen in the industry of the people. All the efforts of the emperor to elevate the industrial condition of the state continually fail for lack of freedom in the people.

It is very plain that slaves are not able to engage in trade and commerce; but in a country where the czar is the only man that is free, there is no disposition to allow the merchant the entire freedom which is the element of his life. Yet, a certain conditional amount of freedom is allowed the merchants: as citizens, so called, they have some privileges above the serfs and other persons, without, however, being able to approach to the privileges of the nobility. The merchant is exempt from military service, but may serve if he will; but, in that case, he has not the same favors shown him as to the nobleman; so the only motive for military service, the opportunity for distinction which it might afford, is taken away. Public employment in Russia is the only quite honorable business; productive labor is attended with more or less reproach, while idleness and dissipation enjoy distinction; accordingly, in such a state of things, the merchants can have but little freedom or social consideration. The Russian merchant is wholly devoted to material things, strives for nothing but the increase of his wealth, and has no aspiration beyond it. Under such circumstances, it is not possible for trade itself to flourish in full vigor; the degradation of the merchant prevents the full expansion of trade. But the Russian feels strongly that the nobleman enjoys a consideration not granted to him so long as he continues in trade. He therefore desires to secure to his children this coveted privilege, so he devotes them to the public service of the state, in which they almost always speedily squander the estate which

their fathers left them, while, had they continued in trade, it would help and promote the expansion of trade itself.

Then there is a general want of credit, which arises from the instability and lack of mercantile honor among the Russians. The education of the people has been purposely neglected, and so it is no wonder that the foreign trade of the Russians, the most lucrative branch of business, is in the hands of foreigners.

None but a despot would have chosen St. Petersburg for the capital and seat of commerce of a great nation. If the chief port and place of trade was to be in Europe, there were the mouths of the Dnieper, the Dniester, and the Don, as they empty themselves into the Black Sea; was it, more naturally, to be in Asia, there was the mouth of the Volga in the Caspian Sea. These are the only streams which form the natural channels in which the productions of this vast interior could easily be borne. These are the only streams which could supply the great capital of the state. At St. Petersburg, only about two thousand ships are freighted in a year, and of their freight nothing but wood is brought by water, while grain, flax, hemp, tallow, &c., are subjected to a long and costly carriage by land. The foreign trade is exclusively in the hands of foreigners. The Germans take the lead; then come the English, the French, and the Swedes. The principal traders, however, are obliged to employ Russians as their agents and go-betweens, and this is rendered difficult, by the Russian laws of trade, and the instability of the national character; for even the most honorable Russian merchant always delays payment as long as possible, not seeing that thereby his credit is marred, and his goods will have cost him so much the more. It is easy to see how difficult it must be to carry on business with such persons. Free trade might be established at St. Petersburg better than anywhere else in the world. But the duties are very high, thirty-three per cent. on the average, and though they produce fifty millions of rubles a year at St. Petersburg alone, it is obvious that this general effect is injurious to the kingdom, while moderate duties would have a good effect by promoting the expansion of trade and stimulating competition at home.

ART. IV. BROWNING'S POEMS.

1. Poems. By ROBERT BROWNING. In Two Vols. Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields. 1850.

2. Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day. A Poem. London: Chapman & Hall. 1850.

THE two volumes first named present an inexhaustible field for the critic. Here are gathered plays, dramas, tragedies, dramatic lyrics, songs; all of them of a great and peculiar excellence. And it is not easy to designate that prevailing characteristic of all these which might attract analysis and exposition. If we have nearly made up our mind that a metaphysical faculty, both keen and profound, is the writer's gift, we suspend our judgment when he gives us some of the most subtle developments of human character and motive that exist since Shakspeare. Lest we should decide in favor of this great trait of genius, he hurries us into the domain of nature, charms us by description at once delicate and sublime, brings the fleeting graces of earth and sky to match his thoughts, gives animals an individuality, from the quick jerboa, "none such as he for a wonder," to the lion, thinking of his desert, with "the hope in those eyes wide and steady;" there is not a dead or living thing with which the poet has not the healthiest sympathy. He brings them all out, the shy birds, the dumb flowers, and encourages them to show their best side to us. He understands what is going on abroad, and translates for us the native dialects. We yield our admiration to his pictures of still life, and are on the point of calling him the artist of nature, when he gives his tube another turn. Were it not for the genial relations which all his gifts bear to each other, we should say that another poet was demonstrating before us, with the power of vivid relation, the dramatic rendering of imaginary scenes into life and wonderful movement, with inevitable word-painting, with coloring and grouping that cheapen in our estimation the best pictures we can remember. Then he tosses us a lyric, with the rich, "golden cry" of the trumpet; such as "Marching Along," "Incident of the French Camp," ," "The Lost Leader." Then his clear voice rolls out the sly humor of "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," and one of the "Garden Fancies." Then he breaks into a fierce scorn with "The Confessional;" recovers, and soothes himself with

the singing of "The Boy and the Angel," and those two exquisite pieces, at once song and picture," Meeting at Night" and "Parting at Morning.' Oh, then he sings songs; he is the English Beranger, is he, or the clear, smooth, lyrical part of Goethe, with an infusion of ale and animal spirits? You do not catch him so easily. Suddenly, he grows very serious, as he calls up the scenes of "Luria to pass before you, and invites you to refresh your moral sense with a look at his Moor, the grave and sustained impersonation of Duty. As you become elevated and strengthened, he bids you look again; film after film passes over the magical mirror, each film a character or a life the pure pathos of Mildred's lapse in "The Blot in the 'Scutcheon," and the fast loyalty of that real woman, her sister Guendolen, at whom you are so enraged that you cannot marry, and call her wife; the naïveté and sweet prayerfulness of Pippa, God's unconscious singer, making the true fibres vibrate in hearts that were forgetting Him; the disinterestedness, the endurance, the love of Right of Valence, rewarded by a doubling of all these in Colombe, who tells him that she prefers to her duchy, "God's earth, and thee;" the great lesson of the impulsive, ruined Paracelsus, greedy after knowledge, yet impatient of labor, forced to eke out his idea before the world with tricks of the empiric, arrogant with the desire of that which he will not obtain, his heart broken by its last throb, suggesting too late that Love should precede Power, that love itself was knowledge: "Another yet - I'll see no more" the line will stretch out to the crack of doom, if we look into his weird-glass so long. A goodly stint for the critic! whoever will tell us where to begin and what to choose, will save us the chief trouble we find in writing this article.

Now we recollect, Mr. Browning asks, "What's become of Waring?" We, for one, cannot inform him. On the contrary, we have always wanted to ask Mr. Browning, hoping that he would reply, as on oath, "Is there such a person as Mr. Waring?" In our own community, one or two disappearances have been chronicled within the month, but we must confess, with due deference for the feelings of anxious friends, no case of a person supposed missing has interested us like this of Mr. Waring if there be such a person. That is our only difficulty. Such drafts are made upon sympathy nowadays, that we have determined to spend no more upon Mr. Waring, if he be really fictitious, that is, only fictitiously real. In that case, nothing but our admiration at the artistic skill of the cheat will repress