faith we have delineated its followers are false, and carry their pretence where they would be less safe in sincerity, then, indeed, is a beautiful commentary furnished for the humility, simplicity and truth of the religion of Bethlehem : hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue."

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In addition to these facts, we learn, that in England, to which benighted and heathenish country Mormon misrionaries were despatched about two years ago, the spread of the doctrines of the brazen bible has been little less than miraculous, the inhabitants of almost one entire shire having become Latter Day Saints, as the Mormons call themselves; many wealthy and long-established families selling out their farms and homesteads, crossing the Atlantic, and threading the Mississippi for more than fifteen hundred miles, to lay their services and their fortunes, at the feet of this impostor! One hundred and thirty of these misguided men passed through New Orleans and St. Louis last summer, on a single steam-boat, on their way to Nauvoo, the "Holy City." At the latter place, we went on board, and looked in vain at the countenances of these victims of so miserable a delusion for some signs of lunacy, or, at least, idiocy. No! In nothing that we could discover, were they different from the mass of Christian emigrants who crowd our steam-boats; and we turned with disgust, as the conviction forced itself upon us, that it was, after all, scarcely even an exaggerated exhibition of human credulity.

But we have already lingered too long over this topic, which, in the estimation of our readers, is not, perhaps, worthy of such serious notice. We think differently. We solemnly believe that the tendency of the age is towards credulity. Our readers may smile at this, and may deem it absurd to forbode such results, from the intelligence of the present century. We have the Press, they will say. True; and so have the apostles of imposture: and, as Satan is said sometimes to disguise himself in the garb of an angel of light, so is there not one of all the long list of impositions, which now thrive and flourish on the face of the earth, which has not its advocate in the press. The Mormons have newspapers of their own; and right plausibly and ingeniously do they advocate their cause, until, in the eyes of many careless and weak-minded individuals,. they "make the worse appear the better reason." They

make stirring appeals to the sympathy of the world; they cry out "persecution!" they assume a humble and modest demeanor, until they obtain the power to strike another blow for their permanent advancement; while, to the ignorant, who are selected for their proselytes and dupes, the most magnificent prospects of temporal and spiritual rewards are held out, if they will embrace the true faith. The superstitious are frightened by denunciation; the licentious purchased by the promise of indulgence; the avaricious tempted by the allurement of wealth, and the ambitious by glowing prospects of power and honor. There is no imposture so absurd or ridiculous, but those very qualities furnish the foundation for a sophistry, which, to the weakminded, looks like reason, and for appeals, which, to the soft-hearted, seem to demand sympathy and protection. The much-vaunted universality of education furnishes but a feeble barrier to the march of imposition. In fact, what is that which, amongst the masses of our population, is termed "education?" Is it a capacity to reason, and to discriminate between true and false logic? Is it the faculty of analysing subjects of great and overwhelming interest, connected with the sources of moral, political, and social well-being? Is it the power of examining important questions, upon enlarged and comprehensive views of the powers, duties, attributes, and final destinies of our race? Or is it not rather a meagre familiarity with a few arbitrary forms of speech and writing, to which no higher power is ever attributed, than that they are the means of ordinary communication in the concerns of every day existence? How few of all the thousands, nay millions, of "enlightened men," who live under the influence of this boasted era of intelligence, have power to think, act or judge, from the independent, unaided promptings of their own intellect! In our day, men spend their profitless lives in going about among water-fretted rocks, which stand hundreds of feet above what is now the river's surface, crawling, like earth-worms, into poisonous caves, in search of parti-colored rocks, or burrowing, like short-sighted moles, into the bowels of the earth, after fossil-remains,-to prove, what? Why, that the section of the earth's surface, upon which they vegetate, was not always what it is; that, perhaps, vast inland seas once flowed above now verdure-crowned and life-resounding fields and

cities; that a race of animals, and, perhaps, men, now extinct, once trod the boundless wilderness around them; in short, that change, in its eternal course, has swept over the earth, and that they, in their wisdom, have been able to discover a few straggling proofs of this self-evident proposition!

Let the empiric in knowledge, who uses these dainty colorings of expression, stand before the pyramids upon the banks of the Nile, and ask where, in the whole range of modern science, he can find even the mechanical power sufficient to erect those mysterious and awe inspiring monuments of a forgotten race. Let him gaze upon the living and immortal beauty, leaping, like rays of light, from the marble of Praxitiles and the canvass of Titian; let him contemplate the grandeur, blending with most exquisite beauty, of those temples which have furnished models to all succeeding time; let him thrill beneath the majestic verse of Homer, or melt under the delicious influences of Sappho's wondrous song,--and then, if he can, turn to the present, and find cause for gratulation and vain-glorious self-applause.

