stituents in the National Intelligencer; and then, if they find that the genius of eloquence has not favoured them, they perhaps remain silent during the rest of the session. But this is hardly safe; for a silent representative is seldom a popular one. A friend informed me, that in passing through Pennsylvania, a Pennsylvanian, speaking to him of a member of congress, said, "He won't get in again, I guess for we never see no speech of his in the papers; and we can't have a man that says nothing for his pay."

But, after all, I think it impossible for an unprejudiced stranger to visit the beautiful Senate-chamber and House of Representatives in the capitol at Washington without being struck with the intelligence and practical skill of congress; the regularity of their proceedings; their ready, perspicuous, forcible, business-like style of eloquence, and, with some exceptions, their habitual courtesy and attention to the feelings of opponents. He would sometimes witness, in American oratory, the freshness of youth, the fervour of boundless anticipation, and that consciousness of personal identity with the glory and prosperity of his country, which a popular government infuses into the meanest citizen; but he would seldom be dazzled with the corruscations of cultivated genius, or electrified with bursts of impassioned feeling, and would seek in vain in the American Congress for that indefinable but irresistible chain which classical associations, the refinements of polished society, and a history rich in all that is illustrious and venerable, imparts to the eloquence of a British Parliament.

LETTER XIX.

Hartford, Connecticut, 1st March, 1821.

In my last letter I mentioned our arrival in Portland on the 16th ult. I will now give you a brief sketch of our journey from Portland to Hartford.

At Portland I found, at a respectable boarding. house where I lodged, among other persons, the Governor of the state, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and eight or ten of the most respectable members. There was a common table at which all ordinarily assembled; and a common sitting-room, where they seemed to pass their leisure in reading the newspapers and smoking segars. For the very first time since my arrival in America, I had actually at this boardinghouse a parlour to myself, which arose from the circumstance of its being, in the first instance, designed for my bed-room. It was a luxury indeed to feel alone, and likely to remain so, without shutting myself up in my bed-chamber, in which I have lived for the last year when not in society or on the road. My hopes of retirement in my parlour, however, were soon shaken; for the landlord brought a gentleman to me, who, after conversing a few minutes, said, he was come to take me into the dining-room, to introduce me to the company. He was a young lawyer, gentlemanly in his manners, and, I found afterwards, had been educated at Harvard College, Cambridge. As we sat down to dinner, at one o'clock,

he introduced me to most of the gentlemen by name, and, among others, to the Secretary of the State. The rest of the company, although I doubt not intelligent and acute, I certainly should not (at least on my first arrival in America) have guessed to be a body of legislators. The landlady presided, with Mrs. the wife of the speaker,

on her right; and the landlord sat down towards the close of dinner, after having waited on his guests, and assisted the waiters till all the company were helped. He was very civil, and came into my room half-a-dozen times in the course of the evening to look at my fire, and see if I wanted any thing. An English landlord could not have been more respectful and attentive. In the course of the evening, the young lawyer also paid me a second visit, with real good nature, bringing in a friend "lest I should be lonely." I give you these little incidents to shew the habits of the country. As they found me busy writing, however, they stopped only half an hour, and retired, saying, they would not interrupt me, but would attend me to any church in the morning to which I liked

to go.

In the morning, accordingly, the young lawyer accompanied me to the Episcopal church, where a young minister preached on the importance of contending for the faith once delivered to the saints; a subject suggested by the activity of Unitarian efforts, and by an act then before the legislature, which it was supposed would operate unfavourably on the interests of religion. The church was profusely adorned with festoons of

"Christmas ;" and on one side of the pulpit was neatly printed, in large letters of spruce, "Unto us a Child is born;" on the other, "Unto us a Son is given." The congregation was respectable in numbers and appearance. In the afternoon we went to the Calvinistic Congregationalist church (places of worship of all denominations are here called churches,) where we found a congregation still more numerous. An elderly minister gave us a logical, metaphysical, scriptural sermon, on "the immutability of God." On my return home, among my landlord's books I found Scott's Bible, Burder's Village Sermons, Baxter's Saint's Rest, Watt's Hymn Book, and Saurin's Sermons. I added to them the Dairyman's daughter, a favourite travelling companion of mine; since, independently of the deep interest of its simple tale, and its exquisite and touching picture of rustic piety, it places so distinctly before me the village spires, rustic cottages, and sequestered lanes of my native country, and the hoary locks and venerable figures of her aged peasants. I think I told you how delighted I was at finding this little tract in a shop at Mobile, in that land of darkness, the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.

While in Portland I found the snow in many places two feet deep for a great distance, and perhaps fourteen inches deep where it was the thinnest. I counted twenty-two sleighs at the church door on Sunday. I saw the town under unfavourable circumstances; but it had a very respectable appearance, many of the houses being large and handsome, with extensive courts before

the doors, ornamented with shrubs and grass-plots. The bay and the adjacent scenery are very picturesque.

We left Portland, at five o'clock in the morning, on the 19th. The roads were so blocked up with snow, that the mail and passengers were obliged to be carried in an open sleigh: it was very cold the thermometer, I should think, not being above zero: but the moon shone so brightly on the new fallen snow, that we should have been sorry to have missed this beautiful winter scene, by being cooped up in a close carriage. We reached Saco, fifteen miles, to breakfast, when it was determined to dispatch us in two sleighs, our unicorn equipage being found inconvenient in the snow drifts, from having two horses abreast. James and I were put up into a tandem sleigh, about as large as a parlour coal-box, or a little larger, the driver standing up to drive. Our two companions followed with one horse in a similar sleigh; and away we went over the snowdrifts, the music of our bells resembling a concert of Jews'-harps. Sometimes the bells of our companion suddenly ceased, or literally "dropt;" for, on looking behind, we used to find that their horse had partially disappeared,—his chin resting on a snow-drift, and his countenance exhibiting a most piteous expression of helplessness. At other times our horses fell through, and it was with great difficulty we extricated them; the snow being sufficiently frozen to be of a very inconvenient consistence, although not always hard enough to carry us rapidly on its surface. Our horses