Description of the City of Jalapa.

On entering it, and proceeding towards the central part, you find the streets well paved, sloping towards the middle, and furnished with good side walks of flat stone. They are in general not wide, nor inconveniently narrow, there being usually sufficient room for two wagons abreast. The houses present an air of comfort; many of them are in modern style, some with pretensions to good architecture, and many are painted in the most fanciful style. They are mostly two stories high, and around the outside of the second floor is in most cases a balcony, upon which the windows open, all in the form of folding doors. The floors, both in the first and second story, are of brick, as are many of the stair-cases. A common style of building is with an arched entrance, leading to a court yard in the centre, from which is an ascent to the second floor.

The streets are filled with people, giving the place the appearance of being densely populated. The town has about 12,000 inhabitants, but the number is now nearly doubled, by the great numbers who left Vera Cruz when that city was threatened by our troops. These being chiefly persons of respectability, one meets a large proportion of well dressed persons. You pass gentlemen in large broadcloth cloaks, thrown over the shoulder a l'Espagnol; now and then a Mexican officer, mingled with tradesmen and country people in short jackets or blankets; women in coarse mantles, with baskets of produce on their heads; poys selling cakes and candy; and the nly thing which reminds you of being nan enemy's country, is meeting here nd there a soldier, or crowds of sloven

looking volunteers, or passing a seny in his pipe-clayed bells, quietly pacing front of his quarters, his burnished usket glancing in the sun, or ringing as e salutes a passing officer. The streets e often crowded with large wagons, nveying the subsistence and stores of e army; little Mexican horses, gaily parisoned, the saddles often mounted th silver; droves of pack mules, in ings of five or six, the halter of each d to the braided tail of his "illustrious -decessor," and donkeys almost entireconcealed beneath immense bundles straw or forage.

Among this varied throng we made

our way to our quarters, previously secured by a friend who had gone before, and paid due compliments to the chickens, vegetables and other dainties, which we had long known only in memory. The various church bells, which seemed to be constantly sounding, hardly served to interrupt our rest, and we fell asleep, quite confirmed in our love at first sight' of Jalapa.

The next morning we visited the Plaza, occupied generally more or less as a market, where we saw exhibited for sale the most various productions. This place is about the size of that in Boston, called Bowdoin Square. It has a considerable slope to the south, and is overlooked on one side by a large church, whose external style, a most barbarous composite, carries one back to the middle ages; on the others, it is surrounded by houses and shops, many with porticos in front, and the former barracks of the National Guard, or militia. In the centre is a fountain somewhat scantily supplied with water.

But on Sunday the plaza is most animated. This is the principal market day, and the whole place is covered with the venders of comestibles, seated flat on the pavement, each by his or her little stock, which they bring on their backs from the country. These people have strongly marked Indian features, and dark complexions; the men dress in jackets or blankets, wide trowsers, and large straw hats; the women in a light upper dress of cotton 'camisa' with or without a coarse 'reboso' or shawl, and skirts usually of brilliant colors. There is just room enough to pass between the lines of traders, and inspect their stock. The article which seems to be brought in greatest abundance, is the red pepper. One woman has perhaps a dozen chickens and a turkey; another a few cabbages; heads of splendid lettuce and greens, among which I observe the flowers of the pumpkin vine, which are much prized for the table; next is a man with plantains, bananas and oranges, and a little basket of eggs; near him you find a peck or two of turnips and onions; a woman recommends to you her pine apples and melons; piles of beans, green peas and lemons, and baskets of blackberries fill up the gaps; fine tomotoes are abundant; others whose names are quite unknown to us. [To be Continued.

Plan of Colonization for Ireland.

(Continued from page 469.)

"While they constitute the great majority in point of numbers, they possess, comparatively speaking, a very small amount of property, and especially of property in land. It is needless, and would be out of place, to advert to the causes of this disproportion; but there is one effect of it which we are satisfied must be deeply impressed on the minds of those who would frame a good plan of colonization for Ireland: the Irish Roman Catholic population comprises so small a proportion of the middle and highest classes, that it may be said to consist mainly of an indigent and unedu. cated peasantry. The exceptions from this rule consist mainly of a very few landowners, a few lawyers and other professional men, and some merchants and tradesmen-but few in comparison with the proportion of the richer classes among the Protestants; and, lastly, the clergy. The Irish Roman Catholic people may be said to have, practically, almost no aristocracy-no natural leaders but their priesthood; while, from their peculiarities of character and circumstances, they stand more in need of leadership than any people on the face of the earth.

