contempt on the plebeian slaves around him. The greatest aristocrat in the world, is one of these fellows. who has belonged to a great man,-I mean with the exception of his master.

The harvest commenced while I was here; and you would have been astonished, to see what work they made with a field of wheat, containing, I was told, upwards of five hundred acres. All hands

turned out; and by night it was all in shocks. An army of locusts could not have swept it away half so soon, had it been green. I happened to be riding through the fields at twelve o'clock, and saw the women coming out singing, gallantly bonneted with large trays, containing ham and corn-bread,—a food they prefer to all other. It was gratifying to see them enjoying this wholesome dinner; for since their lot seems almost beyond remedy, it was consoling to find it mitigated by kindness and plenty. I hope, and trust, that this practice is general; for though the present generation cannot be charged with this system of slavery, they owe it to humanity-to the reputation of their country-they stand charged with an awful accountability to him who created this difference in complexion, to mitigate its evils as far as possible.

We, in our part of the world, are accustomed to stigmatize Virginia and the more southern states, with the imputed guilt of the system of slavery which yet subsists among them,-although records are still extant which show that it was entailed upon their ancestors by the British government; which encourVOL. I-C 2

aged the importation of slaves into these colonies, in spite of the repeated remonstrances of the colonial legislatures. The present generation found them on its hands,—and the great majority of planters with whom I conversed, lament an evil which cannot be cured by immediate emancipation-which seems almost to baffle the hopes of futurity--and which, while it appears as a stain on the lustre of their freedom, seems almost beyond the reach of a remedy. The country west of the mountains has few slaves: and if I ever get there, I shall attempt, perhaps, to sketch the difference of character and habits originating in that circumstance.

I left this most respectable and hospitable mansion, after staying about a week; at the end of which I began to be able to account for the delusion of the gentleman and lady I told you about in the first part of this letter. I began to feel myself mightily at home; and, as the Virginians say, felt a heap of regret at bidding the excellent lady and her family good by. She had two little daughters not grown up, who are receiving that sort of domestic education at home, which is very common in Virginia. They perhaps will not dance better than becomes a modest woman, as some ladies do-nor run their fingers so fast over a piano-nor wear such short petticoats as our town-bred misses; but they will probably make amends for these deficiencies, by the chaste simplicity of their manners-the superior cultivation of their minds, and the unadulterated purity of their hearts. They will, to sum up all in

one word, make better wives for it, Frank,-the only character in which a really valuable woman can ever shine. The oldest was a fair blue-eyed lassie, who, I prophesy, will one day be the belle of Virginia. The turn which my letter has unaccountably taken, brings to my mind, what I had like to have forgot, -a manuscript work, which afforded me infinite satisfaction. I used to lay on the sofa in the stately hall, during the sultry part of the day, and read it with wonderful gusto. It was written by an ancestor of the lady with whom I was a guest,-a high man in his day. Strangers, as they sail up James river, are still shown the house, where he once lived in princely splendour; giving welcome and shelter to high and low that passed that way. Judging by the work, the author was a deep scholar; a man of great observation, and a sly joker on womankind. He never misses an opportunity of giving a shrewd cut at them; and as I especially recollect, records with great satisfaction, the theological opinions of one Bearskin, an Indian philosopher, who accompanied him in running the line between Virginia and North Carolina.

Bearskin's paradise was an improvement on that of Mahomet. It was peopled with beautiful maids, gifted with every personal charm, and endowed with every intellectual gift; of which last they made the most excellent use-by never speaking a word. In addition to this, they were extremely docile and good-natured; obeying every wish or command, of course, without the least grumbling. The sage

Bearskin's place of punishment, was a terrible place; containing nothing but ugly old women, who-but let us not insult the memory of our mothers and grandmothers, who some of them doubtless were not beauties, if I may judge by the family pictures. The style of this work is, I think, the finest specimen of that grave, stately, and quaint mode of writing fashionable about a century ago, that I have ever met with any where. Good by.

LETTER IV.

DEAR FRANK,

ONE of the first things that strikes a northern man, who flounders into Virginia, or either of the more southern states, loaded with a pack of prejudices as large as a pedler's is, that he has, all life long, been under a very mistaken notion of the state of their manners. So, at least, it fared with me, who, you know, had a singular antipathy to gouging, and mintjuleps, the latter of which I have, however, pretty nearly got over. Before I had been long in this part of the world, I discovered, to my great surprise, that the people were very much like other folks, only a little more hospitable; and it is now my settled opinion, notwithstanding all counter authorities, that a civil, honest, well-meaning man, like myself, may traverse the southern states, mountains and all, without being either obliged to fight, without special reason, or put up with insults from any body. Every day's experience, in short, convinces me, that the people of our part of the world have been much misled by the idle tales of travelling pedlers, sent out to buy tobacco and cotton, or by the unneighbourly arts of men, knowing better, but misrepresenting for party purposes.

"Ould Virginia," which, according to the proverb,