of the Atlantic. finished elegance of style, has no superior on either side | His CULPRIT FAY is indeed incomplete in its plan and unfinished in its versification, but it shows a fertility and originality, and manageable wildness of fancy, as well as an ardent love of his subject, that must have placed him on the summit of Parnassus. But too soon for us these ethereal spirits ascended to their congenial skies. In classical or mathematical learning, we have not done much as yet. BOWDITCH's translation of La Place, and ANTHON'S editions of some of the classics, prove that these branches of knowledge are thoroughly cultivated by some, while they also indicate that they are less so than could be wished. But the few lonely lamps that yet burn for the retired student may serve to keep alive the flame that will by and by spread and break forth with the effulgence of a Newton or La Place, Heyne or a Porson. I ought not to omit WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY, as a great achievement of labor and research in philology. In history, besides the large contributions of Dr. RAMSAY of South Carolina, we have MILLER'S RETROSPECT, MARSHALL'S LIFE OF WASHINGTON, (for it belongs rather to history than biography,) IRVING'S LIFE OF COLUMBUS, BANCROFT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, and LEE'S LIFE OF NAPOLEON. I will not obtrude on you my views of these several distinguished works. As to a part, it would be altogether superfluous. Marshall is familiar to all, and to bestow praise on the Life of Columbus is "to gild refined gold, or to add a perfume to the violet." But I will add, because it has had less circulation, that I regard the Life of Napoleon as inferior to no contribution our literature has ever received. In its nice discrimination of character, its spirited and often graphic descriptions, its peculiar apt-a ness of phrase, and rare felicities of diction, I know no work of history or biography its superior; and if it sometimes indicates extraordinary care and effort, we must admit that the brilliancy of the polish is altogether worthy of the labor which effected it. This work, and the life of Columbus, to which I may add Mr. Ban-publish their transactions, and they all exhibit a more crofts', are sufficient to vindicate the claims of this country to equality with any other, at this time, in the elevated department of historical writing. In physical science, our progress has been commensurate with our general intellectual improvement. Our learned societies and institutes in our largest cities all thorough and general acquaintance with the subject than formerly. NUTALL, GODMAN, SAY and others have made large and valuable contributions to the natural history of the country. In the medical science, there have been numerous publications of great respectability. Nor ought we to omit the names of FULTON, HARE and PERKINS in the department of physics. In essay writing and miscellaneous literature, our im In the lighter departments of biography, voyages, and travels, the American press has of late years been very prolific. Many of them have considerable merit, and will compare with the same description of works in other countries. Perhaps IRVING's Astoria, Cooper's SWITZERLAND, SLIDELL'S TRAVELS in Spain and Eng-provement has been very conspicuous. In this departland and, WILLIS'S PENCILLINGS, deserve to be distinguished from the rest. Two works on Moral Philosophy, UPHAM's and WAYLAND's, both of great respectability, have appeared within a few years. The though far inferior to IRVING's, have also great merit, and have not been sufficiently appreciated by that well meaning, but often whimsical personage, the public. Mr. COOPER though sometimes splenetic, loves his country and is proud of it. These sentiments breathe through all his works, and next to Mr. IRVING and Dr. CHANNING, no living man has done so much to raise the literary character of his country abroad. ment we may mention IRVING, PAULDING, COOPER, WIRT, WALSH, EVERETT, INGERSOLL, JEFFERSON, JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, CASS, FLINT, Dwight. number is indeed too great for particular notice. I In Political Economy our writers have been numer- must however except WASHINGTON IRVING, whose tales ous. Besides numerous tracts on banking, currency, and sketches are as yet unmatched. One is sure to protecting duties, and other detached parts of the sub-find in whatever comes from his pen thoughts just withject, there have been five or six general treatises. There out being commonplace, wit the most delicate and rehave been no less than four works on this science pub- fined, without one spice of spleen or misanthropy, and lished during the present year. a singular playfulness of humor, all clothed in the most Works of imagination have more multiplied per-captivating graces of language. CoOPER'S Sketches, haps than any other. Among so many, we may be permitted to distinguish the novels of COOPER, BIRD, Miss SEDGWICK, and Kennedy. Virginia has also produced two, that will not suffer on