made since yesterday for the girl to wear during morning drives, and she thought this an excellent plan. Many such a story does your host amuse you with; observing that, though America has fewer humourists than England, they may be met with in abundance in rare settlements and retired districts, where they can indulge their fancies without much suffering from public opinion.

The storm abates. You are the oracle as to what o'clock it is; and, as you are confident that it is near eleven, the chamber lights are brought. You dismiss your dusky attendants, and throw yourself on your ample sofa for half an hour, to recall what you have seen and heard this day, and meditate on the scope and tendencies of Country Life in the Southern States.

"Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound
Reverbs no hollowness."

SHAKSPEARE.`

THE disasters of our railroad journey to Charleston have been described elsewhere.* We were to have arrived at the city about six P.M. of the 10th of March, when every object would have looked bright in the sunshine of a spring evening. As it was, we reached the railroad station at ten minutes past four the next morning. There was much delay in obtaining our luggage and getting away from the station. We could not think of disturbing the slumbers of the friends whose hospitality we were about to enjoy, and we therefore proceeded in the omnibus which was in waiting to the Planter's Hotel. We were all hungry, having scarcely tasted food since noon the day before; and very weary, having travelled the whole of two nights, and enjoyed no sufficient rest since we left Richmond, nine days before. Every little

event became a great one to persons so exhausted. The omnibus jolted and stopped, and we were told that an accident had happened. The gentlemen got out, but the darkness was total. A light was brought from a private house, and it appeared that a wheel had touched the kerbstone! It seemed as if horses were never backed in Charleston, so long were we in proceeding. When I afterward saw what the streets of Charleston are like, I do not wonder at any extreme of caution in a driver. The soil is a fine sand, which, after rain, turns into a most deceptive mud; and there is very little pavement yet. The deficiency of stone is, however, becoming supplied by importation, and the inhab itants hope soon to be able to walk about the city in all weathers, without danger of being lost in crossing the streets. They told me, as an on dit, that a horse was drowned last winter in a mudhole in a principal street.

At the hotel all was dark and comfortless. We made a stir among the servants; the gentlemen got two men to light a fire, and fetch us wine and biscuits; and we persuaded two women to make up beds and warm some water. We were foolish enough to be tempted to take wine and water, as we could have neither tea or coffee; and when we rose from our unrefreshing sleep an hour after noon, we formed such a dismal group of aching heads as could hardly be matched out of a hospital.

Two of us proceeded, in a light pretty hack-carriage, to the friend's house where we were expected. Nothing could be more considerate than our reception. A pile of English and American letters and newspapers awaited us, and our hostess knew that we must be fatigued; a fire was therefore immediately lighted in my chamber, and we were told that the day was our own; that our dinner would be sent up to us, and that we should not be expected in the drawing-room till we chose to join the family. I shall not soon forget the refreshment of lingering over family letters and London newspapers; of feeling that we were not liable to be called up in the dark for a fortnight at least; and of seeing my clothes laid in drawers, for the first time, I think, since I landed. A chest of drawers is seldom to be seen in the chambers, or, at least, in the guest-chambers of American houses. We were favoured in the article of closets with rows of pegs, but I believe I had the use of a chest of drawers only two or three times during my travels.

A circumstance happened this day which, as being illustrative of manners, may be worth relating. The day before I left Richmond, Virginia, two companions and myself had employed a hack-carriage, driven by a black, for some hours; and, on dismissing it, had paid the fare, which we thought reasonable, two dollars and a half. The proprietor of the carriage and master of the driver had by some means heard who it was that had been his customer. Finding that I had left Richmond, he took the trouble to send the two dollars and a half down to Charleston, five hundred miles, with a message that it was not for the honour of Virginia that I should pay carriage hire! and the money was awaiting me on my arrival.

I had soon reason to perceive that Charleston deserves its renown for hospitality. A lecturer on phrenology sent us tickets for his course; six carriages were immediately placed at my disposal, and the servants came every morning for orders for the day. The difficulty was to use them all and equally; but, by employing one for the morning drive and another for the evening visiting, we contrived to show our friends that we were willing to avail ourselves of their kindnesses. I believe there was scarcely a morning during our stay when some pretty present did not arrive before I rose; sometimes it was a bouquet of hyacinths, which were extremely rare that year, from the lateness and severity of the frosts; sometimes it was a dish of preserve or marmalade; sometimes a feather fan, when the day promised to be hot; sometimes a piece of Indian work; sometimes of indigenous literary production. One morning I found on my window-seat a copy of the Southern Review, and a bouquet of hyacinths from General Hayne; and the next a basket of wafers from Mrs. P.; and the third a set of cambric handkerchiefs, inimitably marked with complimentary devices, from Mrs. W.