ART. VI.-1. Introductory Lecture on the Climate and Salubrity of New Orleans, and its suitability for a Medical School: By EDWARD H. BARTON, M. D., Professor of Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Hygiene. New Orleans. 1835.

2.

Introductory Lecture on Acclimation; delivered at the opening of the Third Session of the Medical College of Louisiana: By E. H. BARTON, M. D., Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine, &c. New Orleans. 1837.

The sea ports of the Southern States are almost invariably situated on the banks of rivers, near their mouths, or on the margins of bays, formed of the alluvion which extends from the Chesapeake bay to the Sabine river. They are all located favorably for business, and possess, in an immense territory and numerous population, dependant on them for intercourse with the rest of the world, vast commercial advantages. Variously favored as they are by nature, their prosperity is marred by one contingency,-their

liability to be infested, every summer, with oppressive heat, and, in their positions, its consequence, malignant diseases. These terrible evils compel many of their inhabitants to leave them during a large portion of the year; they interrupt the regular course of business, and have operated more, perhaps, than any other cause, to divert the trade, which once made them rich and prosperous, to the great commercial emporium in the northern part of our country.

Among the cities of the Southern States, the favorable situation of New Orleans is so obvious, that it justifies the universal prediction, that she must become in a future and not far distant period, the great commercial metropolis of the earth; or, like Babylon of old, sit the unrivalled queen of cities. There never was a city so evidently destined by Providence, so nobly endowed by nature, in most respects, with the gifts requisite to make her the great commercial centre of the earth. Placed at the outlet of the most extensively navigable river in the world, she is the focus, at which must converge the greater portion of American industry and enterprise, as well as much of the surplus products of both, in all other commercial countries. Nothing would prevent her being, at this day, the largest city of America, but the long continuance of high atmospheric temperature during the summer and autumnal seasons. This cause, so adverse to the prosperity of New Orleans, in common with that of all her sister cities of the Southern States, operates chiefly in two ways.

The vital source of prosperity in all communities, may be considered as arising in their ability to furnish an adequate and constant supply of industry for their utmost capacity of consumption. To enable a city to attain its greatest magnitude, it is essential, that it should afford the means of nourishing the manufacturing and mechanic arts, and the petty dealers inseparably connected with them, as well as great factors and merchants. No situation, from which the former portions of urban population are excluded, however striking its natural advantages, as a place of deposit and transfer of the rude productions and simple wants of an agricultural community, can ever be expected to attain the size which it would otherwise possess, or even any considerable magnitude. Experience has long ago proved, that the Anglo-American race, if not the whole of the descendants

of Japhet, are incapable of laboring advantageously in these arts, within the tropics, or in their vicinity, on account of their high natural temperature. The indisposition to, and, indeed, incapacity for, continuous muscular exertion, in the white race, during the existence of tropical heat, is one of the best established truths in human physiology. It is equally well known, that the other races of the human family, who are endowed with the faculty of resisting solar heat with impunity, have not the intelligence requisite to enable them to compete successfully in the arts with the natives of more temperate climates. But if, by any means, within the pecuniary ability of their inhabitants, the temperature of cities within, and in the vicinity of the tropics, could be artificially lowered in the summer to the standard of those in more favored regions, there would remain nothing, in the relative circumstances of the two classes of communities, to prevent all kinds of human industry from being as advantageously applied in the one as in the other.

But the paramount effect of high temperature, in repressing the growth of Southern cites, arises from the unhealthiness of climate it induces. Solar heat, alone, acts upon the constitution of the Caucasian race, and if long continued, is a sufficient cause of disease. Besides the langour and debility which invariably accompany high states of the thermometer, and thus predispose the human system to be affected by atmospheric poison, all the functions become deranged, and if not restored to their healthy exercise, by a remission of heat, will be ultimately destroyed. It is, however, in the form of malarial complaints, that the effects of solar heat are most distinctly marked. Whatever may be the other concurring causes of fevers,particularly of bilious remittent and yellow fevers,--it seems to be universally conceded, that the most essential circumstance connected with them is, a high degree of atmospheric temperature. In proof of this fact, we find, as we direct our enquiries from the temperate zones into warmer regions, that they become more common and more violent, displaying their greatest virulence in the equatorial regions. Malarious diseases, under the pestilential form of yellow fever, are never seen in temperate climates, but when the heat ascends to the tropical height. In countries sub

ject to the healthful influence of frost, their progress is alVOL. I.-NO. 2.

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