occasionally, though seldom, we meet with one of the few surviving actors in scenes and events which are matter of history to the present generation.

General Dearborn and Governor Brooks, are the only revolutionary heroes whom I recollect meeting in company at Boston.

In the Faneuil Hall, or Cradle of Liberty, as it is called, I attended a public meeting on the subject of prohibiting duties on foreign manufactures. It was with strange and mingled feelings, that I saw this intelligent portion of a great, prosperous, and independent nation, so lately an infant colony on a rocky shore, with hostile Indians in their rear, proceeding to discuss a question which assumed the possession of resources, which other nations have been centuries in attaining. While they were coldly animadverting on the experience of Great Britain, and deriving warnings from her example, I often grew a little angry, and felt that they might have remembered that she was their parent country, and that she still supplied them with a large portion of the knowledge which enabled them to avail themselves of their natural resources.

I have been much interested in tracing little peculiarities in the manners and institutions of

the Bostonians, to the customs of their puritanic ancestors; but I will not tire you with these in a letter.

I am surprised by the proofs which are presented to me of the learning of the "Pilgrim Fathers," as they call the first settlers, and with their active solicitude to found seminaries for learning, while wanting almost the necessaries of life. They must have been sadly disheartened at the first sight of the rocky shores of New England. At Salem I saw the original charters from Kings James and Charles. A few weeks will close the second century, since the arrival of the first settlers at Plymouth; and an oration will be pronounced on the rock where they landed, to a large concourse of people from different parts of New England. One can hardly conceive a finer subject for an orator, than the occasion will suggest.

I think I never mentioned, either that I saw the Constitution, the Independence, and the Java frigates, which are lying at Boston, or that I dined one day in company with the son of one of the pretended Indians, who poured the odious tea out of the chests into the Bay.

New York, 21st October.-We set off from Boston in the stage, at four o'clock in the morning of the 19th, and breakfasting on the way,

reached Providence, in Rhode Island, about one o'clock. This is the seat of the earliest, and most extensive, but now by no means the most complete establishment of cotton manufactures in this country, and contains many large and handsome private houses. As I could not stay a few hours without staying two or three days, and as I had seen Waltham, I proceeded in the mail to Norwich, about 80 miles from Boston, where we arrived at seven o'clock in the evening. The most agreeable companions in the stage were one of the Theological Professors of Andover, and an Episcopal clergyman, who had travelled over Europe, and spent some time at Oxford. Our conversation turned for a considerable time on the comparative authority and validity of Episcopal and Presbyterian ordination, and a good deal of real learning was displayed on both sides.

The Americans have the advantage over us in coolness and courtesy in argument, and scarcely ever interrupt the speaker, a lesson of politeness imbibed, perhaps, from the Indians, who are most particular in this respect.

At Norwich we took the steam-boat, dropped down the river to New London, where we anchored till day-light, and then proceeded about 50 miles to Newhaven, where we arrived

in the evening, and were transhipped into another steam-boat, the Connecticut. The sun was just setting, and the full moon rising in a cloudless sky, as we left the beautiful bay of Newhaven, and at four o'clock this morning we found ourselves lying at the wharf of New York, about 54 miles from Newhaven, and 230 from Boston, which we had left 48 hours before. It is an easy and pleasant journey; but there is little interesting in the scenery, either in Rhode Island, or that part of Connecticut through which we passed. The appearance of Rhode Island was rocky, desolate, and uncomfortable; and the people, I am told, are in a worse condition than in any part of New England, with respect to morals, education, and religion.— Indeed, if the accounts stated to me by my fellow-travellers be correct, it must be worse than any other non-slave-holding State I have yet seen. A great change was perceptible on entering Connecticut, although the external character of the country was similar for some distance. Norwich was the birth-place of the traitor Arnold.

The shores of Connecticut presented a pleasing variety of woodland and cultivation, as we sailed through the Sound, and were animated by numerous villages, with their still more

numerous spires. We had a very large party on board the steam-boat; and among others, my friends the Episcopalian clergyman, and the Professor, whom I mentioned in a former part of this letter, and the Governor of Ohio. The latter came on board in the night, and had changed his dress a little, so that I did not immediately recognize him. When I did, he apologized for not speaking first, but said the manners of my countrymen were in general so stiff, (he would gladly have said haughty,) that he had been obliged to come to the determination never to speak first, although always pleased with an opportunity of conversing with them. We then became very intimate, and I found him an interesting and very intelligent companion. He removed into Ohio in 1796, when it was comparatively a wilderness. He represented the State 12 years in the Senate, and has been Governor four years. He has 20,000 acres of good land, and when I spoke to him at Boston, had a cotton-mill; but he has just heard of its being burnt down.

I was amused last night by an illustration he furnished of the levelling nature of republican institutions. We were so large a party, that we had to draw lots for births; he drew in his turn, and got a birth, but he found it pre-occu