was made as stifling as the cracks in the doors would permit it to become. The passages were as filthy as want of sweeping could make them; and dirty cloths, sloppails, and brooms were left lying about them, all day and every day; the narrow wooden staircases were such as you would hardly see in England leading to the poorest of attics; and the household arrangements were as primitive as was consistent with the dirtiness. peculiar to civilized life. As to the meals, their profusion was only equalled by their greasiness, and by the utter nondescriptness of their component victuals. The chicken-pie tasted uncommonly like the stewed mutton, and both were equally unlike any compound I ever ate before. I could understand why it was thought unnecessary for the negroes to waste soap and water on washing; but the same reason could not apply to their jackets and shirts, which I presume once were white. The servants were all negroes, and all, naturally enough, devoted their minds to doing as little work and taking as long about it as possible. What seemed more odd than all, none of the habitual residents—some of them persons of property-appeared to be aware that the establishment was dirty and uncomfortable. The heat of the house must have been fearful in summer and the smells pestilential; for, with a southern climate, the style of building maintained was that of the small rooms and narrow passages of England. Nor was this a single instance. The other

hotels in the city were worse; and some of my friends who have travelled through the Southern States have assured me that, except in the very large towns, the hotels are invariably of the same description. The truth is, that where the whites think it beneath them to work, and where the negroes will not work unless they are forced, you cannot expect domestic comfort.

MISSOURI.

"IF the visitor at St. Louis," writes the local handbook, "should chance to be benevolent, or literary, or educational, he will perhaps like to look at "-a number of institutions, which I grieve to say I did not go to see. It is an unpleasing reflection that I did not fall under any one of the above three categories, and must rank among the vulgar herd, for whom the guide-book adds, by way of consolation, that, "let them seek pleasure as they will, here are the opportunities to find it."

I confess that I sought and found my pleasure wandering about the streets of St. Louis. The place itself was a constant marvel to me. I found myself there, between eleven and twelve hundred miles from New York. Travelling night and day by express trains, you reach St. Louis from the Atlantic in forty-five hours— more than twice the time, and at about the same rate of travelling that you take in going express from Boulogne to Marseilles; and yet there are not two points in Europe separated by a couple of hundred miles, which

are not far more unlike each other than New York and St. Louis. It is the capital city of the great West, the frontier town between the prairie and the settled country. Westwards, the railways only reach as yet a distance of a hundred and odd miles. The great overland caravans for the Pacific Ocean start from here during their short summer season, which was to begin in the middle of May, about a week after my arrival, and to end in the middle of August. The Indians still come to the city at times to barter; and furs and peltries are stock articles of St. Louis commerce. Yet even in the far West, on the edge of the prairie land, I found myself in a vast city, as civilized and as luxurious as any city of the New World. The story of its growth reads fabulous. Thirty years ago it had about 6,000 inhabitants. Twenty years afterwards, it had upwards of 100,000; and to-day its numbers are supposed to be some 30,000 more. The city is worthy, indeed, of the river on which it stands. The praise is not a low one, for to my mind the rivers of America are the one grand feature about its scenery. Here, twelve hundred miles from the sea, the Mississippi is as noble a river as one could wish to see; and yet, for two thousand miles above St. Louis you can sail up the Missouri, the true parent stream of the Mississippi river.

When once you have seen the Mississippi, you understand the feeling of the Western States about the possession of the river. Union men and Secessionists,

Abolitionists and slaveowners, are all agreed on this one point, that come what may, or rule who may, the West must go with the Mississippi. You might as well ask Liverpool to allow the mouth of the Mersey to be held by a foreign power, as propose any arrangement or compromise to the West, by which the command of the Mississippi should pass from its hands. If the Father of Waters had poured into the Atlantic where the Potomac does, the Confederacy might have been a possibility; but the possession of the Mississippi has proved fatal to the existence of the South, as an isolated power.

The waters of the Western rivers were, at the time of my visit to St. Louis, higher than they had been for years, and for miles before you reached the Mississippi the railroad passed through flooded fields, and swamps expanded, for the time, into vast shallow lagoons. The river was full of great trunks of trees, torn up by the roots, and broken-down fences and dismembered rafts. The steamer ferry that carried you across landed you at the long quays, lined with stores and warehouses. There was not a sailing vessel on the wharves, as the current is too rapid for sailing craft to ascend the river; but, for a mile in length, the wharf was lined with the huge river-steamboats. Trade was slack when I was there, as it was everywhere along the Mississippi, but still there were boats enough coming and going constantly to make the scene a lively one. Up