t nation, which (by the happy issue of moderate and healing
councils) was to be made Great Britain, he should see his son, Lord
Chancellor of England, turn back the current of hereditary dignity to
its fountain, and raise him to higher rank of peerage whilst he enriched
the family with a new one. If, amidst these bright and happy scenes of
domestic honor and prosperity, that angel should have drawn up the
curtain and unfolded the rising glories of his country, and whilst he
was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England,
the genius should point out to him a little speck, scarce visible in the
mass of national interest--a small seminal principle rather than a
formed body--and should tell him: Young man, there is America, which at
this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage
men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste death, show itself
equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the
world. Whatever England has been growing to by a progressive increase of
improvement, brought in by varieties of people, by succession of
civilising conquests, civilising settlements in a series of seventeen
hundred years, you shall see as much added to her by America in the
course of a single life! If this state of his country had been foretold
to him, would it not require all the fervid glow of enthusiasm to make
him believe it? Fortunate man, he has lived to see it: fortunate indeed,
if he lives to see nothing that shall vary the prospect, and cloud the
setting of his day."--_Parl. Hist._, vol. xviii. p. 487.]

[Footnote 40: _Edinburgh Review_, 1803.]

SECTION II.

When Collins determined to relinquish Risdon, after survey and
comparison of the places offered to his choice, he preferred the spot on
which stands Hobart Town, called after the name of his patron.
Imagination has traced in its natural outlines a resemblance to the
seven-hilled Roman capital, once the mistress of the world.[41] Its
chief recommendation was the stream which runs through the centre of the
city, whose margin was then beset with brushwood, and choked with
prostrate trees: these often obstructed its course, and threw over the
adjacent banks a flow of water, and thus formed marshes and pools.[42]

Hobart Town is built on the west side of the Derwent, a river named
after the Derwent in Cumberland, celebrated by Wordsworth, the laureate
of England, and the poet of the lakes, w