droll medium for a miracle, the Hamburg letter-bag!  At another, it is an old dropsical impostor, whom thousands of blaspheming dupes venerate as a second virgin quick of a new Messiah!  A short time since animal magnetism was in vogue; and the strong will of certain gifted individuals was believed to have the power of entering into a mystical communication with the spirits of others, and of absolutely controlling their whole physical and mental being!  To-day we are startled by the actual exhibition of a miracle, the “unknown tongue,” on alternate Sundays, at the Caledonian Chapel in Regent Square, London!  If at any time we are tempted to plume ourselves on the fact, that the belief in ghosts and witchcraft has disappeared, we are quickly humiliated by the recollection that there are yet thousands of devout believers in the prophecies of Francis Moore, physician; or by overhearing the rhapsodies of some millenarian dreamer, who as confidently gives us the date of the opening of the New Jerusalem as if he were speaking of the New London Bridge.—­Quarterly Review.

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PUBLIC CREDIT.

It is physically impossible to carry on the commerce of the civilized world by the aid of a purely metallic currency—­no, not though our gold and silver coins were every tenth year debased to a tenth!  Why, in London alone, five millions of money are daily exchanged at the Clearing-house, in the course of a few hours.  We should like to see the attempt made to bring this infinity of transactions to a settlement in coined money.  Credit money, in some shape or other, always has, and must have, performed the part of a circulating medium to a very considerable extent.  And (by one of those wonderful compensatory processes which so frequently claim the admiration of every investigator of civil, as well as of physical economy) there is in the nature of credit an elasticity which causes it, when left unshackled by law, to adapt itself to the necessities of commerce, and the legitimate demands of the market.  Well may the productive classes exclaim to those who persist in legislating on the subject, and are not content without determining who may, and who may not, give credit to another, what kind of monied obligations shall, or shall not, be allowed to circulate—­that is, to be taken in exchange for goods at the option of the parties—­well might they exclaim, as the merchants of Paris did to the minister of Louis, when he asked what his master could do for them—­“Laissez nous faire,”—­“Leave us alone, to surround ourselves with those precautions which experience will suggest and the instinct of self-preservation put in execution.”—­Ibid.

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HOARDING MONEY.