Throwing herself body and soul into the development of the railroad system has made Chicago great, and has secured to her a great future. Unlike Chicago, Boston has never seemed to realize how much its business grows, and what its exigencies are. Strangers see them first, and Boston laughs derisively when they are stated. Commodore Vanderbilt is said once to have remarked that a wholly new line of communication between Boston and New York was required once in seven years. The theory was good so far as it went, but the Commodore understated the fact. Boston has now two railroads and five lines of steamers in communication with New York, and one more railroad is in process of construction. Steam traffic between Boston and New York dates back only thirty years, so that a new line in less than five years, instead of seven, has been the law of increase up to this time. What has been the law of increase between Boston and the great West? Thirty years ago Boston had one single-track railroad line directly connecting her with Albany and the West. She has one single-track railroad line now, and no more. Yet it is a well-established fact that freight from the West, forced out of its direct channels, seeks Boston by devious ways, through Portland, a rival on one side, or through New York, a rival on the other. Through all those three decades the bickerings and shortcomings of the different corporations owning that single line (now happily silenced forever) have been notorious. The press has scolded, committees have reported, legislatures have debated, lobbies have governed, and meanwhile Boston trade with the West has been transacted in New York, as on an exchange. The emergency grew pressing,- something must be done. Something was done. State and city ran their heads against a mountain. New York had two enormous channels of communication with the West, both within the reach of Boston; and one of them her single line of road had tapped thirty years before, diverting from it a slender current to herself. That current paid the toll-keeper a profit of ten per cent on his race-way. The law allowed him to receive no more, and it never occurred to him that there was any good in increasing the volume of that current. In 1854 the State began to sink its capital in the Hoosac Mountain, and the Western Railroad dribbled placidly along, secure against competition for a period of years delightfully indefinite. Meanwhile, what was New York doing through all these years ? Her great rivers of commerce had not been stationary. Day and night they had poured into her streets an ever-increasing volume of wealth. The figures tell the comparative tale. "On the New York Central Road, during the nine years from 1855 to 1864, the increase of through tonnage was 400 per cent; on the New York and Erie Road it was 300 per cent; and on the Western Road it was only 62 per cent." Stimulated by a knowledge of these facts, the Commonwealth toiled painfully on, throwing good money after bad in the construction of a road through a mountain, which when finished would lead to a channel of trade which had been reached thirty years before. When the traffic of the road already built could be increased tenfold, a new road must needs be built, leading to exactly the same point. Meanwhile, just to the south, the roadway to it lying through an open, populous country, unopened to Boston interests, leading directly to the West, lay unnoticed and unthought of the other great channel of New York trade. Who will contend that the enterprise and energy and resources of Commonwealth and city need not be husbanded and organized, when year after year they burrow through a mountain to get to a channel already reached, leaving unopened another channel of equal value within their easy grasp? Even now, while the satisfactory dividends of the Western Road have been stifling the prosperity of Commonwealth and city through this series of years, and the Hoosac Tunnel has been progressing to completion at the rate of ten inches a day, the Boston, Hartford, and Erie Road has been floundering along, the football of stock gamblers, the grave of unfledged operators. Its history has been a curious commentary on the home enterprise of Boston capitalists. That its old ability and enterprise has not departed from the New England capital the whole country bears evidence. Her great houses of to-day are greater than ever before, but their ability and their enterprise are displayed in fields not tributary to Boston. The successors of the great commercial houses of the past the Thayers, the Forbeses, the Hunne - wells, the Brookses, the Dwights, and the Ameses - have been exploiting in the far West. Running their lines of road from Michigan to Chicago, from Chicago to the Mississippi, from the Mississippi to the Missouri, they are now stretching out their arms to the horizon, while here directly at home, — starting from their own doors, running through the most populous region of the continent, leading to double termini, to New York and the great West, furnishing Boston the shortest route to each through an open country swarming with a busy population, an unmade road, which is at once a through road and a road between great cities, has been for years languishing along in a state of hopeless incompletion and chronic bankruptcy. With such an illustration or series of illustrations as that afforded by the Western Road, the Hoosac Tunnel, and the Boston, Hartford, and Erie, staring people and Legislature in the face, who will contend that some additional degree of system might not beneficially be introduced into so confounding a chaos? But the material system is no more open