REVIEW. 



mischevious waggery of others, are so many Munchausens which prey upon his credulity. 

 That he makes some sensible and proper remarks, and arrives at occasional right conclu- 

 sions, is not denied; but the carping spirit in which he generally discusses his subjects, 

 and the deprecatory approbation which he yields when he can no longer withhold it, are 

 a lively testimony to the grudging temper in which he looks upon us and our country. 

 We can aflford to be criticised — abused, even — for we confess to many and frequent delin- 

 quencies — when necessary, and done with smartness and discrimination from the salient 

 points of one's own observation; indeed a little wholesome castigation to our National 

 self-complacency may be at times most wholesomely administered; but Ave choose that it 

 be done by the hand of a master. For the donkey-like reproof of a quack and a bungler, 

 we have no relish. 



We sat down to these volumes of Professor Johnston with the anticipation that in a 

 man of pretended attainments in our own favorite science of agriculture, and its attend- 

 ant pursuits, a traveler to some extent in the way of his profession, on the European 

 Continent, and now in the maturity of his intellect and the vigor of his mind, coming to 

 a country, certainly not without interest to an intelligent investigator of the natural 

 sciences, to make his professional observations, and to select objects of interest and novel- 

 ty for the instruction of his countrymen, we should find something both rich and rare. 

 A reading of his books has, to be sure, discovered to us much in either; but we have risen 

 from our search with the sorrowing conviction that what he has chronicled as rare, is not 

 particularly rich, and whatever he has recorded as rich is not at all rare. Had he con- 

 fined himself simply tohispro/l'sszonai,labors and investigations,and they been reaZZy labors 

 and investigations of his own, we doubt not he could have made up a volume of matter 

 both interesting and instructive. In the United States was a fresh mine of vast resource, 

 inviting both his chemical and his agricultural exploration. He chose to neglect these, 

 to become philosopher, politician, and political economist; and on subjects upon which 

 vastly abler foreigners than himself have preserved a discreet silence, or written but mo- 

 derately well, he has poured out his half-pledged opinions with the flippancy, garrulity 

 and emptiness of a TroUope, and a Fidler. A parting specimen we give in our traveler's 

 visit to Springfield, when speaking of the national armory at that place. " Springfield, 

 from its position as the place of meeting of so many railways, is remarkably well chosen 

 as the site of a national arsenal. Weapons for 300,000 men can, upon the first telegraphic 

 signal, be dispatched either up the Connecticut towards Lower Canada, through Albany 

 towards the Lakes, or to the Atlantic shores northward by Boston, or southward by 

 New-York." A school boy might have said this very prettily. But it so happens that 

 this national armory was established by our government upwards of half a century ago, 

 when Springfield was an obscure inland town, off from navigable waters, or easy commu- 

 nication, and for the very reason that it was so, and a long generation before either rail- 

 ways or telegraphs were known! The wisdom of Congress in this matter is therefore, as 

 applied by our Professor, altogether apocryphal. The accident that Springfield lay in 

 a central position, and on the best line of construction, made that town " the place of 

 meeting of so many railways." The railways met the arsenal — not the arsenal the rail- 

 ways. Our Professor's sagacity in this matter equals that of his philosophic prototype, 

 who acknowledged the great kindness of Providence in making the navigable rivers run 

 by the great towns and cities, that the people who dwelt there might be accommodated in 

 their shipping facilities ! 



But we tire of quotations, which might, of like character, be almost indefinitely 

 tended from the two volumes before us. On the 2Gth March, Mr. Johnston left Bost 