a comparison with the preceding. I allude to EDGE HILL and GEORGE BALCOMB. Poetry too, that beautiful art which transports us into a world of its own delightful creations; which makes us oblivious of the cares, the littleness, and the grossness of life-which at once purifies, ani- But it is in our periodical, or ephemeral literature, that mates and ennobles us, has not been stationary while we are to see the image of our national talent and taste the other departments of letters were progressive. If most truly reflected. Let us first observe the astonishin that which requires the highest gifts of intellect, we ing increase as to number. In 1775 we had 37 newspahad not made correspondent progress, we might have pers in the United States. In 1810, 35 years afterafforded some color to the taunts of European arro- wards, the number had swelled to 359, and in 1834, 24 gance. But in the course of this century, the United years afterwards, it amounted to 1265. The number is States, and but a small portion of them too, have pro- now without doubt upwards of 1600. Many of these duced a constellation of poets, and although none of journals contain five or six times as much as the largest them are stars of the first magnitude, such as are equally in former times, and they are published much more freobjects of the admiring gaze of common and of learned quently. Besides these, the periodical journals for reliobservers, they may be well placed in the second rank, gion, medicine, law, and miscellaneous literature, had and are perhaps equal to any living poets that Europe increased from 27, in 1810, to 130, in 1834—that is now can boast. The names of HALLECK, PERCIVAL, five-fold, while the population was nearly doubled. BRYANT, SIGOURNEY, WILLIS, ALSTON, and MEllen,* If we compare the contents of these publications at have ably vindicated the claim of their country to poeti-different periods, we shall be satisfied that they have eal talent, and to these I may add two, whose prema-improved in character almost as much as in quantity. ture genius found a premature grave-Miss DAVIDSON In our best conducted journals, the editorial portions of New York, whose gentle, delicate, plaintive muse has met with due honor on both sides of the Atlantic, and J. RODMAN DRAKE of the same state. Though he died at a very early age, perhaps two or three and twenty, he had given proofs of high poetical genius. He already showed that he could soar at least as high as his most gifted rivals, and soar too with a more untired wing. I have no doubt omitted some who ought to be included in this list, but the sound of whose harps have not reached my ears. which forty years ago were so dull, flat, and insignificant, are now among their best written articles, and some of them have a spirit and force, and unstudied elegance, that few of their correspondents can reach. In the multiplication of our magazines, and reviews; our religious journals; our temperance journals; our journals of medicine, and law, and agriculture; our railroad, and beat sugar, and silk culture journals-who does not see that the American mind is wakened to the beauties and the benefits of literature, and that what the improved taste of the nation craves, the improved talent of the nation seeks to supply? The reviews and magazines of the present day, such as the KNICKERBOCKER and MIRROR of New York, or our own LITERARY MESSENGER and FARMERS REGISTER, are as superior to similar publications forty years ago as the richest gems of the mine are to the trumpery imitations of them that please the indiscriminating eyes of the savage. We may also refer to the improved style of the debates in our Legislative assemblies with similar feelings of congratulation, with this difference, however, that there have always been a few public speakers who could compare with the best of the present day. But the number of accomplished orators and debaters is far greater now than formerly, after allowing for the increase of our numbers. The Senate of the United States has for some years, been able to boast of orators which would compare with those of England in her best days. Virginia, in the rear of some of her sister states in the successful prosecution of physical science, and in the exhibition of poetical talent, may here claim precedence. And it must be gratifying to those who hear me, to be reminded that a year or two since, no less than seven of the eight or ten of those public speakers whom public opinion had placed foremost in that body, were native Virginians. cing, and the excess, will, whether it be by way of attaining a high accomplishment, of finding relief from ennui, or of earning a livelihood, devote their leisure exclusively to literature, and thus become the Johnsons and the Goldsmiths, the Southeys and the Scotts, the Campbells and the Byrons of America. It may be set down as a maxim that the more free and popular a government is, the stronger is the influence of popular esteem and popular applause. The greater power of the people gives a higher value and a greater