natural aspect is bright and beautiful. Often, when at New-Orleans, walking out at sunrise, on the banks of the Mississippi, which a few hours before had been parched and cracked by yesterday's meridian fervour, but were then saturated with the heavy dews, which at that season fell nightly like showers on the mown grass, I have thought that I had never before seen so much to delight the eye, regale the senses, or kindle the imagination;-orange groves with their golden fruit and fresh green leaves; hundreds of cattle half hid in the deep wet clover, which grows wild and luxuriant on the rich alluvion; the sugar and cotton plantations on the opposite bank; and the forest behind them stretching to the boundless prairies of the Attacapas and Opelousas ;-above all, the noble Mississippi flowing majestically to the sea, and carrying the imagination thousands of miles up its current, to the sources of some of its tributary streams, near the rocky mountains. I have before alluded to the beauties of the close of day, in a climate so delicious, at that hour, and the succeding ones, when the vault of heaven has a deeper blue than with us, when

"Milder moons disperse serener light,

And brighter beauties decorate the night."

And yet when I think of the moral pollution which pervades New-Orleans, and the yellow fever which annually depopulates it, or of the intermittents and slavery which infest its vicinities, the rocky shores of New-England have a thousand times more charms for me. There I see on every side, a hardy, robust, industrious enterprising popula

tion; better fed, better clothed, better educated than I ever saw before, and more intelligent, and at least as moral as the corresponding classes even of our own countrymen. Instead of a succession of slave plantations, whose owners, by supplying them wholesale, prevent the existence of villages or towns, except at very distant intervals, (the 2000 slaves of one slave-holder, like General

would make at least, one respectable village of themselves,) I find handsome thriving country towns, on every side; and I have already told you how beautiful a New-England town is, with its white frame-houses, its little courts, its planted squares, its fine wide streets, or rather avenues, and most especially its numerous spires. From one spot I have counted more than twenty-five spires; and yet I have been asked, in England, if there were any churches, or places of worship in America!

LETTER X.

Philadelphia, Oct. 1819.

As I am now resting a little after my wanderings, I am anxious to take the earliest opportunity of complying with your wishes, and of giving you the impressions I have received of the American character in the course of my route. I might indeed have done this at an earlier period, but it would have been with less satisfaction to myself. Indeed, I have occasionally been led to doubt whether I have viewed the subject with impartiality, either

while receiving the kind attentions which I have so generally met with, or when exposed to the inconveniences incident to travelling in the unsettled parts of the country. I have sometimes been ashamed to find how much my opinions were influenced for the moment by humour or circumstances, and how necessary it was to guard against forming ideas of a peculiar town from the reception which I might happen to meet with, or the circle into which I might accidentally fall. I shall in future have little confidence in any general conclusions respecting a country, founded on the experience of a single traveller; since, however candid may be his representations, they must necessarily be drawn from a range of observation comparatively limited; and be tinctured, at least in some degree, with his own mental peculiari

ties.

Having thus prepared you to receive my statements with caution, I will give you my impressions without reserve. If, in opposition to their republican principles, we divide the Americans into classes, the first class will comprehend what are termed the Revolutionary Heroes, who hold a sort of patent of nobility, undisputed by the bitterest enemies to aristocracy. Their numbers, indeed, are few, but they have too many peculiar features to be embraced in the description of any other class of their countrymen. Many of them were educated in England; and even those who never travelled had generally the advantage of the best English society, either colonial or military. They were formed in the English school; were embued with English associations; and,

however active they were in resisting the encroachments of the mother country, they are, many of them at least, delighted to trace their descent to English families of rank, and to boast of the pure English blood which flows in their veins. In the families of these patricians, in which I have spent many agreeable hours, I met with nothing to remind me that I was not in the society of that class of our well-educated country gentlemen, who occasionally visit the metropolis, and mingle in fashionable or political life. The old gentlemen of this class are indeed gentlemen of the old school; and the young ladies are particularly agreeable, refined, accomplished, intelligent, and well-bred.

The second class may include the leading political characters of the present day, the more eminent lawyers, the well-educated merchants and agriculturists, and the most respectable of the novi homines of every profession. It will thus comprise the mass of the good society of America; the first class, which comprehends the best, being very limited, sui generis, and about to expire with the present generation. The manners of this second class are less polished than those of the corresponding class in England, and their education is neither so regular nor so classical; but their intellects are as actively exercised, and their information at least as general, although less scientific and profound The young ladies of this class are lively, modest, and unreserved; easy in their manners, and rather gay and social in their dispositions: at the same time, they are very observant of the rules of female propriety;

and if they ever displease, it is rather from indifference than from either bashfulness or effrontery. Their appearance is generally genteel and agreeable; their figures are almost universally good; and they dress remarkably well-in this city, indeed, more to my taste than in almost any place I recollect; for which they are indebted partly to the short passages from Europe, which waft across the Atlantic the latest fashions from London and Paris; partly to their accomodating tariff, which places within their reach the beautiful Canton crapes, and all the most elegant materials for dress which American enterprise can collect in the four quarters of the globe; and partly to the simplicity of the Quaker costume, which has had a happy and sensible influence on the taste and habits of the community at large. Their tone of voice, which is generally a little shrill, and their mode of pronouncing a few particular words, are the peculiarities of manner which I think would be most remarked upon in the best society in England. Generally speaking, also, the style of female education in America is less favourable to solid acquirements than with us. The young ladies here go earlier into society than in England, and enter sooner into married life: they have not, therefore, the same opportunities for maturing their taste, expanding their intellect, and acquiring a rich store of well-arranged and digested knowledge, as those have who devote to improvement the longer interval which climate or custom has with us interposed between the nursery and the drawing-room. In the highest