little relish with our crackers," in ancient English, eat salt meat and dry biscuits. Such was the fare, and for guests that certainly were intended to be honoured. I could not help recalling the delicious repasts which I remembered to have enjoyed at little dairy farms in England, not possessed, but rented, and at high rents too; where the clean freshcoloured bustling mistress herself spread the yellow butter on the delightful brown loaf, and placed her curds, and her junket, and all the delicate treasures of her dairy before us, and then with hospitable pride, placed herself at her board, and added the more delicate" relish" of good tea and good cream. I remembered all this, and did not think the difference atoned for, by the dignity of having my cup handed to me by a slave. The lady I now visited, however, greatly surpassed my quondam friends in the refinement of her conversation. She ambled through the whole time the visit lasted in a sort of elegantly mincing familiar style of gossip, which I think she was imitating from some novel, for I was told she was a great novel reader, and left all household occupations to be performed by her slaves. To say she addressed us in a tone of equality, will give no adequate idea of her manner, I am persuaded that no misgiving on the subject ever entered her head. She told us that their estate was her dividend of her father's property. She had married a first cousin, who was as fine a gentleman as she was a lady, and as idle, preferring hunting (as they call shooting) to any other occupation. The consequence was, that but a very small portion of the dividend was cultivated, and their poverty was extreme. The slaves, particularly the lads, were considerably more than half naked, but the air of dignity with which, in the midst of all this misery, the lanky lady said to one of the young negroes, "Attend to your young master, Lycurgus,"

must have been heard to be conceived in the full extent of its mock heroic.'-vol. ii. pp. 8—13.

Much as we reprobate the system of slavery wherever it is found, it is but just to admit, that it is much alleviated by the attention which in America generally is paid to the negro domestics. In Virginia alone, we believe, it is forbidden by law to teach a slave to read-a law which cannot stand long against the force of public opinion.

Though no botanist, the author gives an interesting description of the fruits and flowers which grow in Maryland. No words, however, can give an idea of the luxuriance of the flowering shrubs, which are beautiful beyond all things. The butterflies, too, are, we should suppose, unrivalled for their elegance and variety.

'There is another charm that haunts the summer wanderer in America, and it is perhaps the only one found in greatest perfection in the West but it is beautiful every where. In a bright day during any of the summer months your walk is through an atmosphere of butterflies, so gaudy in hue and so varied in form, that I often thought they looked like flowers on the wing. Some of them are very large, measuring three or four inches across the wings; but many, and, I think, the most beautiful, are smaller than ours. Some have wings of the most dainty lavender colour and bodies of black, others are fawn and rose colour, and others

again are orange and bright blue. But pretty as they are, it is their number even more than their beauty that delights the eye. Their gay and noiseless movement as they glance through the air, crossing each other in chequered maze, is very beautiful. The humming-bird is another pretty summer toy; but they are not sufficiently numerous, nor do they live enough on the wing to render them so important a feature in the transatlantic show, as the rainbow-tinted butterflies. The fire-fly was a far more brilliant novelty. In moist situations, or before a storm, they are very numerous; and in the dark sultry evening of a burning day, when all employment was impossible, I have often found it a pastime to watch their glaring light, now here, now there; now seen, now gone; shooting past with the rapidity of lightning, and looking like a shower of falling stars, blown about in the breeze of evening.'-vol. ii. pp. 29, 30.

In the course of her tour, our author visited Philadelphia, that Quaker city, with its streets so regularly drawn out in squares and lines, that must look to a person sailing over it in a balloon like a mathematical diagram. On the Sundays, chains are thrown across the streets, to prevent horses and carriages from passing. With all this apparent religions severity of conduct, Philadelphia is far from being immaculate. The author relates a story, the truth of which she fully believed, of an itinerant preacher, who after one visit, left no fewer than seven females the victims of his passions. The most beautiful object in Philadelphia is its market; the stalls are spread with snow-white napkins, and the neat manner in which every article is exhibited is incomparable. The dress of the ladies is remarkable for its elegance, delicacy, and taste; and the manners of the people generally simple, unaffected, composed, and agreeable. We shall give the author's graphic description of the day of a Philadelphian lady of the first class.'

