their own people, as the debt of the United States after a long and disastrous war, when the country was destitute of capital and without public works of any kind. Yet the latter debt was, without a murmur, faithfully paid to the last cent, while Pennsylvania, with ample means, remains inert amid her disgrace. The triumphant discharge of the national debt in 1835, is a conclusive proof that all existing debts can be discharged, and that eventually such will be the case. The hesitation now evinced is the effect of the moral paralysis which was the natural result of the losses by paper gambling. The fictitious excitement of the paper system, is succeeded by the same reckless disregard of moral obligation in the public mind as is the

stimulation of a game of chance in that of a losing gamester. We have experienced the cause, and it has been succeeded by its effect. That feeling is, now passing away. The wealth and the public morals are growing under the healthy action of industry and economy, and the time is not distant when the last stain will be wiped from State faith.

During the last session of the New. York State Legislature, a law was passed in relation to the State Banks, by which they were required to make quarterly returns of their affairs to the Comptroller, by whom they were to be published on the 20th of August, November, January and May of each year. The first quarterly statement was made on the 20th August, and is as follows, as compared with the previous returns:

loans to brokers and directors, showing the little business demand which has existed for money; the means have accumulated from deposites, public and private, and from banks of other cities, mostly Philadelphia and Baltimore, to which a balance of over $10,000,000 is due. In September of last year money was here comparatively scarce, and the exchanges began to turn in favor of New Orleans, whither near $3,000,000 in specie was sent from this city in payment of the crops, at the same time specie was flowing in here from Europe. This continued until the crops were mostly exhausted in the spring, when remittances began to be made to New York, and money to accumulate as seen above. As the season advanced, bills at the south began to grow scarce, and the rates to advance; and as money here had become

This table gives an increase of $46,678,476 accumulated at four points in 18 months, and evinces the fact that the causes which produce such an effect are not local, but are general and embrace the commercial world. The receipts of specie at New Orleans from July, 1842 to August 1843, were $10,500,000, whereas the increase in the banks was but $4,500,000; $6,000,000 passed into circulation to supply the vacuum created by the withdrawal of the paper circulation of the banks. The receipts of specie into the United States may be estimated at $25,000,000, while the Bank of England has received $33,000,000. These facts show how fallacious were the notions some time since indulged in by a large party, that without bank paper we should have no currency. The natural wealth of the United States answering the wants of Europe will always compel a supply of the precious metals sufficient for the wants of the country. The extent of that supply is always governed by the relative value of specie to commodities. When the supply is short, the price is high, or what is the same thing, commodities

so plentiful as scarcely to find employment at all, even at exceedingly low rates, remittances were stopped in order that they might be made to better advantage, at the low rates which it was expected the bills against the new crops would command. The movement of business generally, being on a cash basis, only served to return money to the great centres of business whence it had previously been distributed for the purchase of produce. This process has gone on not only at all the commercial centres in the United States, but also in London, the great centre of the commercial world.

The following is a table of the specie held by the banks of New York City, South Carolina, New Orleans, and the Bank of England, at different periods down to August, 1843.

are cheap. They are cheap when a given amount of the precious metals will command a greater quantity of articles generally than in any other country. When that is the case specie moves to that point until the increased supply has reduced the price, and commodities have attained a relatively increased value. The wants of the United States have been very large, because, it has been the effect of the enormous quantity of bank paper created in former years, and forced into circulation, so to increase the supply of the currency, as to decrease its value much below what it would command abroad. As the paper part could not be exported, the specie was sent abroad until nothing remained but some $130,000,000 of paper which could not be redeemed, and was therefore valueless. A great part of that has perished, and specie, as seen above, has been imported in large quantities during the past year. The progress of the import, indicating the appreciation of the currency as the business of the year progressed, is seen in the following table of sterling exchanges at the leading cities:

1842, TO

5,43 a 5,45 5,42 a 5,43 5,41 a 5,42 5,27 a 5,30 5,28 a 5,30 5,25 a 5,26 5,221 a 5,25 5,221 a 5,23

