with pleasure. When the boat touched the shore, "You seem," he said, " to be a foreigner; I wish you may soon become a citizen, for I think that you are worthy to be a citizen of our country??? The old patriot meant this for a compliment; as such I received it, and as such, I assure you, I felt it.

It was with much interest that I visited, some evenings since, the little villa of which you once were an inmate. We turned down the little lane, wild and rocky as when you traversed it, and reached the gate just as the sun just as the sun was sinking behind the heights of the Jersey shore. I thought that you had gazed on the same object from the same spot-I cannot describe how dreary and sad-how fraught with painful recollections the scene was to me; and, had I been alone, I could have sat down, notwithstanding the keen searching air of a November evening, and moralised with Jacques for good an hour and a quarter. You know the spot; but it doubtless lives in your memory as inhabited by kind friends, and breathing, within and without, warmth, comfort, beauty, and hospitality. We found it desolate and deserted; the house, without a tenant, gradually falling into disrepair; the fences broken down, the trees and shrubs all growing wild, while the thick falling leaves that strewed the ground, and rustled beneath our feet- the season and even the hour, all wooed one on to

sickly thoughts, and pressed on the heart the conviction of the slenderness of that link which holds us to this changing world, to its good or ill, its joys or sorrows.

I would finish this letter with a more cheerful paragraph, were not the ship that is to bear it to you about to sail. Autumn still lingers with us, or rather we are at present thrown back into July by the Indian summer. Farewell.

31

LETTER IV.

APPEARANCE AND MANNERS OF THE YOUNG WOMEN. STYLE OF SOCIETY. RECEPTION OF FOREIGNERS. GENERAL BERNARD. FOREIGN WRITERS. -MR. FEARON.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

New York, February, 1819.

My letters have as yet chiefly spoken of our more intimate friends; and have said little of the general style of society in this city. I feel that a stranger ought to be slow in pronouncing an opinion upon these matters, and indeed the rigors of the winter (though unusually mild this year) have for some time past made me rather a close prisoner.

Though the objects around me have now lost the freshness of novelty, they have by no means lost that air of cheerfulness and gaiety which I noticed in my first letters. The skies, though they have exchanged their fervors for biting frosts, have not lost their splendors, nor are the pavements trod by figures less airy, now that they are glittering with snows. Broadway, the chosen resort of the young and the gay, in these cold bright mornings, seems one moving crowd of painted butterflies. I sometimes tremble for the pretty creatures (and very pretty they are) as they flutter along through the biting air in dress more suited to an Italian winter than to one which, notwithstanding the favorable

season, approaches nearer to that of Norway. In spite of this thoughtlessness, the catch-cold does not seem to be the same national disease that the Frenchman found it in England. This is the more remarkable, as consumption is very frequent, and may be generally traced to some foolish frolic, such as returning from a ball in an open sleigh, or walking upon snow in thin slippers.

I believe I have before remarked upon the beauty of the young women; I might almost say girls, for their beauty is commonly on the wane at five and twenty. Before that age, their complexions are generally lovely; the red and white so delicately tempered on their cheeks, as if no rude wind had ever fanned them; their features small and regular, as if moulded by fairy fingers; and countenances so gay and smiling, as if no anxious thoughts had ever clouded the young soul within. It is a pity that the envious sun should so soon steal the rose and lilly from their cheeks, and perhaps it is also a pity that the cares of a family should so soon check the thoughtless gaiety of their hearts, and teach them that mortal life is no dream of changing pleasures, but one of anxieties and cheating hopes. The advantages attending early marriages are so substantial, and the country in which they are practicable, is in a condition of such enviable prosperity, whether we regard its morals or its happiness, that I almost blush to notice the objections which, as an idle observer, one might find in a circumstance re

sulting from so happy an order of things. The American youth of both sexes are, for the most part, married ere they are two-and-twenty; and indeed it is usual to see a girl of eighteen a wife and a mother. It might doubtless, ere this, be possible, if not to fix them in habits of study, at least to store their minds with useful and general knowledge, and to fit them to be not merely the parents but the judicious guides of their children. Men have necessarily, in all countries, greater facilities than women for the acquirement of knowledge, and particularly for its acquirement in that best of all schools, the world. I mean not the world of fashion, but the world of varied society, where youth loses its presumption, and prejudice its obstinacy, and where self-knowledge is best obtained from the mind being forced to measure itself with other minds, and thus to discover the shallowness of its knowledge, and the groundlessness of its opinions. In this country, where every man is called to study the national institutions, and to examine, not merely into the measures but the principles of government, the very laws become his teachers; and in the exercise of his rights and duties as a citizen, he becomes more or less a politician and a philosopher. His education, therefore, goes on through life; and though he should never become familiar with abstract science or ornamental literature, his stock of useful knowledge increases daily, his judgment is con