I have had many a good talk with Jonathan, and have learned many valuable facts from him. He knows everything. You can tell him nothing. Unfortunately, he

knows too much. He sets up his packing-box too often upon the sand, mistaking it for rock. His sanguinity is refreshing. Although his ten-acre lot is only a brushheap, next year he is to dig dollars out of it. You need not suggest a market for this, or sale for that; what he is after is strawberries. He expects to show after a "spell" a "tarnal site" better specimen of the fruit than Middle States people ever read about or "heared tell on." "He'll do it; by the eternal Jehoshaphat he will."

A curious place, truly. I am in earnest when I suggest that the people may be philosophers. Assuredly it would not be easy to find a region where so much is got out of so little. The settlement is a plain counting thousands of acres. Where drains are required you find ditches. Where fences are ordinarily used law is made to take their place. Vines and trees skirt the road-side. Fruit hangs over your head as you pass along. Nobody steals.

The crates of berries sent by this community to the markets of the two great equidistant cities of Philadelphia and New York are fully fabulous as to number; tons is what the people count their produce by. Besides raising the berries they make the boxes. Go to Vineland to learn economy. A shaving from a hoop-pole is made to surround a quart of fruit. A pumpkin is hung up to dry, a dead tomato-vine saving the price of string. A boy's winter cap comes off a squirrel's back. A girl's summer head-gear is the twisting and twining of leaves and flowers.

Not all the houses of Vineland are up-ended dry-goods boxes. Some are large. A few are very tasteful. The centre of the colony is a street a mile in length. Ambitious stores have already commenced a process of dete

rioration by hanging in their windows the fashion-plates of the day. From a fashion-plate to a woman's shoulders is not a long distance. From a Paris dress to extreme feminity is a shorter distance. Go soon if you want to see the woman in pantaloons. . .

Discoursing of Vineland reminds of a place some few miles below it. There is a certain station squat down upon a sand-hill; squat expresses the impression produced. That is all about the station. You leave the cars there.

This brushland region is full of cedar-water streams. Cedar-water in its purity! Do not set up your judgment on water until you have seen and tasted that found in the cedar regions of the Jersey barrens. Black, cold, sweet, it is unlike all the fluids of the earth. Its blackness is not opacity, it is transparency. Obstruct its running by a handful of pebbles, and you have the peculiar sparkle of a diamond. Drink it, or perhaps it is the air you breathe in connection with the drink,—and you are lifted up by some exhilaration unfelt ever before. Not very far from the station referred to is a stream of this cedarwater that well deserves a poet's pen to write its praise. By the arbored banks of the runnel Hygeia may be assumed to have set up one of her trysting-places. One stretches himself in the shade of the dense foliage, wondering if accident has not revealed to him the hidingplace of the fountain searched for so vainly and so long by Ponce de Leon. The place is not, however, without its drawback.

"Mosquitoes!"

I have been there often, and have yet to meet one. The drawback is getting to it. If you hire a wagon and ride, the road breaks you up. Bump, bump: a set of axles is good for one trip. To walk is well; only you are not to have ankles too susceptible to the depressing in

fluence of water-soaked pantaloon-legs. It was an idea once seriously entertained by the writer to build for himself a summer box at the site of the beautiful stream, an idea which would undoubtedly have had a fruition had it not been for fear of an accidental spark from a passing locomotive, or of an ash carelessly thrown aside from a tramp's pipe. Not unique, it is yet anomalous, that here, within a stone-throw of a health-and-pleasure-seeking population, passing and repassing almost hourly to and from the sea, a place so beautiful exists known alone to the dryads and to a few peregrinating loiterers. Some time it will be discovered by Boniface; some time the sweet water will be polluted by beer-dregs.

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

JARED SPARKS.

[Jared Sparks, a distinguished biographer and historian, was born in Connecticut in 1789. He became a minister of the Unitarian denomination in 1819. From 1823 to 1830 he was editor of the North American Review. His first biographical work was the "Life of John Ledyard” (1829). But his most important production in this field is "The Life and Writings of George Washington," in twelve volumes, a work which Griswold characterizes as "in all respects as nearly perfect as possible." He edited the complete works of Franklin, and wrote a large number of biographical essays. For several years before his death in 1866 he is said to have been engaged on a History of the American Revolution. As a writer he had an attractive style, and was very accurate, impartial, and exhaustive].

THE causes of the Revolution, so fertile a theme of speculation, are less definite than have been imagined.

The whole series of colonial events was a continued and accumulating cause. The spirit was kindled in England; it went with Robinson's congregation to Holland; it landed with them at Plymouth; it was the basis of the first constitution of these sage and self-taught legislators; it never left them nor their descendants. It extended to the other colonies, where it met with a kindred impulse, was nourished in every breast, and became rooted in the feelings of the whole people.

The Revolution was a change of forms, but not of substance; the breaking of a tie, but not the creation of a principle; the establishment of an independent nation, but not the origin of its intrinsic political capacities. The foundations of society, although unsettled for the moment, were not essentially disturbed; its pillars were shaken, but never overthrown. The convulsions of war subsided, and the people found themselves, in their local relations and customs, their immediate privileges and enjoyments, just where they had been at the beginning. The new forms transferred the supreme authority from the King and Parliament of Great Britain to the hands of the people. This was a gain, but not a renovation; a security against future encroachments, but not an exemption from any old duty, nor an imposition of any new one, farther than that of being at the trouble to govern themselves.

Hence the latent cause of what has been called a revolution was the fact that the political spirit and habits in America had waxed into a shape so different from those in England that it was no longer convenient to regulate them by the same forms. In other words, the people had grown to be kings, and chose to exercise their sovereign prerogatives in their own way. Time alone would have effected the end, probably without so violent an explosion,

had it not been hastened by particular events, which may be denominated the proximate causes.

These took their rise at the close of the French War, twelve years before the actual contest began. Relieved from future apprehensions of the French power on the frontiers, the colonists now had leisure to think of themselves, of their political affairs, their numbers, their United States. At this juncture, the most inauspicious possible for the object in view, the precious device of taxing thecolonies was resorted to by the British ministry, which, indeed, had been for some time a secret scheme in the cabinet, and had been recommended by the same sagacious governor of Virginia who found the people in such a republican way of acting that he could not manage them to his purpose.

The fruit of this policy was the Stamp Act, which has been considered a primary cause; and it was so, in the same sense that a torch is the cause of a conflagration, kindling the flame, but not creating the combustible materials. Effects then became causes, and the triumphant opposition to this tax was the cause of its being renewed on tea and other articles, not so much, it was avowed, for the amount of revenue it would yield, as to vindicate the principle that Parliament had a right to tax the colonies. The people resisted the act, and destroyed the tea, to show that they likewise had a principle, for which they felt an equal concern.

By these experiments on their patience, and these struggles to oppose them, their confidence was increased, as the tree gains strength at its root by the repeated blasts of the tempest against its branches. From this. time a mixture of causes was at work: the pride of power, the disgrace of defeat, the arrogance of office, on the one hand; a sense of wrong, indignant feeling, and