society in America is rejected, would be suppressed by a more correct estimate of American manners; and prejudice would be succeeded by candour and liberality. Christian sympathy also would be awakened towards those unknown distant friends, who, sprung from the same stock, and speaking the same language, profess also the same religion; and who, strangers and pilgrims on the earth, like their Europeau brethren and sisters, are travelling a thorny road to that better country where all true Christians will be for ever united in one common family.

My very sensibility to the unrivalled excellencies of my fair country women makes me additionally solicitous that they, at least, should be exempt from those unchristian prejudices, which some of my countrymen appear to regard as proofs of patriotism.

The pleasure and exultation with which I have just been listening, in a large party, to warm eulogiums on Mrs. Hannah More and Mrs. Fry, and some other of our illustrious females, have rendered me at this moment peculiarly susceptible on this point; and you must excuse me if I write with corresponding earnestness. The conversation afterwards turned on the signs of the times in both countries; and on our rambles in Canada, where many of the party had spent the summer. It was very pleasant to compare our adventures and impressions. Montreal and Quebec are so much like old European towns, and differ so widely from the airy, expansive cities of the United States, that an American feels as far from home on his first arrival in a

Canadian city, as I did in the forests on the Mississippi. As he looks round him, he feels more and more in a foreign land; and the foreign language and gentle manners of the native Canadians confirm the impression. The pomp of monarchy, even when dimly seen in the regalia of a viceroy: the aristocratical distinctions apparent even in a colony: the vestiges of the feudal system to be traced in the surrounding seignories; the nunneries, and the Catholic churches, with their vesper and matin bells; the Catholic clergy walking in the streets; and the boards of plenary indulgence suspended from the walls, are all calculated to recall impressions connected rather with the old world, than with the newly discovered continent, where man still shares his divided empire with the beasts of the forest. Here no gray tower meets the eye, to call back the imagination to scenes and incidents of elder times; no monastic edifices, to revive the memory of ancient superstitions; no regalia, transmitted through a line of kings; no feudal magnificence; no baronial splendour; no sacred depositories of the ashes of generations who have slept with their fathers during a thousand years: all is new, fresh, and prospective; and if the mind will take a retrospective glance, it is but to expatiate in the regions of fancy, or to lose itself in the clouds which rest on the early history of the aborigines. But I shall have tired you.

LETTER XI.

Charleston, N. C. Feb. 19, 1820.

THE celebrated Missouri question continued the great subject of discussion, both in and out of Congress, as long as I remained at Washington. The debates, both on the constitutional difficulties involved in the question, and on the expediency of the proposed restrictions, were very interesting; the former, as developing the spirit of the constitution, and requiring a constant reference to the original principles of the confederation; the latter, as exhibiting the views of the most enlightened men in the country with regard to the probable effects of the admission of slavery into Missouri.

I left Washington on the 24th ult. proceeding only to Alexandria, six miles distant, where I slept, and where I had been not a little surprised to meet Joseph Lancaster a few days before. I set off the next morning at three o'clock, in what is called the mail-stage, the only public conveyance to the southward, and a wretched contrast to the excellent coaches in the north. It is a covered waggon, open at the front, with four horses; and although it was intensely cold, I was obliged to take my seat by the driver, in order to secure a view of the country during the remainder of the day. The road lay across woody labyrinths, through which the driver seemed to wind by in

stinct; and we often jolted into brooks, which were scarcely fordable. Leaving Mount Vernon, which I had previously visited, to our left, we reached Occoquan, twenty-three miles, to breakfast. Occoquan is romantically situated on a river of the same name, which winds below masses of rock, that my companion compared to those of the Hot-wells at Clifton, but they did not appear to me to be so high. We then proceeded by Neapsco, Dumfries, the Wappomansie River, Acquia, Stafford, and Falmouth, to Fredericksburgh, a small town on the Rappahannock, which we. crossed by moonlight. Our journey this day was fifty miles in sixteen hours. The next morning at three o'clock we left Fredericksburgh, and, passing the Bowling Green, Hanover Court-house, and the Oaks, reached Richmond at seven o'clock, sixty-six miles, in seventeen hours. At Hanover Court-house, at least 150 horses were standing fastened to the trees, all the stables being full, as it was a court day. This gave me a good opportunity of examining the Virginia horses, which appear to deserve their reputation.

After we left Alexandria, the country assumed an aspect very different from any which I had before seen. For miles together the road runs through woods of pine, intermingled with oak and cedar; the track sometimes contracting within such narrow limits that the vehicle rubs against the trees; at others expanding to the width of a London turnpike-road, yet so beset with stumps of trees, that it requires no common skill to effect a secure passage. On emerging, at intervals,

trom forests which you have begun to fear may prove interminable, the eye wanders over an extensive country, thickly wooded, and varied with hill and dale; and the monotony of the road is further relieved by precipitous descents into romantic creeks, or small valleys, which afford a passage to the little rivers which are hastening to the Atlantic. Every ten or fifteen miles you come either to a little village, composed of a few frame houses, with an extensive substantial house, whose respectable appearance, rather than any sign, demonstrates it to be a tavern (as the inns are called,) or to a single house appropriated to that purpose, and standing alone in the woods. At these taverns you are accosted, often with an easy civility, sometimes with a repulsive frigidity, by a landlord who appears perfectly indifferent whether or not you take any thing for the good of the house. If, however, you intimate an intention to take some refreshment, a most plentiful repast is immediately set before you, consisting of beefsteaks, fowls, turkeys, ham, partridges, eggs, and, if near the coast, fish and oysters, with a great variety of hot bread, both of wheat flour and Indian corn, the latter of which is prepared in many ways, and is very good. The landlord usually comes in to converse with you, and to make one of the party; and as one cannot have a private room, I do not find his company disagreeable. He is, in general, well informed and well behaved, and the independence of manner which has often been remarked upon, I rather like than otherwise, when it is not assumed or obtrusive, but ap