dignity to its approbation. Where men acknowledge no sovereign but his fellow-men, in their corporate capacity, they become the dispenser of public honors of all kinds, and their favor bestows the laurel not only on the warrior's, but also on the poet's brow. Their huzzas cheer and reward the victories of a PERRY or a DECATUR-a JACKSON or a Scorr-but they also stimulate the intellectual efforts of an IRVING or a COOPER a PINCKNEY or a WEBSTER-a RANDOLPH or a CLAY. Fame is valued according to the number and force of the voices that speak through her trump, and they are never so numerous or so loud as where all are disposed to speak, and every one is free to utter what he thinks. Here then we find the powerful incentive of public praise, which gives to the object of it, assurance of the esteem of his fellow men; the potent influence of which once made a garland of oak preferred by the highAfter this comparative view of our literary advance-minded victor to a crown of gold; which is at once ment, so grateful to every liberal and patriotic mind, let us turn our eyes to the prospect of its further improvement, and consider what can be done to promote and secure its onward progress. We are well warranted in expecting that the same causes which have hitherto operated so beneficially on our literature, will continue to produce the same effects. These causes may be regarded to be principally our civil liberty, and the federative character of our govern ment. Civil liberty, gentlemen, if experience is a true instructor, is favorable to a development of all the faculties of man; for in a free government he is most sure of receiving the rewards which are due to a successful exertion of those faculties, either in fame, power, popularity, or emolument. If he is successful as an orator or writer, statesman or legislator, to what may he not aspire? We every day see men, both in this country and occasionally in England, occupying the most elevated stations in the land, who have raised themselves to distinction by the force of their virtues or talents. They have all been the artificers of their own fortune, and if chance and circumstances have concurred to their elevation, they have been such circumstances as are within the reach of every one. the cheapest and richest reward of public virtue; which is all, next to a sense of duty, that stimulated WASHINGTON, the pride of America, and the admiration of the world. There is moreover an unseen influence which free institutions possess, of imparting force and vigor to every pursuit in which its citizens engage whether it be in amassing wealth, or acquiring glory, whether they engage in the pursuits of commerce or of war-of speculation or of literature and science. They are likely to be less unduly biassed by the dicta of their præceptors; to be less trammelled by the tyranny of custom-to be more bold, fearless, and adventurous-more pliant and accommodating to uncontrollable circumstances. We see this manifested in various ways. What merchants or navigators exhibit the same vigorous daring enterprise as ours? What explorers of the wilderness? Where has sagacious industry achieved so much in the way of canals, and railroads, and bridges? All this indicates extraordinary mental activity and energy of purpose, which will assuredly one day produce the same salutary effects in letters that it has already achieved in arts and arms. But there is another cause of improvement to be found in the character of our government, the influence But in the government of one or a few, men can with of which is not yet fully felt. By reason of the sepadifficulty emerge from the obscurity in which they are ration of the States, the spirit of emulation, that exerts born, and if now and then we see examples of extra-so propitious an influence on the character of a people, ordinary elevation from the humble ranks of life, they are exceptions which attract notice and excite wonder by their rarity. By far the greater number who at tain rank and power, and high station, owe it mainly to the accident of birth. This difference must give a powerful incentive to exertion, and it is exercise and exertion which are the chief sources of excellence. may be expected to be particularly active here. Need I remind you that those nations which have been most conspicuous and illustrious have all felt the force of national emulation? France and England owe much of their success in letters, arts, and arms to the rivalship of more than two centuries. Even the division of Great Britain between the English and Scotch, has had a sensible effect; though ever since the union, it has been the sentiment of generous emulation that has animated them, rather than a rivalship inflamed by anger and hatred. It was this spirit among the little Grecian states which kept their faculties ever on the stretch, and goaded them on in the pursuit of excellence, not only in arms, but also in literature, the fine arts, and philosophy, until the most successful of them far transcended the other portions of the world; and