There are eleven trunk and twenty branch and extension lines, which centre in Chicago, the earnings of nineteen of which, for the year 1859, were fifteen millions of dollars.  As that, however, was a year of great depression in business, with a short crop through the Northwest, we think, in view of the large crop of 1860, and the consequent revival of business, that the earnings of these nineteen lines will not be less this year than twenty-two millions of dollars.

In the early settlement of the State, twenty-five or thirty years ago, the pioneers being necessarily very liable to want of good shelter, to bad food and impure water, suffered much from bilious and intermittent fevers.  As the country has become settled, the land brought under cultivation, and the habits of the people improved, these diseases have in a great measure disappeared.  Other forms of disease have, however, taken their place, pulmonary affections and fevers of the typhoid type being more prevalent than formerly; but as most of the immigrants into Northern Illinois are from Western New York and New England, where this latter class of diseases prevails, the people are much less alarmed by them than they used to be by the bilious diseases, though the latter were really less dangerous.  The coughs, colds, and consumptions are old acquaintances, and through familiarity have lost their terrors.

The census of 1850 gives the following comparative view of the annual percentage of deaths in several States:—­

  Massachusetts, . . 1.95 per cent. 
  Rhode Island, . . 1.52 "
  New York, . . . 1.47 "
  Ohio, . . . . 1.44 "
  Illinois, . . . . 1.36 "
  Missouri, . . . 1.80 "
  Louisiana, . . . 2.31 "
  Texas, . . . 1.43 "

This table shows that Illinois stands in point of health among the very highest of the States.

Having sketched the history and traced the material development of the Prairie State to the present time, we will close this article with a few words as to its politics and policy.

As we have seen, the early settlers of Illinois were from Virginia and Kentucky, and brought with them the habits, customs, and ideas of Slaveholders; and though by the sagacity and virtue of a few leading men the institution of Slavery was kept out, yet for many years the Democratic Party, always the ally and servant of the Slave-Power, was in the ascendant.  Until 1858, the Legislature and the Executive have always been Democratic, and the Democratic candidate for the Presidency, from Jackson down to Buchanan, was sure of the electoral vote of Illinois.  But the growth of the northern half of the State has of late years been far outstripping that of the southern portion, and the former now has the majority.  We have now a Republican Legislature and a Republican Governor, and, by the new apportionment soon to be made, the Republican Party will be much more largely in the ascendant,—­so much so, indeed, that there is no probability of another Democratic Senator being chosen from Illinois in the next twenty years, Mr. Douglas will be the last of his race.