This lady shall be the wife of a senator and a lawyer in the highest repute and practice. She has a very handsome house, with white marble steps and door posts, and a delicate silver knocker and door-handle; she has very handsome drawing rooms, very handsomely furnished (there is a side-board in one of them, but it is very handsome and has very handsome decanters and cut glass water jugs upon it), she has a very handsome carriage, and a very handsome free black coachman; she is always very handsomely dressed; and, moreover, she is very handsome herself.

'She rises, and her first hour is spent in the scrupulously nice arrangement of her dress; she descends to her parlour neat, stiff, and silent; her breakfast is brought in by her free black footman; she eats her fried ham and her salt fish, and drinks her coffee in silence, while her husband reads one newspaper, and puts another under his elbow; and then, perhaps, she washes the cups and saucers. Her carriage is ordered at eleven, till that hour she is employed in the pastry room, her snow-white apron protecting her mouse-coloured silk. Twenty minutes before her carriage should appear, as she retires to her chamber, as she calls it, shakes and folds up her still snow-white apron, smooths her rich dress, and with nice care, sets on her elegant bonnet, and all the handsome et cetera ; then walks down stairs, just at the moment that her free black coachman

announces to her free black footman that the carriage waits. She steps into it, and gives the word, " Drive to the Dorcas society." Her footman stays at home to clean the knives, but her coachman can trust his horses while he opens the carriage door, and his lady not being accustomed to a hand or an arm, gets out very safely without, though one of her own is occupied by a work basket, and the other by a large roll of all those indescribable matters which ladies take as offerings to Dorcas societies. She enters the parlour appropriated for the meeting, and finds seven other ladies, very like herself, and takes her place among them; she presents her contribution, which is accepted with a gentle circular smile, and her parings of broad cloth, her ends of ribbon, her gilt paper, and her minikin pins, are added to the parings of broad cloth, the ends of ribbon, the gilt paper, and the minikin pins with which the table is already covered; she also produces from her basket three ready-made pincushions, four inkwipers, seven paper matches, and a paste-board watch-case; these are welcomed with acclamations, and the youngest lady present deposits them carefully on shelves, amid a prodigious quantity of similar articles. She then produces her thimble, and asks for work; it is presented to her, and the eight ladies all stitch together for some hours. Their talk is of priests and of missions; of the profits of their last sale, of their hopes from the next; of the doubt whether young Mr. This, or young Mrs. That, should receive the fruits of it to fit him out for Liberia; of the very ugly bonnet seen at Church on Sabbath morning; of the very handsome preacher who performed on Sabbath afternoon, and of the very large collection made on Sabbath evening. This lasts till three, when the carriage again appears, and the lady and her basket return home; she mounts to her chamber, carefully sets aside her bonnet and its appurtenances, puts on her scolloped black silk apron, walks into the kitchen to see that all is right, then into the parlour, where, having cast a careful glance over the table prepared for dinner, she sits down, work in hand, to await her spouse. He comes, shakes hands with her, spits, and dines. The conversation is not much, and ten minutes suffice for dinner; fruit and toddy, the newspaper, and the work-bag succeed. In the evening the gentleman, being a savant, goes to the Wister society, and afterwards plays a snug rubber at a neighbour's. The lady receives at tea a young missionary and three members of the Dorcas society. And so ends her day.'-vol. ii. pp. 72-75.

In America, a great number of married young persons fix themselves in boarding houses, instead of forming establishments for themselves. Their mode of life differs but little from that which is found at most institutions of that description. The living generally is excellent. They consume an extraordinary quantity of bacon and ham, eggs and oysters, which are often eaten altogether; so are beef steaks with stewed peaches, and salt fish with onions. Their bread is excellent, their butter tolerable, cream is not plentiful, the common vegetables are very fine and abundant. Sea-cale and cauliflowers are seldom seen. Indian corn is eaten in a great variety of ways. The rock and shad are their best fish; they have very little turbot, salmon, or fresh cod; their game is much inferior to ours; they have neither the hare nor the pheasant. They are all

!