in some departments of skill have never yet found their equals among the thousands of millions that have lived after them. It is true that the character of our government has a tendency to give intellectual pursuits a particular direction. They hold out especial encourage ment to the talents for public speaking, or for the duties of the politician and statesman, and to the arts of winning the public favor. But the disadvantage of this condition of things must be regarded as temporary, and not likely long to impede the other influences that have hitherto had so extensive and salutary an operation. So long as the educated classes of our citizens are not more than sufficient to fill the learned professions, and to supply the public offices, their intellectual culture will be directed that way which is likely best to It is partly to the greater force which this desire of qualify them for those dignified duties. But the num- superiority exercises in a large city, that it has always ber of educated and cultivated minds is rapidly advan- I been found the most favorable theatre for genius and talents of every kind. Here competitors in every profession and pursuit are placed side by side, and their respective merits being so accurately measured and compared, the rival candidates are urged to redouble their exertion for superiority. We know the force of this principle in juvenile instruction, and while men in a populous city are like children in a public school, those who are dispersed over the country may be compared to the children who are instructed at home. This principle of emulation must always exert more influence among the American people from their being distributed into separate States, having their governments, laws and institutions independent of each other; and the more distinct are their interests, the more contrasted their general character, the stronger is this spirit likely to be. Hence the dissimilarity between the Northern and the Southern States, if it occasionally give rise to some illiberal and inconvenient prejudices, is also productive of this good effect. And though it has hitherto shown itself principally in efforts to obtain the power and patronage of the general government, or in jealousy and disappointment at not having obtained them, it may hereafter also manifest itself in literary rivalship. Of this we have already seen some symptoms, in the reviews and magazines. We also occasionally see signs of it between New York and Philadelphia, and between Boston and New York. The West, the ardent, generous West, also shows its ambition to excel, and that affords a sure presage of excellence. We there behold a boldness, a freedom from the dominion of habits and prejudices that is most auspicious to originality; and there, if any where, we may expect in time to see new modes of administering pleasure or interest to the intellectual tastes of mankind. These circumstances of our political and social condi tion may therefore be expected to continue their benignant influence on the advancement of letters and science in the United States; and it only remains for us now to notice the modes by which we may best encourage and assist that influence. We should, in the first place, do all in our power to advance the cause of education, both in its elementary, and more difficult branches of knowledge. The seed that is sown in the humblest country school, if it chance to fall on a fruitful soil, may shoot up into luxuriance and become the lordly oak, the pride of the forest. But in general, the distinguished man of civilized society is so much the creature of artificial culture, he is like the same oak in a city. It has been planted there, and its size and growth have been in proportion to the care with which it has been nurtured, until it could support itself by its own inherent vigor. We ought then to be unsparing in our efforts to provide adequate schools, academies, and colleges: to endow them liberally; and to improve their internal economy, regulations, and discipline, to the utmost. The nation seems now fully sensible of the importance of juvenile instruction. The number of schools and colleges has been greatly multiplied within a few years, but I fear that their character has not advanced in the same proportion as their number. Associations such as that it is now my pleasure to address, should be multiplied and be supported with untiring zeal. All such institutions concur to introduce a literary spirit, to give it a wider diffusion and a more vigorous growth. This spirit is the more to be cherished, as affording the best counteraction to the love of gain, if it is likely to prove stronger in a democracy, as has been supposed, than in those governments in which there are privileged orders of men. We should also encourage public libraries and library companies, which will at once favor a taste for reading and afford the means of gratifying it. Nor ought we to neglect female education, since it devolves on the mother to give the first direction to the child's thoughts and acts. I