Now, the most careful government could not presently supply an Irish Roman Catholic colonization with that which neither exists at present nor could be soon created: it could not furnish the classes of gentry and capitalists—the natural leaders or care-takers of society who under a good system of colonization would emigrate along with the poorest classes of English, or Scotch, or AngloIrish. By way of stay, and help, and guide, and government, to a great body of Irish Roman Catholic emigrants, it would be impossible to supply anything effectual, save only a sufficient number of that order of men who constitute, as we have said, their real and actual governors and guides--that is, of their clergy. With a view to colonisation rather than emigration of Irish Roman Catholics-in order to transplant and establish in society large numbers of that people; there must be transplanted and established along with them the only institution to which the great mass of them appear really attached in their native land. If there were any other institution which possess

ed an important influence here over the Irish Roman Catholic peasantry, that also ought to emigrate along with them. But there are two reasons why the transplantation of their church is peculiarly indispensable. First, because, as the only existing institution really formed, respected and loved by the people, it will be their chief security against falling into a state of anarchy or barbarism-into that state which an Irish Roman Catholic settlement in Canada, for example, invariably exhibits when planted without a clergyman; and, secondly, because every one who is familiar with the history of planting of colonies, knows that great success has never been attained when religious provisions were neglected, and that the influence of religious provisions was wanting in all the cases of remarkable failure.

It is because we believe that the emigration of which we are the advocates must be in overwhelming proportion Roman Catholic, that our statement proceeds on the hypothesis that it will be entirely so. The student of the colonial history of England will not fail to observe, that the prosperity of the old English colonies in America seems to have been in a pretty equal ratio to the influences of religion on the emigrants; the colonies in which religious provisions were neglected were the least prosperous; those in which they were more regarded were more prosperous; and the most prosperous of modern colonies, those of New England, were in fact Levitical communities, almost entirely governed and managed by influences of a religious kind. On the other hand, during more recent times, emigration has proceeded, and a sort of colonization has gone on, as if the work were merely economical or commercial-as if religion were deemed of no importance to society; as if it were denied that a history of religion would be a history of mankind; and, at length, we have got into the habit of saying that colonization is one of the lost arts. It is on general grounds, therefore, relating to the art of colonization, as well as on the score of the peculiar dependence of the Irish Roman Catholics on their church as stay, guide, and government, that we insist on the necessity of ample religious provisions as essential to the well-doing of an Irish Roman Catholic colonization.

Apart from religion, the Irish Roman

Catholics are what may be termed a national people; that is, they are a people bound together and separated from the rest of the world by peculiarities and sympathies of historical recollections, of actual circumstances, of customs and sentiments, and perhaps of origin or blood. They mix but little with any other people, either in England, Scotland, the English part of Ireland, or even in the new countries to which vast numbers of them emigrate. This, like their religion and its potent influence on them, is a fact of which no human power can alter the complexion. It seems most expedient to choose some one country to which the main stream of emigration should be directed, and in which, accordingly, a powerful Irish nationality would at once take root. If the emigrants were dispersed amongst a number of communities, in each of which they would be an alien minority, their nationality would be lost or wasted; the best that could happen to them, speaking nationally, would be a speedy amalgamation with the different nations or communities into which they had been received. In this case their connection with Ireland, as nuclei of attraction to further bodies of emigrants, would soon disappear. But if, on the contrary, the great bulk of an Irish colonization took place in one part of the world, the process would establish an Irish nation, with free scope for the beneficial working of an Irish nationality, and with such intimate relations of national sympathy between the new people and its parent stock, as to provide the strongest moral or non-material inducements to the emigration of more people.

The passage from Ireland to North America is the shortest of emigrant voyages, and partly because, in the trade between North America and the United Kingdom, the exports of America and imports of Britain are bulky, the imports of America and the exports of Britain the reverse of bulky, so that ships which come heavy laden to Britain go light to America, and carry passengers at a very low rate. This must be more especially the case for many years to come. If a million of Irish emigrants were sent to any country but North America, it would be necessary to send along with or after them about four million barrels of flour, at a cost of from £8,000,000 to 10,000,000; and in all probability the greater

part of the flour would come from North America. Manifestly, therefore, it is to North America alone that a great Irish emigration should be directed. It is there only that the emigrants would fall in with a great store of food ready for the mouths of new comers; because it is there only that an abundance of fertile land exists in combination with a skilful agricultural population many times more numerous than any conceivable amount of annual emigration. For an English, or Scotch, or Anglo-Irish colonization, an uninhabited country, or one very slightly inhabited, may be suitable, because the emigrants might carry with them an ample capital, as in the recent cases of South Australia and New Zealand.