extravagantly fond of puddings, pies, and all sorts of sweets. The ladies seldom take any wine, and very rarely, when they do, exceed a single glass. Mixed dinner parties of both sexes are not of frequent occurrence. On all such occasions, the barbarous custom exists of placing the ladies at one end of the table, and the gentlemen at the other! If a lady plays at cards, it must not be for money. They are in general bad musicians, either as vocalists or on instruments. The most agreeable meetings are said to be those at which no married women are admitted! The ladies have a strange and unaccountable fancy for powdering the face, neck, and arms with pulverized starch. They think it adds to their charms. They are also very fond of false hair. They seem to have no idea of regulating their dress by the weather. A fair damsel may be seen picking her way through the snow, in a pale rose-coloured bonnet set on the very top of the head. It is no uncommon thing for them to return home with their pretty little ears frost bitten. They never wear muffs or boots, and they walk in their shoes and silk stockings in the middle of winter. There must be vanity at the bottom of this, for they have generally beautiful tiny feet. Yet they neither walk well, nor dance well.

The reader will derive both instruction and entertainment from the author's remarks on the state of literature, the fine arts, and education in America. He will also be much amused with her account of New York, Albany, Rochester, and the celebrated falls of the Niagara, all of which she visited before her return to England.

The Americans will not much like Mrs. Trollope's volumes, and there are many even at this side of the Atlantic, amongst them ourselves, who would wish that she had more frequently checked her disposition to draw, from particular premises, general conclusions. There are multitudes in America who firmly believe that every Englishman is a cockney, pronounces the v like a w, and adds the aspirated h to every word beginning with an a. Their error is ludicrous; but it is not more ludicrous than that of the traveller who believes that every American is a back-woodsman"a half horse, half alligator, of Kentucky." It is time that on both sides of the water we should get rid of these false notions, which make us look at each other through a deceptive medium. Mrs Trollope's work will not much conduce to this end; at the same time it must everywhere be admitted, that her observations uniformly indicate a strong, active, well informed mind, endowed with good sense, and no ordinary firmness. Her style is lively, elegant, and sometimes even poetically beautiful. This is the first production which we have seen from her hands, but we have no hesitation in expressing our opinion, that it must place her name among those of the most eminent female writers in our language.

566

ART. VIII.-Gleanings in Natural History: with Local Recollections. By Edward Jesse, Esq., Deputy Surveyor of his Majesty's Parks. To which are added, Maxims and Hints for an Angler. 8vo. pp. 313. London Murray. 1832.

MR. WHITE, in the preface to his Natural History of Selborne, the most interesting, perhaps, and one of the most valuable, among the contributions that have in modern times been made to that department of knowlege, suggests, "that if stationary men would pay some attention to the districts on which they reside, and would publish their thoughts respecting the objects that surround them, from such materials might be drawn the most complete county histories.". Mr. Jesse informs us that it was this remark, that first induced him to write down any observations which had occurred to him on subjects relating to natural history. We are with him convinced, that if the plan were to be adopted by persons residing in the country, much useful information would be obtained. Indeed the wonder is that such a tribute is so very seldom paid by clergymen especially, to the varied and surprising productions which the Creator has scattered in such profusion upon the surface of the earth, and which, particularly in the fields and on the mountains, are so well calculated to awake and reward the attention.

Memorials of the kind here suggested have a degree of attraction of no ordinary kind. They exhibit at once the life of the inquirer, and the topographical peculiarities of the objects which he describes-if such peculiarities they have. Even when there is nothing to distinguish the insects of one part of the country from those of another, it is still interesting to have the fact of coincidence or resemblance authentically ascertained. And at all times it is delightful to accompany an intelligent man in the rambles which he takes through his neighbourhood; to sit down with him under a shady tree and moralize on the goodly prospect that opens upon the eye; to watch with him the tenants of the soil, the water, or the air, in the performance of the various offices which are assigned to them in the creation; to become acquainted with their habits, their structure, and the laws by which they are guided. He cannot, as Mr. Jesse justly remarks, be a bad man who devotes a portion of his time to studies such as these; studies which, more than the best philosophy to be found in the books, conduce to the improvement of the heart, the practice of sound benevolence, and, above all, to the cultivation of that religion which has the Almighty Being for the object of its worship, and the universe for its temple. The book before us is wholly devoid of method. We confess we like it the better for the negligé dress in which it appears. The author does not pretend to be a man of science. He writes as a mere amateur, in the tone and style in which he may be supposed to converse; and there is an air of gentleness and good nature about his gleanings, which very much increase their value in our