ing, my informant thought, more than 4,000 dollars. A gentleman, whom he pointed out to me, had just offered 7,000 dollars for the whole, which were refused. The next farm was one of a hundred and fifty acres, with out-buildings, but in high cultivation, one-fifth woodland. It had been sold the preceding week at 140 dollars per acre. In this well settled country, woodland is dearer than cleared land. The next was a large estate, which a German had just sold to his sons at 105 dollars per acre, that they might give their sisters as a marriage portion their equal share, as is usual with them. The sons-in-law thought the sale too low. All these estates are within fifty miles of Baltimore, which the farmers consider their market, and speak of as very near.

Ten miles from York we passed the beautiful and classical Susquehanna, on a fine bridge, a mile and a quarter broad; but the night was closing in, and the clouds, which obscured the moon, prevented our seeing the scenery of this noble river distinctly. We had been frequently gratified during the day, by the view of a distinct chain of the Blue Mountains in the horizon. We reached Lancaster, a fine old town, (all things are by comparison,) at nine o'clock, having been eighteen hours in completing the seventy miles from Baltimore. We left Lancaster at four o'clock the next morning, and proceeded in the dark fourteen miles to breakfast. To my great mortification, it was so cloudy and misty during a great part of the day, that my view was circumscribed. We still continued, however, to see handsome barns, substan

tial houses, and beautifully cultivated fields. From the time we left Lancaster, we were on the great Pittsburgh road, which leads us to Philadelphia, through the "Great Valley," as it is called; the land is for the most part excellent, yielding from twenty-five to thirty bushels of wheat, and thirty to forty of Indian corn, to the acre. The farmers in the county of Lancaster, unlike those of York, are, I was told, deeply in debt; the treacherous paper system having been incautiously admitted.

The country through which we passed during the day's ride, as far as we could see on each side of the road, (the fog contracting our view within narrow limits,) might be compared with the richest part of England, reminding me sometimes of Craven-sometimes of Warwickshire-sometimes of Gloucestershire. The best houses and barns are of stone, the largest being generally taverns; and the buildings on the farms (which are from two to three or five hundred acres in extent) are perhaps from 4,000 to 20,000 dollars in value, There were few (till we reached Philadelphia scarcely any) that could be called gentlemen's houses, or which give one the idea of being in the vicinity of educated, or well-bred society. One, between thirty and forty miles from Philadelphia, exhibited traces of taste and elegance in the front of the house and garden: the out-buildings seemed complete and extensive. My companion said, the whole of the buildings might cost, with the house furnished, 7,000 dollars; and one hundred acres of land, in high cultivation, in the vicinity, 5,000 dollars more. Now, I think, with good management on the farm,

a family might live comfortably with 18,000 dollars in addition; not with less than that sum, nor with so little, if there were boarding-school expenses to pay, or any charges except those strictly domestic. Now let us suppose that Mr. Birkbeck had settled there:-his family, except as regards society, would scarcely have been conscious that they were transplanted: he would have felt at home in a cultivated country, instead of a novice in the prairies, and his agricultural skill might have been profitably exerted in a congenial sphere: 30,000 dollars, out of the 35,000 which he is said to have brought with him, would have been disposed of in a form at least as convertible as at present. I much doubt whether his whole property, at the end of ten years, including the 5,000 dollars left to accumulate with compound interest, would not have been of more value than it will now prove, and have commanded as many cultivated and uncleared acres in Illinois, as he will possess at the expiration of that period. If he should not be benefited, or be only partially so, by the remissions of price proposed by the Government to be afforded to purchasers of public lands, (which will depend on the state of his instalments,) or if his settlement continue unpopular, he may actually lose by his lands, the reduction from one and a quarter to two dollars by the Government for vacant lands, of course reducing the value of those he has entered. This, however, is a speculation for which I have no sufficient data; but I was led to think a little on the subject on passing these fine Pennsylvania farms. It ap

pears to me that the "aliquid immensum infinitumque," which played round the youthful imagination of Cicero, and conducted that celebrated orator into regions of truth and beauty, had taken possession of the mind of Mr. Birkbeck, and led him, less courteously, into the prairies of Illinois, where I have no doubt it has long since vanished, like an ignis fatuus, leaving the agriculturalist not a little mortified at having been beguiled by an insidious phantom, which beckoned him to fame and fortune in the Western wilds.

We reached Philadelphia, 60 miles from Lancaster, at four o'clock in the afternoon, and found our party at the boarding house increased by the arrival of a gentleman and lady and three daughters from Lexington, Kentucky, who having hastily left a comfortable estate in the vicinity of London, had become tired of the Western wilderness, and had returned to the Atlantic States, beginning to think that, to persons in their easy circumstances at least, there was no place like old England after all.

LETTER VI.

New-York, Feb. 1821.

A LONGER residence in the principalities of the United States, and a more intimate acquaintance with their inhabitants, have given me a better opportunity than I had previously enjoyed, of forming the estimate you request from me of the present state of religion and morals on this side of the

Atlantic. You must, however, make great allowance for errors in so difficult and delicate an undertaking, and will receive with peculiar caution, on such a subject, any general conclusions deduced from the observations of an individual traveller. You may, however, consider the favourable representations which I made, in a letter from Boston last autumn, with respect to opportunities of public worship, and the prevalence of evangelical preaching, as applicable to all the principal towns and cities from Portland to Savannah.

But churches are not religion; nor are the ministrations of a pastor an unerring criterion of the piety of his hearers. In a country, however, in which contributions to places of public worship are for the most part voluntary, a liberal dissemination of sacred edifices is a very favourable symptom; while the number of faithful ministers, and the frequent occurrence of large congregations listening attentively to unwelcome truths from pastors appointed by their own election, and dependent on them for support, afford something more than a vague presumption of the existence of no inconsiderable degree of vital piety in the community.

My favourable impressions were strengthened as I proceeded, by noticing the attention generally paid on the Atlantic coast to the external observance of the Sabbath; by meeting continually with Bibles, and other religious books, in the steamboats and houses of entertainment; and by witnessing the efforts every where apparent for the extension of Christian piety.