I must not forget to tell you I took up my quarters at a little inn at Williamsburg, having for its sign the effigies of Sir Walter Raleigh. People who fancy themselves wise may condemn the honours of a signpost; but when I see the name of a man inscribed on these tablets of immortality, I feel it has taken deep root in a country. A senate may vote a statue; it is the public sentiment decrees a sign.

I confess I was gratified at this testimony that the memory of Sir Walter Raleigh was still cherished in this New World, so deeply indebted to his enterprise and exertions. In an age as fruitful of great men as any that preceded or followed, he stands eminently conspicuous for his talents as a scholar, a statesman, a seaman, and a soldier. From the influence of his example, and the consequences resulting from his genius and enterprise, we may date the earliest attempts to settle the United States. He was one of those master spirits which always precede the rest of mankind in great undertakings; and not only in the illustrious career of his life, but in the affecting circumstances of his death, and his noble deportment during the last trying scene, is he equally entitled to our admiration and sympathy. North Carolina has done herself honour by giving his name to her capital, which I hope will continue to grow and flourish as long as that great name continues to be remembered and admired. Farewell.

LETTER VII.

DEAR FRANK,

YOUNG nations, like young children, seem destined to endure certain diseases before their constitutions can be said to be well established. So, also, must they encounter a great variety of experience before they can become wise. But nations have a great advantage over us poor single gentlemen mortals, since they often last long enough to reap the benefits of the experience thus painfully acquired. With individuals it is quite different; for by the time we grow tolerably wise by the aid of personal experience, we are old, and peradventure die, just as we have become qualified, in our own opinion, for the true enjoyment of existence. Life is a tune which has no da capo; and those who play it wrong at first sight, never have an opportunity of correcting their errors.

The disease at present prevailing more than all others, in our country, is that of cutting teeth; one of the earliest that seizes upon infants. It goes at present by the name of speculation, and, like other epidemics, seems to be in regular progress from one part of the United States to another. The symptoms of this disease are easily discernible. At first, that is to say, in the preparatory stage, the people of a city or town will go plodding on in the old, sober,

money-making way, peu a peu, for some years, buying and selling a thing for what it happens to be worth at the time. At length some rare genius springs up, and, like an inspired Pythia, in breeches, foretels that this city must be one of the greatest of the day. Then the diminutive present, like little Tom Thumb, is swallowed up by the great red cow of the future;—the inspiration spreads,—he who has nothing to lose sometimes gets rich, if he has discretion to sell out in time; and all get something, except the honest gentleman, who fares pretty much like the person in whose hand the fire goes out in the play of "Robin's alive, as 'live as a bee." The poor man gets a pretty pile of debts on his back, and becomes the jest of his fellow-playmates, who got rid of the fire just before it went out.

I remember I happened to be in a certain great city, some ten or a dozen years ago, when the folks were just cutting their eye-teeth, and buying land as if every lot had a gold mine in it. Prices were then given, which have ever since impoverished the purchasers; which they have never been able to realize, and probably never will. There is a great difference in buying land on speculation, and purchasing it to derive a support from its produce. In the one case, the man depends altogether upon its prospective value, derives nothing from it in the intermediate space of time, and if he sells it for its first cost, still he is a loser to the amount of the interest of the purchase-money, and of the taxes. In the other case, admitting the man, at the end of twenty or fifty years,

disposes of it for even less than he gave, still, if it has supported him in the meanwhile, it has been a good bargain. The good old way, therefore, of buying land for what it is, not what it possibly may be worth, is, I think, the best after all; and of those who acted under a different idea, one possibly may have grown unreasonably rich, while fifty have become uncomfortably poor. This epidemic, I observe, in its progress extends to every article of sale or purchase, and generally peoples several of those public infirmaries called county jails, before it is checked effectually. It is then generally passed over to the next city, where it operates precisely the same, without distinction of climate; for it would seem that in this case, contrary to the usual practice, a man will take up with nobody's experience but his own, nor believe in the mischief until he becomes a victim. Cupidity is ever excited by a solitary instance of successful speculation, infinitely more strongly than discouraged by a hundred examples of victims sacrificed at the shrine of this golden calf.

The great northern cities having pretty well got through the cutting of their teeth, the disease seems now making a successful progress to the south. Washington, which seems to have been begotten in speculation, and brought up in it too, is just now cutting its wisdom teeth, and Richmond appears to me to be following its example. London, Cairo, Pekin, Ispahan, and even the great Babylon, with its “hieroglyphic bricks," and "Nimrod straw," are, and were, nothing to what these two auspicious cities are one

day to become, and prices are given for land by persons properly inoculated with the mania, which will cause their heirs to make wry faces, or I am mistaken. I know a little of these matters myself; for I was once, for my sins, advised by a knowing man who saw deep into millstones, to buy a lot in the neighbourhood of the certain great city I mentioned before, and which, though generally more than half covered with water, and producing nothing but bullfrogs, he assured me would double the purchasemoney whenever the city came that way, which it evidently had a great inclination to do. But the city, “a murrain take her!" not being a Dutch city, and having no predilection for marshes or frogs, obstinately took a different direction, notwithstanding my friend had demonstrated to the contrary. My speculation still remains on my hands; it is now worth almost half what it cost, and that half has been paid in taxes for opening the neighbouring streets. Nay, its principal staple commodity of frogs is extinct, in consequence of the depredations of certain rogues, who settled close by, on purpose-to hear the music.

That Richmond will increase rapidly in exact proportion to the increase of population and agriculture in the range of country watered by James river and its branches, I have no doubt. But I do doubt whether either the one or other will increase, at least for a very long time, in a way to realize the anticipations entertained by many people here. The Atlantic states, except such as possess a back territory equal, or nearly equal, in fertility and in natural