may also have a cloth of state, but only fringed, and with pendants; and his countess may have her train borne by the wife of an esquire, except in presence of her superiors. A viscount has no cloth of state, but is allowed to have a cover of essay held under his cup when he drinks; and his lady can only have her train borne by a woman in presence of her superiors. A baron may have the cover of his cup held under it while he drinks; and a baroness may only have her train borne by a man in the presence of her superiors. All these give place to each other, as a matter of course, in the order I have mentioned, except entitled by some office to precedency. Persons of the same titles are again arranged according to the date of their creation, which causes another distinction of the utmost importance to the happiness and consequence of the possessor.

You will perceive from this detail-which I have taken the pains to copy from an old book of the highest authority in the college of Lord Lyon, king at arms-how the spirit of personal independence is chastised into submission by these outward and visible badges of inferiority, which derive incalculable importance from habit and custom. Servility to superiors, together with a grovelling subserviency to those who can bestow on them the privilege of a cloth of state, or the right of turning their backs on those who before turned their backs on them, will naturally result from such a nicely graduated importance. Hence no one can go into titled society, without at once learning the relative rank of each

person, first by the arrangement of the point of precedence, and next by the anxiety of the small fry, to establish a propinquity with some titled dignitary. In fact, the lord or the lady who marches first at a coronation, has all the superiority over those that march at the other end, that the leader of a herd of buffaloes has over the rabble in the rear. So sensible are they of the influence of superior rank in England, that it has always been the practice of the house of lords, in all trials of peers, for the youngest peer, that is the peer of the latest creation, to give his vote first, and so on in regular gradation up to the highest officers of state. Nothing can more clearly indicate a consciousness of the existence and operation of a feeling of inferiority on the part of the mushroom lords, than this virtual acknowledgment of the danger of their yielding their consciences to their superiors in rank.

You will readily gather from this slight sketch, that it is next to impossible for these English travellers, who rail at the rude familiarity, as they are pleased to call it, of the people of the United States, to conceive the abstract idea of an independent man, or to tolerate, much less relish, the manly frankness of a republican freeman, who is utterly unconscious of the marvellous difference between a mantle of four folds, and one of three and a half. For my part I neither wonder at, or lament their misapprehension, and earnestly hope the day will never arrive, when our people will not be distinguished for their total incapacity to comprehend, what these gentlemen

mean by deference to rank and station, and the refinements of court etiquette. Equal rights and laws are as nothing, unless accompanied by an habitual sense of equality, and a determination to assert the dignity of personal self-respect, against any claims of hereditary distinction, or of superiority founded merely on prescription. The moment they suffer themselves to be bullied or laughed out of these genuine characteristics of liberty, they will be on the downhill course to degradation. They will be prepared to worship a mantle of "four folds," and bow down before a coronet of pearls. Adieu.

VOL. I-M

LETTER XV.

DEAR FRANK,

WE are now at the warm spring, feeding most sumptuously on venison and mutton, and passing our time in an agreeable variety of eating, drinking, and sleeping-sleeping, eating, and drinking—and drinking, eating, and sleeping. The spring is in the bottom of a little valley, shut in by high mountains, and looking like the abode of the sylvan gods, the Oreades, and all the flat-footed nymphs of the mountains. The bath here is the most luxurious in the world; its temperature about that of the body, its purity almost equal to that of the circumambient air: and the fixed air plays against the skin in a manner that tickles the fancy wonderfully. About five miles farther on, are springs of still higher temperature, being from one hundred and two to one hundred and eight degrees. They are resorted to by people who have tried the warm spring in vain, for rheumatic and other complaints.

Oliver has already discovered, to a positive certainty, that this valley has been neither more nor less than the crater of a volcano; which is doubtless the reason why the waters of it are so warm. He has picked up several substances, that have evidently undergone the action of fire, whether from a vol

cano, some neighbouring forge, or lime-kiln, I leave it to my masters, the philosophers, to discuss. For my part, I wish them success, in their praiseworthy attempts to find out how the world was made; for as knowledge is power, we shall then doubtless have several new worlds created by these wise people, free from all the faults and deficiences of the old one. I am sure if a volcano, or a comet, is necessary to enable them to come at the truth, I am the last man in the world to deny them a trifling matter of this sort. A carpenter requires axes, saws, hammers, and chisels, for building a house; and certainly a philosopher is entitled to tools corresponding to the prodigious magnitude of his undertaking. If they wanted fifty volcanoes, and a hundred comets, they might have them and welcome for all me; provided the volcanoes were fairly burnt out, and the comets would pledge their word of honour not to return till the time foretold by Newton.

The warm spring is principally used as a bath, although people occasionally drink, and cattle are, in a little time, very fond of it. Indeed, the instinct of animals has led us to some of the best remedies in the world; and I understand all the salt licks, and many of the medicinal springs, in the western country, were originally indicated by the concourse of wild beasts to those places. I drank of this water, but it created an unpleasant sensation of fulness in my head and eyes. The bath is about thirty feet in diameter, forming an octagon, walled two or three feet above the water's edge; the bottom covered