In the midst of all this there was no little watchfulness, among a totally different set of persons, about my proceedings with regard to the negroes. I had not been in the city twenty-four hours before we were amused with ridiculous reports of my championship on behalf of the blacks; and, long after I had left the place, reported speeches of mine were in circulation which were remarkably striking to me when I at length heard them. This circumstance shows how irritable the minds of the people are upon this topic.

I met with no difficulty, however, among my associates. I made it a rule to allow others to introduce the subject of slavery, knowing that they would not fail to do so, and that I might learn as much from their method of approaching the topic as from anything they could say upon it. Before half an hour had passed, every man, woman, or child I might be conversing with had entered upon the question. As it was likewise a rule with me never to conceal or soften my own opinions, and never to allow myself to be irritated by what I heard (for it is too serious a subject to indulge frailties with), the best understanding existed between slaveholders and myself. We never quarrelled, while, I believe, we never failed to perceive the extent of the difference of opinion and feeling between us. I met with much more cause for admiration in their frankness than reason to complain of illiberality. The following may serve as a specimen of this part of our intercourse :

The first time I met an eminent Southern gentleman, a defender of slavery, he said to me (within the half hour),

"I wish you would not be in such a hurry away. I wish you would stay a year in this city. I wish you would stay ten years, and then you would change your opinions." "What opinions?"

"Your opinions on slavery."

"What do you know of my opinions on slavery?"

"Oh, we know them well enough: we have all read 'Demerara.'

"Very well: now we shall understand each other; for I must tell you that I think about slavery exactly as I did when I wrote that story. Nothing that I have seen shows me that I have anything to qualify of what is said there. So now you do know my opinions."

"Oh yes. I don't want to know anything more of your opinions. I want you to know mine." "That is exactly what I want.

have them?"

When will you let me

We had engaged to dine with this gentleman the next week; it was now arranged that our party should go two hours earlier than the other guests, in order to hear this gen tleman's exposition of slavery. He was well prepared, and his statement of facts and reasons was clear, ready, and en tertaining. The fault was in the narrowness of his premises, for his whole argument was grounded on the supposition

that human rights consist in sufficient subsistence in return for labour. Before he began I told him that I fully understood his wish not to argue the question, and that I came to hear his statement, not to controvert it; but that I must warn him not to take my silence for assent. Upon this understanding we proceeded, with some little irritability on his part when I asked questions, but with no danger of any quarrel. I never found the slightest difficulty in establishing a similar clear understanding with every slaveholder I met. In the drawing-room of the boarding-house at Richmond, Virginia, three gentlemen, two of whom were entire strangers, attacked me in the presence of a pretty large company one afternoon. This was a direct challenge, which I did not think fit to decline, and we had it all out. They were irritable at first, but softened as they went on; and when, at the end of three hours, we had exhausted the subject, we were better friends than when we began.

Some of the reports of my championship of the negroes arose from a circumstance which occurred the day after my arrival at Charleston. Our host proposed to take us up a church steeple, to obtain a view of the city and its environs. The key of the church was at the Guardhouse opposite, and our host said we might as well go for it ourselves, and thus get a sight of the Guardhouse. One of the city authorities showed us over it, and we stayed a few moments in a room where a lady was preferring a complaint against two negro boys for robbing a henroost. They were proved guilty, and sentenced to be flogged at the place of punishment at the other end of the city.

The view from the church steeple was very fine; and the whole, steeped in spring sunshine, had an oriental air which took me by surprise. The city was spread out beneath us in a fanlike form, in streets converging towards the harbour. The heat and moisture of the climate give to the buildings the hue of age, so as to leave nothing of the American air of spruceness in the aspect of the place. The sandy streets, the groups of mulattoes, the women with turbaned heads, surmounted with water-pots and baskets of fruit; the small panes of the house windows; the yucca bristling in the gardens below us, and the hot haze through which we saw the blue main and its islands, all looked so oriental as to strike us with wonder. We saw Ashley and Cooper rivers, bringing down produce to the main, and were taught the principal