to criticism than the legal system on which it is founded. The railroad legislation of Massachusetts, as it now stands on the statute-book, is not only strangely crude, but ingeniously calculated to defeat its own ends. The whole system of that legislation, if system it deserves to be called, originated in the infancy of a phase of development which has now expanded beyond all anticipation. The limbs of the young giant are tightly swathed in the swaddling-clothes of the infant. The laws of Massachusetts regulating the rights, duties, and relations of railroads and community towards each other, intended in their conception as a temporary expedient to await the development of results, have been suffered to creep into a permanence. They have accordingly become antiquated and deficient, repressive where they should be permissive, and permissive where they should be repressive. They at the same time check the natural tendency of the roads to development, and incite legislatures to a continual interference, always unsatisfactory and often hurtful. The limits assigned to this paper will not admit of a detailed discussion and proof of this statement. That it is true, most of those who have disinterestedly examined the subject will admit.* That in the practical control over railroads which renders them subservient to the interests of communities this country is years behind Europe, few will deny who have ever studied at all the systems of the two hemispheres. It is time that this article drew to its close. In it nothing has been perfectly developed; much has been left wholly untouched. An attempt has been made to show why other cities have shot ahead of Boston in the race of modern material development. A few suggestions of reform have been thrown out. That the ground lost is not irretrievably lost, is still confidently maintained. That it will not, however, be recovered by spasmodic energy and unsystematic enterprise is amply demonstrated by the failures of the past. From the history of the State and the city in other emergencies is drawn the principle to which resort should now be had. More than thirty years ago the statute law of the Commonwealth had become confused, antiquated, and unascertainable. At another period, its system of education was crude and unsatisfactory. Yet again, its great harbor shoaled and grew narrow. In the investigation of each case the same course led to the same result. Now, again, the neglect of certain great laws and forces of modern development have jeoparded the material growth, independence, and influence of the community. In the ascertainment of these laws and in the cultivation of these forces only can salvation be found. A community must go back to first principles. As a preliminary, it must organize its intelligence. To organize that intelligence should be the labor of a new commission, composed of such men in material life as Story was in law, Mann in education, and Bache in science. These men must study causes, point out effects, and indicate remedies. Then, at last, with laws ascertained, with a system defined, with resources husbanded, with energies concentrated, and with an end well in view, Boston may hope again to resume her former course of nicely-balanced development, and confidently hope to leave that class of large towns of which Manchester and Lowell are types, and to take her place among the sisterhood of cosmopolitan cities. CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, JR. See Article entitled "Railroad Legislation" in American Law Review, Oc tober, 1867, and Hunt's Merchants' Magazine, November, 1867. ART. II.-1. Stornelli Italiani di FRANCESCO DALL' ONGARO. Milano G. Daelli e Comp. 1863. 2. Fantasie Drammatiche e Liriche di FRANCESCO DALL' ONGARO. Firenze: Successori Le Monnier. 1866. 3. Poesie di F. DALL' ONGARO. Trieste: Tipografia Marenigh. 1840. IN the month of March, 1848, news came to Rome of the insurrection in Vienna, and a multitude of the citizens assembled to bear the tidings to the Austrian ambassador, who resided in the ancient palace of the Venetian Republic. The throng swept down the Corso, gathering numbers as it went, and paused in the open space before the Palazzo di Venezia. At its summons, the ambassador abandoned his quarters, and fled without waiting to hear the details of the intelligence from Vienna. The people, incited by a number of Venetian exiles, tore down the double-headed eagle from the portal, and carried it for a more solemn and impressive destruction to the Piazza del Popolo, while a young poet erased the inscription asserting the Austrian claim to the palace, and wrote in its stead the words, "Palazzo della Dieta Italiana." The sentiment of national unity expressed in this legend had been the ruling motive of Francesco Dall' Ongaro's life, and had already made his name famous through the patriotic songs that were sung all over Italy. Garibaldi had chanted one of his Stornelli when embarking from Montevideo in the spring of 1848 to take part in the Italian revolutions, of which these little ballads had become the rallying-cries; and if the voice of the people is in fact inspired, this poet could certainly have claimed the poet's long-lost honors of prophecy, for it was he who had shaped their utterance. He had ceased to assume any other sacred authority, though educated a priest, and at the time when he devoted the Palazzo di Venezia to the idea of united Italy, there was probably no person in Rome more unpriestly than he. Dall' Ongaro was born in 1808, at an obscure hamlet in the district of Oderzo in the Friuli, of parents who were small freeholders. They removed with their son in his tenth year to |