therefore, the people consider themselves as patrons who are giving away a place; and if an opulent man offers himself, they are disposed to say, "You have enough already, let us help some one as good as you who needs it."" Sir C. Lyell adds: "During my subsequent stay in New England I often conversed with men of the working classes on the same subject, and invariably found that they had made up their mind that it was not desirable to choose representatives from the wealthiest class. The rich,' they say, 'have less sympathy with our opinions and feelings; love their amusements, and go shooting, fishing, and travelling; keep hospitable houses, and are inaccessible when we want to talk with them, at all hours, and tell them how we wish them to vote.' I once asked a party of New England tradesmen whether, if Mr. B., already an eminent public man, came into a large fortune through his wife, as might soon be expected, he would stand a worse chance than before of being sent to Congress. The question gave rise to a discussion among themselves, and at last they assured me that they did not think his accession to a fortune would do him any harm. It clearly never struck them as possible that it could do him any good, or aid his chance of suc cess. "The chief motive, I apprehend, of preferring a poorer candidate, is the desire of reducing the members of their legislature to mere delegates. A rich man would be apt to have an opinion of his own, to be unwilling to make a sacrifice of his free agency; he would not always identify himself with the majority of his electors, condescend to become, like the wires of the electric telegraph, a mere piece of machinery for conveying to the capital of his State, or to Washington, the behests of the multitude. That there is, besides, a vulgar jealousy of superior wealth, especially in the less educated districts and newer States, I satisfied myself in the course of my tour; but in regard to envy, we must also bear in mind, on the other hand, that they who elevate to distinction one of their own class in society, have sometimes to achieve a greater victory over that passion than when they confer the same favor on one who occupies already, by virtue of great riches, a higher position."-vol. i. pp. 97–99. America, like some of the old Greek republics, will need a law to compel her best men to take a part in her affairs. "The great evil of universal suffrage is the irresistible temptation it affords to a needy set of adventurers to make politics a trade, and to devote all their time to agitation, electioneering, and flattering the passions of the multitude. The natural aristocracy of a republic consists of the most eminent men in the liberal professions-lawyers, divines, and physicians of note, merchants in extensive business, literary and scientific men of celebrity; and men of all these classes are apt to set too high a value on their time to be willing to engage in the strife of elections perpetually going of this serious evil-its actual workings on "I heard many anecdotes, when associating vinced me that envy has a much ranker growth with small proprietors in Alabama, which conamong the aristocratic democracy of a newly settled slave State than in any part of New England which I visited. I can scarcely conceive the oscarried farther. Let a gentleman who has made tracism of wealth or superior attainments being a fortune at the bar, in Mobile or elsewhere, settle in some retired part of the newly cleared country, his fences are pulled down, and his cattle left committed, not by thieves, for none of his property to stray in the woods, and various depredations is carried away, but by neighbors who, knowing nothing of him personally, have a vulgar jealousy of his riches, and take for granted that his pride must be great in proportion. In a recent election for Clarke county, the popular candidate admitted the upright character and high qualifications of his opponent, an old friend of his own, and simply dwelt on his riches as a sufficient ground for distrust. A rich man,' he said, 'cannot sympathize with the poor.' Even the anecdotes I heard, which may have been mere inventions, convinced me how intense was this feeling. One, who had for some time held a seat in the legislature, finding himself in a new canvass deserted by many of his former supporters, observed that he had alDo you think,' answered a former partisan, ways voted strictly according to his instructions. 