2 a 3

7a 8

1

The import of specie since July, 1842, has been very large. The rates have in all that time continued much under the par of exchange, which is about 9,32 premium, and must rise to 10 and 10 per cent., before specie becomes the preferable remittance abroad. The export of cotton last year commenced unusually early, and the quantity sent forward exceeded by far that of any previous year, the crop being 2,375,000 bales. And up to the present time, at which period of last year a great fall in the rates of bills in the southern ports took place, there has been no advance in bills. The exchange operations of the Union are in a great measure governed by the manner in which business is conducted at New Orleans and Mobile, from which two ports about 50 per cent. of the whole exports of the Union are made. The former port is not only the point of concentration for the cotton and tobacco of the Mississippi Valley, but it receives the agricultural produce of all the country tributary to the Mississippi, as far as settled along its mighty course. The valleys of the Ohio and Illinois Rivers send down large quantities of produce to New Orleans, which is either sold there, or exported. The proceeds are for the most part transferred to New York, in payment for the supplies which the dealers of those sections generally come here to purchase. The receipts of all these articles at New Orleans reach in a year in value, from 50 to $60,000,000, and form the pivot on which the whole

-

a 1 " a 4

a 1 " a 1 prem.

a par

par a

7a 8 8 a 9 "C 7 a 84 " exchanges of the country turn. Hence the soundness of the business there has a great influence upon the affairs of the whole Union. If, as was formerly the case, a few irresponsible speculators could through the medium of bank credits obtain possession of millions of dollars of produce, the bills drawn against it were sold in the New York market, where most of the imports of the Union are made, and the stability of the whole rested upon the success of individual speculations. Constant revulsions were the inevitable result of such a system, and ruin finally attended it. During the year which has now elapsed, the business has been mostly for cash. At Mobile, on the other hand, the banks have continued their suspension, and irredeemable bank paper has been the medium of transacting business. Finally, however, the evil has been remedied, and all the State banks have been put into liquidation, leaving the Bank of Mobile alone to conduct the business. That institution on the first of October, refuses to receive, or pay out, the State Bank bills, which during the past year have constituted the currency of the State, and issues its own bills payable on demand. This operation is artificial, and will be far less effectual than if performed without the agency of a Bank. During the past year, the currency of New Orleans has been cash, and that of Mobile irredeemable paper. We may contrast the business of the two cities in the following table:

This gives the complete movement of the cotton year at each point. At New Orleans the cotton moving steadily and rapidly forward for cash, turned the commercial balance in favor of New Orleans, and produced a large supply of specie. The current has not yet entirely ceased, and will probably soon be again renewed. The rates of bills did not fall steadily, because, although the supply of bills was very large, the demand fluctuated immensely, and was greatly influenced by the stagnation of trade under the legislation of the twenty-seventh Congress. At Mobile, the same causes for fluctuation existed, with the additional one of an irredeemable paper circulation. So low had that paper fallen in August, 1842, that $162 would command but $100 of specie, or in other words, the circulation was at a discount of 38 per cent. for the constitutional currency, and rose to 12 per cent. discount in January, when a portion of the new crops had been sent forward. The discount on the paper money was a principal element in the nominal price of exchange, and that discount depended upon the supply of the bills, the regulation of which was in the hands of the bank officers. When cotton was shipped, and the specie proceeds were in New York to the credit of the banks, instead of being remitted to Mobile to constitute a currency, as at New Orleans, it was too apt to be employed here, in purchasing the Alabama paper

When, as in

at a heavy discount. August, the paper was at 38 per cent. discount, the Bank having 1000 specie dollars in New York, could buy up $1,620 of its own bills, instead of redeeming them for their face, or it would sell a bill on New York at 60 per cent. premium. This operation, in a short time, withdraws the bills from the market, and raises their price, which was the case in January; they were then too dear to buy, or exchange was too low. All that was then necessary was to stop drawing bills, and to issue more notes. The rates immediately rose to 23 per cent. This paper juggling the people have endured with great patience, but have at last put an end to it. For the coming year broken paper will cease to be currency; a dollar in Mobile, will mean the same thing as a dollar in New York, or any other section of the country, and the rate of exchange will mean only the market price of a bill, fluctuating within the actual cost of transporting the dollars from one city to the other. With the restoration of specie payments in Alabama, the currency of the whole Union will be "equalized," and the exchanges "regulated," without any artificial assistance from banks or financiers; and the people, released from the withering grasp of the credit system, will be left in the "pursuit of happiness," dependant only upon their own never-failing ener gies.