have come to the conclusion, from no very slight or hasty course of observation, that more distinguished men owe the impetus which has made them what they are, to their mothers, than to their fathers. A disposition to encourage domestic literature must also have a good effect. It must be recollected that the American writer, laboring under the disadvantages that have been mentioned, is placed in competition with the writers of a nation that are second to those of no other on the globe; and that the consciousness of this disadvantage is calculated to repress and dispirit the efforts of the native author. Let us constainly bear in mind, gentlemen, that, next to a character for virtue and integrity, we should be most ambitious of obtaining one for letters. This is a higher glory than distinction in wealth, power, or arms. For "The beings of the mind, are not of clay; Let us remember too, that a taste for literature and science, besides what it has done for the well-being of society, affords to individuals the best security against vicious and immoral habits; and that it is essential to the preservation of civil liberty: that for a people to be capable of administering their own affairs wisely, they must be well instructed. They must understand the elementary principles of government, of legislation, and political economy; must be well acquainted with the human character, and be able to distinguish between their real and their pretended friends, through all the disguises which crafty_ambition or love of gain may throw around them. We are then urged to the intellectual improvement of the people, whether we regard the happiness, the safety, or the dignity of the nation. The votary of literature in our country has indeed much to stimulate his efforts. There are some who now hear me, who may live to see the population of these states amount to some 50 or 60 millions; and in 25 years afterwards, they will reach 100 millions without having as dense a population as there is at this time in Massachusetts. With so numerous a people, all speaking the same language, and agreeing in the great fundamental principles of religion, morals and government; but having endless diversities of manners, habits, usages and institutions, what a field is presented for the successful cultivator of English literature! The writer of the next generation, who is so fortunate as to win the public favor, will, besides hearing his name re-echoed from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Hudson's Bay to the Mexican Gulf, have a greater number of readers than are now living on the habitable globe. His gains, if gain should be his object, will be as much greater than Byron's or Scott's, as theirs were greater than those of their predecessors. And though minds best qualified to delight the world by the productions of their genius, may find their highest reward in the glory they acquire, yet even they will see, in the extensive sale and circulation of their works, the surest indications of that glory. In consequence of the great multiplication of books, all over Europe, within the last forty or fifty years, and their continued further increase, it has been apprehended by some that literature must eventually suffer a decline. They say that if books thus go on increasing, it will be impossible for any one reader, however diligent, to read them all; and that the conviction of this fact will proportionally discourage men from writing, or from qualifying themselves to write; and that literature may thus, like the Roman vestal, be buried under the wealth she had too eagerly coveted. But the very hypothesis, in assuming that further productions of intellect will be checked by the redundancy of previous productions, supposes that consequence of the evil which will effectually bring its remedy, which is a diminution of the supply until it is level with the demand. Such a redundancy, when it is felt, may indeed have the effect of discouraging trivial, or second rate productions. It may also call into exist ence new and strange creations of a misapplied ingenuity, by way of provocative to man's incessant craving for novelty, but it can do no more. The means of communicating instruction, or interest, or delight, to the minds of others, are as exhaustless as is the desire to receive them, and by far the larger part of these means every generation has to provide for itself. It is true that so far as concerns human passions and feelings, or the beauties of scenery, or poetical imagery, there are natural limits, and the best part of the stock may be preoccupied, or nearly so; but even these may be served up again in a form, which when modified by the ruling taste of the day, may not only seem to have the recommendation of novelty, but give more lively pleasure than pictures of the same natural features, painted according to the taste of other times. It is with language as with dress, though the materials are the same as they were centuries ago, silk, cotton and wool, feathers and flowers, gold, diamonds and pearl, yet the