out of countenance, by a high-minded and punctilious honesty, before which, the more lax commercial morality of their degenerate descendants in this country should stand rebuked." Having stated these particulars, which candour would not allow me to suppress, it is peculiarly gratifying to me to add, that I have the pleasure of being acquainted, in all the commercial cities, with merchants, distinguished by as strict a regard to integrity, as high a sense of honour, as any I know in England, and in whose principles I should be equally ready to place unlimited confidence. They, I trust, will redeem the character of their country, and never rest till they have effected such alterations in its commercial code, as may tend to render the body of their countrymen as honourable as themselves. Lotteries and horse-racing are not uncommon here: the latter is most prevalent in the southern States, where private race-courses are frequent. Gambling, in the middle States, I should imagine, from all I saw, is about as common as in England: it is far more so as you proceed to the southward, and dreadfully prevalent in New Orleans, where a license to authorise gamblinghouses is sold either by the city or the state authorities, I forgot to inquire which; though in the one case it would throw the blame on the French, in the other, on the Americans. The licenser is reported to realize a large income from this iniquitous traffic; and the Kentucky boats, which, for above a mile, line the shores of the Mississippi, are said, on Sundays, to form a line of gambling-shops. These, with the open theatres, and the week-day work, which is going on at the wharfs, to, perhaps, one-third of its ordinary extent, present a Sunday-evening prospect you would be grieved to witness. Indelicate and profane language is less common in the Eastern States than with us, perhaps equally prevalent in the Middle, and far more so in the southern Atlantic States; but it prevails to an awful degree on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. These, indeed, are emphatically, in a moral sense, the benighted regions of America; and yet their natural aspect is bright and beautiful. Often, when at New Orleans, walking out at sunrise, on the banks of the Mississippi, which, a few hours before, had been parched and cracked by yesterday's meridian fervour, but were then saturated with the heavy dews which, at that season, fell nightly like "showers on the mown grass," I have thought that I had never before seen so much to delight the eye, regale the senses, or kindle the imagin ation;-orange groves, with their golden fruit and fresh green leaves; hundreds of cattle half hid in the deep wet clover, which grows wild and luxuriant on the rich alluvion; the sugar and cotton plantations on the opposite bank, and the forest behind them, stretching to the boundless prairies of the Attacapas and Opelousas; above all, the noble Mississippi flowing majestically to the sea, and carrying the imagination thousands of miles up its current, to its distant source. I have before alluded to the beauties of the close of day, in a climate so delicious, at that hour, and the succeeding ones, when the vault of heaven has a deeper blue than with us. "Where milder moons dispense serener light, And yet, when I think of the moral pollution which pervades New Orleans, and the yellow fever which annually depopulates it, or of the intermittents and slavery which infest its vicinities, the rocky shores of New England have a thousand times more charms for me. There, I see, on every side, a hardy, robust, industrious enterprising population; better fed, better clothed, better educated, than I ever saw before, and more intelligent, and at least as moral as the corresponding classes even of our own countrymen. There, instead of a succession of slave-plantations, which, by furnishing their own supplies, or deriving them in large quantities from a distance, prevent that interchange which gives rise to numerous villages and towns, I find myself surrounded by handsome thriving country towns; and I have already told you how extremely beautiful a New England town is, with its white frame-houses and Venetian blinds, its little courts, its planted squares, its fine wide streets, or rather avenues, and especially its numerous spires. From one spot, I have counted more than 25 spires ; and yet I have been asked, in England, if there were any churches, or places of worship,' in America. Letter XLII. Hartford, Connecticut, 1st March, 1821. ON the 23d, I left Newburyport for Salem, 25 miles distant, where we arrived at noon. The surface of the ground was generally well cultivated; but I often observed immense rocks, in the fields, evincing that the country immediately on the coast was more indebted to man than to nature for any appearance of fertility it might exhibit. Indeed, I think a great part of the road between Newburyport and Boston presents a more rocky region than I ever before saw in a state of cultivation; but every thing seems to yield to the proverbial perseverance of New England. I have seen a New Englander clearing what appeared to me a barren rock, for the sake of the narrow strips of soil in the crevices; and I could not help thinking, with what a smile of contempt a Mississippi or Alabama planter would recall such a scene to his recollection, while standing with folded arms over his slaves as they hoed his rich alluvion. But both his contempt and pity would |