'that they would vote for you after your daughter came to the ball in them fixings?' His daughter, in fact, having been at Mobile, had had a dress made there with flounces according to the newest Parisian fashion, and she had thus sided, as it were, with the aristocracy of the city, setting itself up above the democracy of the pine-woods. In the new settlements, there the small proprietors, or farmers, are keenly jealous of thriving lawyers, merchants, and capitalists. One of the candidates for a county in Alabama confessed to me that he had thought it good policy to go everywhere on foot when soliciting votes, though he could have commanded a horse, and the distances were great. That the young lady whose "fixings" I have alluded to had been ambitiously in the fashion I make no doubt; for my wife found เ From Boston we are tempted, indeed compelled by our limited space, to make as it were a wide leap to the farthest south: we are curious to place in their striking opposition the two extremes of American scenery, society, and civilization; the height of European culture with the most thoroughly American wildness, and, we must not say lawlessness, but that state where every small community of men is a law unto itself. We pass over at once the author's visits to New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Richmond in Virginia, Wilmington in North Carolina, Charleston, Savannah, Darien. We must decline of necessity much curious philosophical disquisition. We have a discussion of some length, and to us extremely satisfactory, arising out of the exhibition in Boston of that "colossal and terrible reptile the sea-serpent, which when alive measured thirty feet in circumference the leviathan of the Book of ings, is that, wherever there has been a true sea monster-and some of the relations apvariety of the "basking shark." We would pear of undoubted veracity-it has been a call especial attention to an extract from sifted contemporaneous testimony. We have Campbell's Life, as showing the value of unbesides many pages of lively description of scenery, which of course Sir Charles beholds rather with the keen and close observation of a naturalist than with the vague and brilliant sight of the painter. We have a great many very amusing facts in natural history. We have much about Irish quarters in the great towns; Irish votes, and, we regret to say, indelible Irish hatred of England. We have a debate in Congress, with one specimen of eloquence which we cannot pass over: "It would be impossible to burlesque or caricature the ambitious style of certain members of Congress, especially some who have risen from humble stations, and whose schooling has been in the backwoods. A grave report, drawn up in the present session by the member for Illinois, as chairman of a post-office committee, may serve as an public as the infant Hercules,' and the extension example. After speaking of the American Reof their imperial dominion over the northern continent and oriental seas,' he exclaims: The destiny of our nation has now become revealed, and great events, quickening in the womb of time, reflect their clearly defined shadows into our very repel ambrosial gifts like these, or sacrilegiously eye-balls. Oh, why does a cold generation frigidly hesitate to embrace their glowing and resplendent fate? Must this backward pull of the government never cease, and the nation tug forever beneath a dead weight, which trips its heels at every stride?'" Job!" There is nothing equal to the cool matters says, the Supreme Court before judges, only one We have Mr. Webster pleading before of whom, such has been the ascendancy of the democratic party, had been nominated by the Whigs. But we hasten south wards. Be it remembered that the author is conveyed along all this wide and desultory route from city to city, with occasional divergences for geological purposes, by steamvessel and railroad. He travels with perfect ease, at no great cost, from northern Boston to Savannah and Darien in Georgia, to Macon and Milledgeville in Alabama. We cannot show the change better than by the following extracts: A friend of the highest authority on scientific "The sea-serpent now in London is a fish, known to ichthyology for about a century, described by Black and Yarrell under the name of Gymnetrus Hawkenii, and rarely captured by reason of its being a deep-sea fish, and therefore not taking a bait, or getting in the way of nets; the last species to figure as the surface-swimming python, for its gills are so constructed that it dies very soon after they are exposed to the air." Some poor Germans, we hear, exhibit next door a most beautiful model of Cologne as the architect intended it to be-alas! will it now ever be? They bitterly complain that "When I got to Macon, my attention was formore people went in one day to see de nasty stink-cibly called to the newness of things by my ing fisch, than to their model in a month." friend's pointing out to me the ground where there had been a bloody fight with the Choctaws and Chickasaws, and I was told how many Indians had been slaughtered there, and how the present clerk of the Circuit Court was the last survivor of those who had won the battle. The memory of General Jackson is quite idolized here. It was enough for him to give public notice as he passed, that he should have great pleasure in meeting his friends at a given point on a given day, and there was sure to be a muster of several hundred settlers, armed with rifles, and prepared for a fight with 5000 or 7000 Indians."