But a great part of North America is a foreign country. We do not stop to ask whether it would be allowable or possible for the government of Britain to make arrangements with that of the United States for the reception and absorption of a great Irish emigration in the latter country, because there are circumstances in the United States, independent of the point of foreign dominion, which unfit. that country for the prosperity of a great Irish colonization. If ever two nationalities came into collision by meeting, it is the Irish and the American in the United States. Everywhere in the United States the Irish-born part of the popula tion is only tolerated by the native Americans as what has been termed 'a serviceable nuisance;' it is a population of foreigners and outcasts, exceedingly valuable as a mass of labor which gives productiveness to capital in a country where the natives dislike working for hire, but socially despised, and in so many ways ill-treated, that practically it does not enjoy that equality of rights which is the boast of the American democracy. Your lordship is doubtless aware of the recent organization of a party in the United States with the name of Native Americans. The object of this association is to give eflect to the American sentiment of hostility to the Irish. The existence of that sentiment in the United States, founded as it is on antipathies of religion and race, and prevailing in a country whose Irish-born inhabitants must, under any circumstances, be a small minority, would be a fatal impediment to prosperous colonization.

To be Continued.

Changes of Fashion. Fashion is proverbially fickle, but never has she been more so than during the past Century. Our great grandmothers. delighted in high-heeled shoes, enormous toupees, and hoop petticoats; our grandmothers flourished in short waists. In our own day we have seen the reign of bishops' sleeves and Dunstable bonnets: of tight sleeves and little hats, of lownecked dresses and high-necked dresses; of short cloaks, long cloaks, and now no cloaks at all. Old ladies are still living who began life with their hair combed over a cushion on their head a foot high, and, after passing through all the gradations of tight curls, loose curls, long curls and short curls, are now finishing life with the same hair combed demurely down the side of their faces and set off with a modest, Quaker-like cap.

A hundred years ago, that is in 1747, hoop petticoats and white powder worn in the hair were in all their glory. The influence of George III. was long exerted unsuccessfully against the custom of wearing powder, but finally the court practices prevailed, and powder was generally abandoned.

The hoop petticoat is a fashion now more than three hundred years old. It first made its appearance at the Court of Charles V., Emperor of Germany, who introduced it. The hoop passed into England and France towards the close of the sixteenth century. Anne Boleyn's portrait represents her without a hoop, consequently it was at a later day that it became fashionable. Queen Elizabeth, however is always painted with a hoop. In her state dress, this august personage is a comical looking affair. Her stomacher reaches nearly halfway to her feet; while her throat is buried in an immense ruff, like that of a ruff-necked pigeon. The hoop continued to be worn in England until the reign of Charles I., abolished it. At the same time it lost caste in France, after having been worn for nearly a century and being the cause of supplanting the graceful costumes designed by the great painter Titian for the court of Francis the First.

All this time, however, the hoop retained its sway in Germany. It was again introduced into England after an exile of fifty years; but it did not get footing in France for a considerable period later. The hoop came back to the

court of England in 1668, with Mary, wife of William, Prince of Orange, who had worn it in Holland, where the fashion of the imperial court was followed. From this time, up to 1747, the hoop continued to grow larger. Louis XIV., for a long time resisted its introduction at his court. But on the day when he was dining in public after the treaty of Utrecht, two English ladies dressed in little caps and enormous hoops, came to witness the ceremonial; but they unknowingly provoked more curiosity than the king, and such was the rush of the populace to get a sight of them, that a riot liked to have occurred in the presence of his majesty. The ladies, it is said, would have been crushed to death by the eager crowd, if the attendants had not rushed out and brought them in safety within the rail of the king's table. From that day the hoop became all the rage in France.

