has been unique. From a small island she has become an empire that reaches round the world. From every storm that has swept the face of Europe and blotted out nations, she has emerged with added strength and more extended dominion.

Thus she has gone on, augmenting her power, till her Will has almost become the Law of the world. Does she want the Indies? she takes them. Would she humble China? her war ships darken her coast, carrying desolation to her cities. Would Russia add Turkey to her dominions? she enters the Bosphorus and bids her retire to her northern home. The overthrower of empires, the dispenser of crowns and thrones, she takes and chains on a lonely Isle, and "bids the world breathe free again."

Holding such power, and sustaining such relations, and more than all laying her moulding hand on the millions of half civilized men in every quarter of the globe, she must be an object of intense interest to every thoughtful man. Seeing how the fate of her countless subjects and other governments is connected with hers, he will anxiously inquire, whether the law of growth, maturity and decay, to which other nations have been subject, belongs to her,-whether she be now

advancing, balancing, or receding. And more than all will he seek to know whether the claims her people are now uttering so loud and piercingly in the ears of the world, are to be disregarded forever, or at length granted.

To answer these questions is all I propose in speaking of the "Fate" of England. I do not profess to be equal to the task of writing her future history. No one can do this. But what each man knows and feels he may utter. His errors others may correct; his truths they may use. I speak confidently only of the present and of the inevitable crisis England is approaching-Reform or Revolution.

C. EDWARDS LESTER.

New York, Aug. 16, 1842.

THE FIRST BOOK.

m

POWER AND MAGNIFICENCE OF

ENGLAND.

"That power whose flag is never furl'd—
"Whose morning drum beats round the world."

"THE future historian of a decline and fall hereafter, not less memorable than that of Rome, will probably commence his work with a corresponding account of the power and extent of the British Empire under William the Fourth and Queen Victoria. What Rome was in its influence over the destinies of mankind in the 1st century, England is now in the 19th; while not merely in regard to rank in science and civilization, but also in the territorial extent of its possessions, on which the sun never sets, England occupies a prouder position than ancient Rome."Westminster Rev. Ap. 1842.