-vol. ii. p. 65. This cause of General Jackson's popularity is quite new to us. Macon is now a considerable town. "I often rejoiced, in this excursion, that we had brought no servants with us from England, so strong is the prejudice here against what they term a white body-servant. Besides, it would be unreasonable to expect any one, who is not riding his own hobby, to rough it in the backwoods. In many houses I hesitated to ask for water or towels for fear of giving offense, although the yeoman with whom I lodged for the night allowed me to pay a moderate charge for my accommodation. Nor could I venture to beg any one to rub a thick coat of mud off my boots or trowsers, lest I should be thought to reflect on the members of the family, who had no idea of indulging in such refinements themselves. I could have dispensed cheerfully with milk, butter, and other such luxuries; but I felt much the want of a private bedroom. Very soon, however, I came to regard it as no small privilege to be allowed to have even a bed to myself. On one occasion, when my host had humored my whims so far in regard to privacy, I felt almost ashamed to see, in consequence, a similar sized bed in the same room, occupied by my companion and two others. When I related these inconveniences afterwards to an Episcopal clergyman, he told me that the bishop and some of his clergy, when they travel through these woods in summer, and the lawyers, when on the circuit or canvassing for votes at elections, have, in addition to these privations, to endure the bites of countless musquitoes, fleas, and bugs, so that I had great reason to congratulate myself that it was now so cold. Moreover, there are parties of emigrants in some of these woods, where women delicately brought up, accustomed to be waited on, and with infants at the breast, may now be seen on their way to Texas, camping out, although the ground within their tent is often soaked with heavy rain. If you were here in the hot season,' said another, the exuberant growth of the creepers and briars would render many paths in the woods, through which you now pass freely, impracticable, and venomous snakes would make the forest dangerous.""-vol. ii. p. 72. And yet even here science finds more than liberal hospitality; it has its ardent votaries: "The different stages of civilization to which families have attained, who live here on terms of the strictest equality, is often amusing to a stranger, but must be intolerable to some of those settlers who have been driven by their losses from the more advanced districts of Virginia and South Carolina, having to begin the world again. Sometimes, in the morning, my host would be of the humblest class of crackers,' or some low, illiterate German or Irish emigrants, the wife sitting with a pipe in her mouth, doing no work and reading no books. In the evening, I came to a neighbor whose library was well stored with works of French and English authors, and whose first question to me was, Pray tell me, who do you really think is the author of the Vestiges of Creation?' If it is difficult in Europe, in the country far from towns, to select society on a principle of congeniality of taste and feeling, the reader may conceive what must be the control of geographical circumstances here, exaggerated by ultra-democratic notions of equality and the pride of race. Nevertheless, these regions will probably bear no unfavorable comparison with such part of our colonies, in Canada, the Cape, or Australia, as have been settled for an equally short term of years, and I am bound to say that I passed my time agreeably and profitably in Alabama, for every one, as I have usually found in newly peopled districts, was hospitable and obliging to a stranger. Instead of the ignorant wonder, very commonly expressed in out-of-the-way districts of England, France, or Italy, at travellers who devote money and time to a search for fossil bones and shells, each planter seemed to vie with another in his anxiety to give me information in regard to the precise spots where organic remains had been discovered. Many were curious to learn my opinion as to the kind of animal to which the huge vertebræ, against which their ploughs sometimes strike, may have belonged. The magnitude, indeed, and solidity of these relics of the colossal zeuglodon are such as might well excite the astonishment of the most indifferent. Dr. Buckley informed me that on the estate of Judge Creagh, which I visited, he had assisted in digging out one skeleton, where the vertebral column, almost unbroken, extended to the length of seventy feet, and Dr. Emmons afterwards showed me the greater part of this skeleton in the Museum of Albany, New York. On the same plantation, part of another back-bone, fifty feet long, was dug up, and a third was met with at no great distance. Before I left Alabama, I had obtained evidence of so many localities of similar fossils, chiefly between Macon and Clarkesville, a distance of ten miles, that I concluded they must have belonged to at least forty distinct individuals."