The first ten Cantos of the Inferno of Dante Alighieri, newly translated into English verse. Boston: William D. Ticknor. 1843.

Dryden, in one of his admirable, though rather inconsistent prefaces, sharply reproves the fault of those translators of poetry who run into "the extreme of a literal and close translation, where the poet is confined so straightly to his author's words, that he wants elbow-room to express his elegancies." And a little farther on he adds," and for just reward of their pedantic pains, all their translations want to be translated into English."

This has been peculiarly the case with the many translations of Dante. That of Cary is generally esteemed to be the best, and certainly is the best known. At least we have Coleridge's testimony, in his Table Talk, in its favor; whose opinion, indeed, should not go far to convince us in such a matter, but for his wonderful instinct in making happy criticisms even on subjects in which his real knowledge was very limited. But Coleridge at that time had not seen Wright's version, which is clearly superior to that of Cary in many respects. Cary was hampered with the idea that there was a close similarity between his original and Milton. He therefore adopted blank verse as his vehicle, and imitating that of Milton to the best of his ability, easily caught its defects, (as was natural to one who was no poet himself,) but with careful and singular felicity he escaped any infection of its beauties. His leading error, it seems to us, was in supposing the resemblance between the two poets. The style of Dante was as compressed and decided as those iron lips of his. Even his flowers seem to have grown by chance upon a volcanic soil, and to have been plucked from among the arid scoria with a gauntletted hand. Milton, on the other hand, had all the luxuriance of Spenser, (whom he somewhere calls "his master, pruned somewhat, it is true, by a rigid puritanism, and yet at the same time dignified and exalted into sublimity by a religious enthusiasm scarcely less than Hebrew. The attempt of Mr. Cary, therefore, was an unfortunate one: it was like engrafting the rose upon the barberry bush, whose yellow sap infuses itself into the blossom, and gives birth to a new variety. His version is neither Dante nor Milton, though it is a to

lerable mixture of the defects of both. It is as dull as those parts of Paradise Lost where (to quote Pope's happy criticism,) the Deity is made "to argue like a school divine," and as exact as Dante's measurement of Beelzebub.

Mr. Parsons, the author of the present version, has already made himself honorably known to the judicious by some original poems distinguished as well for their excellence, as for their truly English classicalness and purity of diction. He is a man of humor, also, and this is another qualification for his task, and no small one, either, for Dante smiles grimly now and then. He has chosen the English elegiac stanza for his medium, and to our mind, his choice seems a sagacious one. His design has been to render Dante interesting also to the every-day reader, and this would alone have been sufficient to have deterred him from the immitigable severity of the terza rima. In the metre he has selected we do not lose the enticing echoes of rhyme, which, moreover, in the hands of a poet, has always a meaning of its own which adds to and confirms the thought he means to convey. Dante in blank verse could never be a popular poet, though even then, the spice of John Bunyan in him might have made his chance better than Milton's. But we see no reason why he might not become even " easy reading," in a stanza like that adopted in the present translation which escapes the monotonous seesaw of the English heroic, while it allows all the continuous flow of blank verse.

We think Mr. Parson's version so good that we shall begin with noticing a few of its defects, though our criticisms may savor too much of verbal minuteness. On page 9, last line, we lose entirely the fine expression, "nel lago dil cor," which increases the force of the word "durata,” with which Dante denotes the effects of fear. On the next page we do not like the use of the word "launch," as applied to "adamantine cars." The translator has here enlarged upon Dante, (who merely says "quelle cose belle,") but has not been so happy here as in a similar liberty in Canto III., p 25, where he makes the ghosts" quiver like naked birds"-a simile suggested by the rhyme, but at the same time eminently Dantesque. On page 12, he makes Dante call Virgil his " choice author," which is not, we think, the intention of the original. But we have neither