Letter XXXVE.

Portland, State of Maine, 17th February, 1821.

AT six o'clock, on the 7th, we took leave of New Bedford, and set off in the stage for Boston. It was a dark morning, with rain and sleet, but not cold. The country seemed laboriously cultivated, but very barren; and occasionally we skirted the native forests of slanted pine and cedar. We breakfasted at a poor house, where we met with civility; but where the meagre fare, so little in the American fashion, evinced that we were either on a road little frequented, or in the track of travellers who still retained some tincture of the right thrifty economical habits of their New England ancestors. I still observed, however, the neat, clean dress, which distinguishes the children even of the poorest farmer in New England; and indeed, generally throughout America. Rags and a dirty squalid appearance will be quite new to me on my return, as I have scarcely seen an instance of them since I left the Slave-States; and there, generally speaking, only among the blacks.

In the course of the morning, we passed within 19 miles of Plymouth, where the Pil grim Fathers landed about 200 years ago. The second Centenary Anniversary was celebrated there a few weeks since, and an immense concourse of people assembled. The following are a few of the toasts which were given on that occasion.

"The character of William Penn-like that of an American autumn-mild-calm-bright -abounding in good fruits."

"Old times-old folks-old records-and OLD COLONY."

"Literature; Antiquities of New England; Elliott's Indian Bible, writ with but one penNewman's Concordance, compiled by the light of pine knots."

"The Rock of Plymouth. May it be trodden two thousand years hence, by as worthy feet as leaped upon it two hundred years ago.'

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Speed the arts, which speed the plough, which speeds the keel which Jack built."

"The ancient haunts of the Pilgrims; tongues in trees; books in the running streams; sermons in stones; and good in every thing."

"The hospitality of our Fathers-the best first, and the best always."

There is an annual celebration, but to that, I believe, none make a point of going, except

those in the vicinity; while the close of the century is rendered an interesting and solemn occasion, by the assemblage of distinguished characters from all parts of New England; who unite in the offices of religion, and after the delivery of an appropriate oration,* spend

* The following is an extract from the Oration spoken on this occasion, by Mr. Webster, an eminent lawyer and Member of Congress. It is an oration which will bear a comparison with the finest specimens of modern eloquence :

"Different, indeed, most widely different, from all common instances of emigration and plantation, were the condition, the purposes, and the prospects of our Fathers, when they established their infant colony upon this spot. They came hither to a land from which they were never to return. Hither they had brought, and here they were to fix their hopes, their attachments, and their objects. Some natural tears they shed, as they left the pleasant abode of their fathers; and some emotions they suppressed, when the white cliffs of their native country, now seen for the last time, grew dim to their sight. They were acting, however, upon a resolution not to be changed. With whatever stifled regrets, with whatever occasional hesitation, with whatever appaling apprehensions, which might sometimes arise with force to shake the firmest purpose, they had yet committed themselves to heaven, and the elements; and a thousand leagues of water soon interposed, to separate them for ever from the region which gave them birth. A new existence awaited them here; and when they saw these shores, rough, cold, barbarous, and barren, as then they were, they beheld their country. That mixed and strong feeling, which we call love of country, and which is, in general, never extinguished from the heart of man, grasped and embraced its proper object here. Whatever constitutes country, except

the evening in festivity. The rock on which the Fathers landed, is now brought into the

the earth and the sun, all the moral causes of affection and attachment, which operate upon the heart, they had brought with them to their new abode. Here, were now their families and friends; their homes, and their prosperity. Before they reached the shore, they had establishments of a social system; and at a much earlier period had settled their forms of religious worship. At the moment of their landing, therefore, they possessed institutions of government, and institutions of religion; and friends and families, and social and religious institutions, established by consent, founded on choice and preference. How nearly do these fill up your whole idea of country!

"The morning that beamed on the first night of their repose, saw the Pilgrims already established in their country. There were political institutions, and civil liberty, and religious worship. Poetry has fancied nothing in the wandering of heroes so distinct and characteristic. Here was man, indeed, unprotected and unprovided for on the shore of a rude and fearful wilderness; but it was politic, intelligent, and educated man. Every thing was civilized but the physical world. Institutions, containing in substance all that ages had done for human government, were established in a forest. Cultivated mind was to act on uncultivated nature; and more than all, a government and a country, were to commence, with the very first foundations laid under the divine light of the Christian Religion, Happy auspices of a happy futurity! Who could wish that his country's existence had otherwise begun? Who would desire the power of going back to the ages of fable? Who would wish for an origin, obscured in the darkness of antiquity? Who would wish for other emblazoning of his country's heraldry, or rather ornaments of her genealogy, than to be able to say, that her first existence was with intelligence; her first breath, the inspira

middle of the town, at Plymouth; and it is proposed to erect a monument over it, in a

tions of liberty; her first principle, the truth of divine religion?

"Local attachments and sympathies would, ere long, spring up in the breasts of our ancestors, endearing to them the place of their refuge. Wherever natural objects are assembled with interesting scenes and high efforts, they obtain a hold on human feeling, and demand from the heart a sort of recognition and regard. This rock soon became hallowed in the esteem of the Pilgrims, and these hills grateful to their sight. Neither they nor their children were again to till the soil of England, nor again to traverse the seas which surround her. But there was a new sea, now open to their enterprize, and a new soil, which had not failed to respond gratefully to their laborious industry, and which was already assuming a robe of verdure. Hardly had they provided shelter for the living, ere they were summoned to erect sepulchres for the dead.-The ground had become sacred by enclosing the remains of some of their companions and connexions. A parent, a child, a husband, or a wife, had gone the way of all flesh, and mingled with the dust of New England. We naturally look with strong emotions to the spot, though it be a wilderness, where the ashes of those we love repose. Where the heart has laid down what it loved most, it is desirous of laying itself down. No sculptured marble, no enduring monument, no honourable inscription, no ever-burning taper that would drive away the darkness of death, can soften our sense of the reality of mortality, and hallow to our feelings the ground which is to cover us, like the consciousness that we shall sleep, dust to dust, with the object of our affections.

"In a short time, other causes sprung up to bind the Pilgrims with new cords to their chosen land. Children were born, and the hopes of future generations found this the land of their nativity, and saw that they were bound to its fortunes.