-vol. ii. p. 74. the midst of the Slave States. Throughout Our philosopher is here in the south, in the Union, and here more especially, his object is to inform himself upon this vital question-the state of slavery, the condition and prospects of the slaves, the hope, the possi gious temperament, bordering on superstition. Even those who think they ought forever to remain in servitude give them a character which leads one to the belief that steps ought long ago to have been taken towards their gradual emancipation. Had some legislative provision been made with this view before the annexation of Texas, a period being fixed after which all the children born in this State should be free, that new territory would have afforded a useful outlet for the black population of Virginia, and whites would have supplied the vacancies which are now filled up by the breeding of negroes. In the absence of such enactments, Texas prolongs the duration of negro slavery in Virginia, aggravating one of its worst consequences, the internal slave-trade, and keeping up the price of negroes at home. They are now selling for 500, 750, and 1000 dollars each, according to their qualifiwhose business it is to collect slaves for the cations. There are always dealers at Richmond, southern market, and, until a gang is ready to start for the south, they are kept here well fed, and as cheerful as possible. In a court of the gaol, where they are lodged, I see them every day amusing themselves by playing at quoits. How much this traffic is abhorred, even by those who encourage it, is shown by the low social position held by the dealer, even when he has made a large fortune. When they conduct gangs of fifty slaves at a time across the mountains to the Ohio river, they usually manacle some of the men, but on reaching the Ohio they have no longer any fear of their attempting an escape, and they then unshackle them. That the condition of slaves in Virginia is steadily improving, all here seem agreed.”—vol. i. p. 277. bility of an early and a peaceful adjustment of this awful feud of races. There is throughout a quiet dispassionateness, which gives great weight to his opinions. He has manifestly in his heart the true English, Christian abhorrence of slavery; yet neither, on the one hand, does he close his eyes to the fact that the actual slavery of the present time-in many parts of the country at least-has its compensations in the ease, comfort, plenty of food, good lodging, secure provision for old age, as compared with the condition of the laboring classes in most parts of the Old World; nor is he blind to the difficulties and perils, perils appallingly serious to the colored race, which would make rapid or inconsiderate emancipation a curse rather than a blessing. No more, on the other hand, does he disguise or mitigate the inherent evils of the system; the barbarous laws which in Georgia prohibit the education of the negroes; the barbarous jealousy which prevents their employment when free as workmen and mechanics; the more barbarous, it should seem indelible antipathy, which will not allow social intercourse, still less the connection of marriage, with one in whom there can possibly be suspected one drop of black blood. Sir Charles Lyell is disposed to take a favorable view of the capacity of the black, still more of the colored race, for moral and intellectual cultivation. We do not doubt this conclusion up to a certain point, (beyond this, evidence is wanting ;) and below this point it is criminal and unchristian to attempt to keep down this race of God's creatures, of our brethren in Christ. In Virginia the question first presents itself in a practical form; at Richmond, in that province, the rector and proprietors of a handsome new church have set apart a side gallery for people of color. "This resolution had been taken in order that they and their servants might unite in the worship of the same God, as they hoped to enter hereafter together into his everlasting kingdom if they obeyed his laws." (p.275.) In this church there were few negroes; but the galleries of the Methodist and Baptist churches are crowded with them. The mixed races, it is allowed, are more intelli-out-door laborers have separate houses, "as gent and more agreeable as domestic servants; whether from physical causes, or intercourse with the whites, is still matter of controversy: "Several Virginian planters have spoken to me of the negro race as naturally warm-hearted, patient, and cheerful, grateful for benefits, and forgiving of injuries. They are also of a reli There is great repugnance to the separation of families; and some persons have been known to make great sacrifices in order to do their duty by their dependants, whom they might profitably have thrown on the world; in other words, sent to market. At Hopeton, further south, in Georgia, Sir Charles Lyell had an opportunity of examining the actual working of the system as he admits, on a well-regulated estate. There seems to be much mutual attachment between the master and the slave. Of 500 blacks on the property, some are old, superannuated, live at their ease in separate houses, in the society of neighbors and kinsfolk. There is no restraint, rather every encouragement to marriage. The neat as the greater part of the cottages in Scotland"- --no flattering compliment, observes our author, himself a Scot; their hours of labor are from six in the morning, with an interval of an hour, till two or three. In summer they divide their work, and take a cool siesta in the middle of the day. In the evening they make merry, chat, pray, and sing psalms. There is a hospital. To counterbalance all this there is the overseer and his whip, not a heavy one, and rarely used --but still