diversified modes in which they can be combined, are infinite; and though the belles of the present day may now and then seem to tread in the steps of their grandmothers, it will generally be found, on a closer inspection, that there is some important modification of the ancient prototype; and that, at all events it has, to the eyes for which it was intended, the charm of novelty, so as to make each succeeding generation manifest the same lively sensibility to ornament, and the same exquisite taste in gratifying it, as when Belinda was thus exhibited at her toilet more than 120 years since : "And now, unveiled, the toilet stands display'd, First rob'd in white, the nymph intent adores, As to science, that is, and must ever be, continually progressive, and every new discovery seems but the prolific parent of many more. It forms a new stem from which spring numerous ramifications, each of which | branches out again, and thus leads to new facts and new laws of matter. The fear then is utterly groundless, that there can be any necessary check to intellectual activity, either in the class of writers or readers. And as to the supposed influence of the multiplicity of books, or the character of subsequent works in encouraging quaintness, affectation, or licentious novelty, we must trust to the natural growth of good taste for the prevention or correction of this evil. To resume my former illustration, the same danger might seem to exist as to dress; and yet it has been steadily advancing for the last fifty years towards simplicity, and losing much of the very forced and artificial character it formerly assumed. I had intended, Mr. President, to have said something in behalf of cultivating CLASSICAL LEARNING, as the best means of forming a good taste, and as affording the most improving exercise to the mental faculties; and also to have dwelt on the advantages of SIMPLICITY in writing and speaking; but the unexpected length to which this discourse has been already extended, forbids me from further tasking your patience. On the whole then, the prospects before us, gentle men, are no less brilliant and grand in our literature, than in national power and opulence, if we are only true to ourselves; and the sun of civilization, which has been travelling to the west, as far back as history re cords, will, when it has completed its circle round the earth, by traversing the American continent, be found to have still increased in splendor, in its course; and as it shone more brightly in Greece and Rome, than it had done in Asia; and in England and France, than in Rome or Greece-so, if the auguries do not prove deceitful, its progressive brightness will continue with us, and when it shall be setting to Europe, it will here in its meridian,* beam with an effulgence that the world has never yet witnessed. * Some of our readers may not know, that when it is sunset at London or Paris, it is noon on the Mississippi.-Editor. THE FORESTER'S SERENADE. Awake! gentle dreamer, and hide thee with me, Where the free and the fearless dwell; A sylvan home is waiting for thee, Deep, deep in the shade of the dark waving tree, That hangs o'er the Forester's dell. There linger the hours of beautiful bloom, And when the gay Summer is past, 'Neath the angry clouds of Winter's gloom, Still smile we, my love, though our leafless home May shake with the terrible blast. And softly, and sweetly, at Eve's silent hours, A holy calm, from heaven's fair bowers, Oh come!-'tis the moment when all things are still, Or the plaintive wail of the lone whip-poor-w ill, Why linger, my love?-the glorious stars In shadow and silence we flee. Thro' yonder wild mazes together we'll stray, Where the wolf and fierce panther roam, Ere the skies grow light with opening day, O'er mountain and valley away—let's away— Far, far, to the Forester's home. LEXICOGRAPHIC ACUMEN. In Johnson's Dictionary is this article: "Curmudgeon, a vicious way of pronouncing cœur mechant-An unknown correspondent." By the last three words Johnson acknowledges his obligation to an anonymous writer in the Gentleman's Magazine-but Ash copied the word into his Dictionary thus: "Curmudgeon-from the French cœur, unknown, and mechant, correspondent." JOURNAL ment arising out of the detention of the other boat, Providence was filled with hordes of applicants, who, unfortunately, had taken up all the state-rooms, berths, OF A TRIP TO THE MOUNTAINS, CAVES AND SPRINGS settees, cots and pegs, on which a poor wight could sleep, OF VIRGINIA. By a New Englander.