At this time, ladies' gowns were made chiefly of satin brocades; for it was some years later when crapes and smaller light fabrics came in fashion. A handsome dress often lasted half a life-time; it was only the very wealthy that could afford to replenish their wardrobes frequently, persons in ordinary rank of life wore coarser and more common stuffs, and everybody's station could be distinguished by his or her dress. For out of door costumes, the ladies wore little hats perched on one side of the head. The modern bonnet was then not yet invented. Indeed, to this day, it is only the women of the United States and England, with the females of the better classes in Europe, that wear bonnets: peasantry of all other countries have each a national head-dress to which they adhere, and even the' grisettes' of Paris wear caps and not bonnets.

Twenty years later, that is in 1777, hoops were still worn in England. The ladies now, however, had got to using a most absurd head dress. They had already increased the hoop to such a size that, in going through an ordinary door, it was necessary to turn side ways. They enlarged the cushion which they had been wearing for some years on the head with their hair combed back over it; and enlarged it to such an extent that it often soared a foot into the air. Think what a looking object a bride must have been, dressed in the height of the then fashion,

standing on heels three inches tall, and towering twelve inches more with a steeple of curls on her head.

The hoop and the toupee had now, however, seen their best days. The taste of Marie Antoinette, the unfortunate queen of Louis XVI., who ascended the throne in 1774, revolted against the enormous hoops heretofore worn, and gradually diminished their size. In England, they held their place somewhat longer. Sir Joshua Reynolds, however, had some time before banished them from his pictures; and in most of his portraits, accordingly, the ladies are represented in flowing robes as shepherdesses, and other fancy characters. It is questionable, nevertheless, whether this was not an instance of the worst taste; Copley refused to follow this fashion; and certainly his women look all the better for the stately attire of their day.

With the French Revolution of 1789 came a rage for classic costumes. The beautiful wife of Tallien set the fashion in Paris, where she appeared with a loose flowing robe, without any hoop whatever, bare arms, a short waist cinctured by a girdle, hair dressed in a knot of curls on the back of the head, and the whole costume a la Grecque,' like that of an antique statue. In the course of twenty years fashions turned a complete somerset. In 1777, a lady in full dress resembled in shape an enormous cabbage; in 1787 she had shrunk to the stalk with all its leaves shorn away. In 1777, a fashionable lady could scarcely crowd her way along a modern hall, in 1797, she looked as if she could almost squeeze herself through the banisters. In 1777 was an inflated balloon; in 1798 she was a collapsed parachute. The waist which had once been extravagantly long, was now absurdly short. People began to think at last that the ladies intended to have no waists at all, that waists were to be lost.

Since that period fashion has played a good many fantastic tricks; but the hoop has not recovered its ground, though occasionally the mode looks that way. Short waists, however, have gone to the 'tomb of the Capulets,' never we hope to be revived.

Fickle as fashion seems, and really is, at least in civilised Europe and America, it originally had its beginning in convenience. Most of our costumes are de

rived from the peasantry of different quarters of the world: the short cloak from the Irish girl, the gypsy hat from the Swiss, the laced bodice from the Tyrol. All rude nations dress suitably to their climate; but the fashion appropriate in one place, when imitated by a Parisian modiste,' becomes often ridicu lous. Even the fashions proper for Paris, are not always proper for the United States. The bare arms and low necked dresses, worn occasionally by the Parisian belles, are fertile of consumption when imported into this country.

What changes in fashion may be in store for us, who is prophet enough to tell? But we doubt if this century will be as fertile in absurdities as the past.SEL.

WHAT A MERCHANT SHOULD BE.—A merchant should be an honorable man. Although a man cannot be an honorable man without being an honest man, yet a man may be strictly honest without being honorable. Honesty refers to pecuniary affairs; honor refers to the principles and feelings. You may pay your debts punctually, you may defraud no man, and yet you may act dishonorably. You act dishonorably when you give your correspondents a worse opinion of your rivals in trade than you know they deserve. You act dishonorably when you sell your commodities at less than their real value, in order to get away your neighbors' customers. You act dishonorably when you purchase at higher than the market price, in order that you may raise the market upon another buyer. You act dishonorably when you draw accommodation bills, and pass them to your banker for discount, as if they arose out of real transactions. You act dishonorably in every case wherein your external conduct is at variance with your real opinions. You act dishonorably, if, when carrying on a prosperous trade, you do not allow your servants and assistants through whose exertions you obtain your success, to participate in your prosperity. Yon act dishonorable, if, after you have become rich, you are unmindful of the favors you received when poor. In all these cases there may be no intentional fraud. It may not be dishonest, but it is dishonorable conduct.-Gilbert Lee, on An. Commerce.