there is a whip; though the number of stripes is generally limited, its terrors seems to have great effect: "The most severe punishment required in the last forty years for a body of 500 negroes at Hopeton, was for the theft of one negro from another. In that period there has been no criminal act of the highest grade, for which a delinquent could be committed to the penitentiary in Georgia, and there have been only six cases of assault and battery. As a race, the negroes are mild and forgiving, and by no means so prone to indulge in drinking as the white man or the Indian. There were more serious quarrels and more broken heads among the Irish in a few years, when they came to dig the Brunswick canal, than had been known among the negroes in all the surrounding plantations for half a century. The murder of a husband by a black woman, whom he had beat violently, is the greatest crime remembered in this part of Georgia for a great length of time." -vol. i. p. 258. The Baptist and Methodist missionaries were for some time the most active in evangelizing the negroes. Since Dr. Elliott has been bishop of Georgia, the Episcopalians have labored with much zeal and success. The negroes have no faith in the efficacy of baptism, except with a complete washing away of sin; the bishop has wisely adopted the rubric which allows immersion : "It may be true that the poor negroes cherish a superstitious belief that the washing out of every taint of sin depends mainly on the particular manner of performing the rite, and the principal charm to the black women in the ceremony of total immersion, consists in decking themselves out in white robes like brides and having their shoes trimmed with silver. They well know that the waters of the Altamaha are chilly, and that they and the officiating minister run no small risk of catching cold, but to this penance they most cheerfully submit."--vol. i. p. 363. Sir Charles Lyell attended at Savannah, first a black Baptist church with a black preacher, and then a black Methodist church with a white preacher. The black preacher delivered an extempore sermon, for the most part in good English, with only a few phrases in "talkee-talkee," to come more home to his audience: "He got very successfully through one flight about the gloom of the valley of the shadow of death, and, speaking of the probationary state of a pious man left for a while to his own guidance, and when in danger of failing saved by the of God, he compared it to an eagle teaching her newly-fledged offspring to fly by carrying it up high into the air, then dropping it, and, if she sees grace it falling to the earth, darting with the speed of lightning to save it before it reaches the ground. Whether any eagles really teach their young to fly in this manner, I leave the ornithologists to turesque language, yet by no means inflated, the decide; but when described in animated and picimagery was well calculated to keep the attenHe also inculcated tion of his hearers awake. some good practical maxims of morality, and told them they were to look to a future state of rewards and punishments in which God would deal impartially with the poor and the rich, the black man and the white.'"-vol. ii. p. 3. In neither of these churches did that odor, which is said to keep the two races apart, at all offend the sense. At another black Methodist church at Louisville, in Kentucky, built by subscription by the blacks themselves, and well lighted with gas, he heard another dark divine, (we regret to say that Sir Charles compares him with a white Puseyite Episcopalian, not much to the advantage of the latter.) This preacher was a full black, spoke good English, and quoted Scripture well. He laid down, it is true, metaphysical points of doctrine with a confidence which seemed to increase in proportion as the subjects transcended human understanding; but in this we discern the sect rather than the color. Our black Chrysostom received signs of assent-not the riotous clapping of hands which applauded him of Constantinople, nor the sighs and groans, so well known in other places, like those which are heard above the torrent's brawl on the hillsides in Wales. It was said of a celebrated metropolitan preacher of the last generation, that he had taken lessons of Mr. Kemble; our sable brother (as he would be called at Exeter Hall) was a manifest imitator of an eminent American actor who had been playing in those parts. We must not omit one point more; from his explanation of Whose image and superscription is this?' had set his signature to a dollar note. it was clear that he supposed that Cæsar author afterwards attended in Philadelphia a free black Episcopal church, in which the performed by a black clergyman with great more solemn and quiet Anglican service was propriety. While on this point we will add that, according to the account of Dr. Walsh, published many years ago, and confirmed, if we remember right, by later travellers, the black Roman Catholic priests in Brazil conduct the ceremonial of their faith with much greater impressiveness and dignity than those of European descent. Our But there is much to be set against these hopeful signs of negro improvement, and the |