* TO CHARLES E. SHERMAN, Esq., of Mobile, Ala. These fragments of a Diary, kept during a tour made in his society, are respectfully and affectionately inscribed, by his friend and fellow-traveller, THE AUTHOR. -Virginia! Yet I own I love thee still, although no son of thine! Some marvel yet unmarked,-some peak, whose throne lie or hang. This was a damper. Ma'am Judy was weathered by your unlucky friend in a recumbent posture, upon "the soft side of a pine board," and his rheumatic bones had to suffer racking in an out of the way hole, away forward, which they call the salooncabin. From Boston to Canton, we came along in a fine easy car, in which we could sit or stand as we pleased, and the seats in which were made as is usual in coaches, width-wise and very comfortable. At Canton we took to our feet, to go down and up a deep valley, over which a most splendid viaduct of massy granite is in the progress of erection, an ingenious and stupendous work indeed. We then got into a long jolting omnibuslooking car, in which we rode side-wise, and although we went over the road rapidly, the noise of this crablike mode of progression materially marred the pleasure of the thing. However we finished our journey at last, so far as rails (and I suppose you hope as far as railing also,) are concerned,*—and here am I, at table, between the jingling of champagne glasses on one side, and the rattling of dice on the other, as a whist party and a pair of backgammon players are amusing themselves at their respective games. What a love of excitement is suddenly contracted upon coming on board a steamboat! People in such a predicament seem to think they ings-Sleepers in Steamboats-New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia--Judge Marshall--Baltimore---Page's--Ripshall die of ennui, if a source of amusement is not imRaps-Hampton Roads-James River--Steamboat Racing-mediately opened to them, so soon as they place their feet on board. CHAPTER I. Wilde. Locomotive from Boston to Providence-Railroads and rail Arrival at Richmond. I have been taking a stroll round the boat, to see how the land lies, what way we are making, what the weather is, and who, if any body, had stolen my birth. We are half way to New York, are going at the rate of thirteen miles an hour, the night is cloudy but mild, and the steward and I turned a big bully of a fellow out of my narrow accommodations in "the saloon cabin." I am sure they were not worth stealing. My Hector showed fight, and now stands glowering at me like a chained mastiff. Cannot help it, my dear fellow, take my rheumatics and you may have my berth and welcome-and I'll sit up all night and scribble. He shogs off upon this fair proposal; it must have been convincing of his reason, and assuaging of his Steamboat President, July 8, 1835. Your correspondent is a quiet man and hates a fuss, or he would hardly have composure enough to sit down so quietly and collectedly, as he is now doing, to write you an account of himself, considering the traveller's disappointment to which he has been doomed. He thought, and experience had taught him that he was right in the conjecture, that to take a trip to New York in the good "President, Bunker," was the very realization of all that is comfortable in the way of travelling; so starting from the city of notions by the "Whistler" locomotive, and shooting over the forty intervening miles between that and its sister city, at the rate of five and twenty miles an hour, he marched up to the gentlemanly clerk of the said steamer, to secure a good berth in which to stretch his invalid limbs How queerly folk appear while asleep! I should not while going round that most lovely of capes, Point like to occupy one of those settees or cots as they call Judith. But by some misunderstanding, a disappoint-them, all conglomerated as they are into a dense mass; it is so disagreeable to have a half dozen waking stran wrath. • This Journal is made up from a series of letters, written ingers making game of your dreaming disclosures, as you 1835, for some of the northern papers, which at the time attrac- lie there on your back, talking about your most private ted some attention, not only at the north, but in other parts of the country. There had at that time been little said, and less affairs, with as much sang froid as if you were but exwritten, in relation to the now more generally known watering changing the time of day with your hearers. And places, which these letters describe; and to that cause, rather then how singularly people differ in their ideas of comthan to any merit discernible in their composition, was to be fort on these occasions! One twists a yellow bandanna attributed the interest at first so generally taken in them. It is round his head for a night cap, while another puts on at the suggestion of a friend who was induced to try the virtues of the Virginia waters, by the descriptions of their qualities the real thing, in the shape of a red silk bag, a white set forth in these ephemeral letters, and who experienced a per-knit skull-cover, or a black velvet toupee. One fellow fect cure of his complaints by doing so, that they are now cm-sleeps in his clothes like "my man John," in the nurbodied in this form. If they shall induce a single additional sery song, who "went to bed with his trowsers on." cure of any of those numerous "ills that flesh is heir to," the writer will not regret the toil of editing them anew. Washington, July 4th, 1837. *This road is now finished, and in all its appartments is one of the very best in the United States. VOL. IV-12 |
