the two first divisions of soil has never, I believe, been fertile, and certainly is not so now; but the last is considered fruitful. In riding along the road, we saw very few comfortable-looking houses. The better sort of people here, having little taste for highways, prefer building at a distance from them, -to get away from the dust, perhaps. Most of the houses on the public roads are taverns, and none of the best, although by no means desperate. In consequence of this, it results that no correct idea of Virginia can be formed by travelling on the great highways; and travellers, unless they deviate from them, will be much deceived, not only in their estimate of the soil, but of the houses. /

I don't know if you recollect our knowing acquaintance, the London cockney traveller, who cut such a dash in your city last winter, and whose professed object in coming out to this country was, to give a correct account of it to his countrymen when he got home again. He had monopolized all the knowledge extant about England,-was a profound critic in cheese, porter, and roast beef,—and contradicted historians, travellers, and official documents,—without ceremony. He never saw a beggar in England in his life-denied tithes, poor-rates, and taxes, and always bought his poultry cheaper than in the cheapest parts of our country. He was omnia suspendens naso,-and could not see more than a hundred yards with the aid of a glass he wore suspended from his neck by a black riband. You may remember how we were tickled with the

idea of his

travelling to the southward and westward, to see the country. He was hereabouts not long ago, and mistook a cluster of haystacks for a town, which doubtless he will describe as being a very mean place, with thatched roofs shaped like steeples; without paint, and not better than Irish cabins. The last we heard of him was his getting nearly drowned, by driving his gig plump into a little clay-coloured branch of James river, which he mistook for a turnpike road. I should like to read his travels, for no doubt he will make ample amends for what he could not see, by describing what was not to be seen.

The first view we got of the mountains was from a hill, a few miles from Louisa court-house. You know I was raised, as they say in Virginia, among the mountains of the north, and I never see one that it does not conjure up a hundred pleasing associations. It was one of those evenings described by a homespun poet, who, I believe, few people ever heard of before, when,

"The purple hue of evening fell,
Upon the low sequester'd dell,

And scarce a ling'ring sunbeam play'd,
Around the distant mountain's head.
The sweet south wind broke to a calm,
The dews of evening fell like balm.
The night-hawk, soaring in the sky,
Told that the shades of night were nigh.
The bat began his dusky flight;

The whippoorwill, our bird of night,

Ever unseen, yet ever near,

His shrill note warbled in the ear;

VOL. I-H

The buzzing beetle forth did hie
With busy hum, and heedless eye;
The little watchman of the night—
The firefly, trimm'd his lamp so bright,
And took his merry airy round,
Along the meadow's fragrant bound;
Where blossom'd clover, bath'd in dew,

In sweet luxuriance blushing grew,” &c.

It was just such an evening when we first caught a view of the distant undulating mountain, whose fading blue outline could hardly be distinguished from the blue sky with which it almost seemed to mingle. Between us and the mountain was spread a wide landscape,-shade softening into shade, with such imperceptible gradations, as blended the whole into an indescribable harmony. Over all was spread that rich purple hue, which painters have often attempted to imitate in vain. All that they have been able to do is, to put us in mind of it, and leave the rest to imagination.-This is a good hint to me, and so I will say no more at present about the mountains.

At Louisa I bought a new horse,-one of your capital racking ponies, as they are yclept, who wriggled and twisted at such an execrable rate, that by the time we got to Charlottesville I felt as if I had been racked in good earnest. The great philosopher, Nimrod Babylonicus Brickibus, used to say very wisely, "that when a man was altogether taken up with himself, he was very apt to attend to nothing else,"--which is as true as that the fresh-water lakes were once salt; for I remember nothing of the ride from Louisa to Charlottesville, except that Oliver's

horse stumbled in fording a branch of James river, at the western foot of the south mountain, and spilled him into the arms of the nymph of the stream. “Our armies swore terribly in Flanders," as Uncle Toby says, but they were nothing to Noll, who abused the river, instead of his horse, in such a way, that if the river-gods had been in power, he would have fared rather badly. But as he escaped with only a wet jacket, I do suppose our republican rivers threw off the yoke of the river-gods, when they became independent. I will not describe Charlottesville, because we arrived there at night, half-asleep,--and left it half-awake in the morning.

I fear you will think we shall never get on to the Blue Ridge; where I believe I promised to land you, safe and sound, in this letter. But I will fulfil my promise, happen what may. I can do this without forfeiting my character as "a regular built" traveller, whose duty it is to tell all he sees, and more besides, -since the only remarkable incident that occurred on the road was a stout battle between a magnanimous pig and a large mastiff, in which the pig utterly discomfited the mastiff, and incontinently carried off the enemy's artillery, consisting of a hollow marrowbone. This is the only fight we have yet seen in Virginia, and therefore I thought it worth recording.

We ascended the Blue Ridge at Rockfish Gap, by a winding road, rising so gently as to be almost imperceptible; nor should we have known the height to which we had arrived, had it not been for the gradual expansion of the prospect, which at last

became so extensive and magnificent, that I would describe it, if I thought I could communicate any thing of the impression I received. This I hope you will take as a sufficient reason for my declining the task. Nearly on the summit, a little descending to the west, stands an extensive tavern and boardinghouse, where we halted for the night; and where I advise you to stop, if you ever travel this way. The air is delightfully pure, elastic, and invigorating;a spring of the finest water in the world (except the waters of Helicon) bubbles from a rock of freestone close by; the house is exceedingly comfortable; and the prospect of the long valley to the west, as it gradually faded, and melted, and became lost in the shades of night, was calculated to awaken the soul, -which so often falls fast asleep in the racket of noisy towns.

Nobody ever died here except the late landlord, who fell a victim to a disease which is occasionally epidemical in some parts, called the whiskey fever. Good by.