American brethren. I really am not without hopes, that it may yet become the fashion for ladies of the two countries to exchange visits across the Atlantic. Then, and perhaps not till then, will my country-women learn to do justice to their Western sisters; and leaving it to us, their knights-errant, to maintain their own superiority, as in dutý bound, will begin to think it possible, at least, that intelligence, refinement, and piety may combine, even on this side of the Atlantic, to form characters justly entitled to esteem and affection, The supercilious disdain with which, in many circles, the very idea of polished society in America is rejected, would be suppressed by a more correct estimate of American manners; and prejudice would be succeeded by candour and liberality. Christian sympathy also would be awakened towards those unknown distant friends, who, sprung from the same stock, and speaking the same language, profess also the same religion; and who, strangers and pilgrims on the earth, like their European brethren and sisters, are travelling a thorny road to that better country, where Christians, of every nation, will be for ever united in one common family.

My very sensibility to the unrivalled excellencies of my fair country-women makes me

additionally solicitous that they, at least, should be exempt from those unchristian prejudices, which some of my countrymen appear to regard as proofs of patriotism. The pleasure and exultation with which I have just been listening, in a large party, to warm eulogiums on Mrs. Hannah More and Mrs. Fry, and some other of our illustrious females, have rendered me at this moment peculiarly susceptible on this point; and you must excuse me if I write with corresponding earnestness. The conversation afterwards turned on the signs of the times in both countries; and on our rambles in Canada, where many of the party had spent the summer. It was very pleasant to compare our adventures and impressions. Montreal and Quebec are so much like old European towns, and differ so widely from the airy, expanded cities of the United States, that an American feels as far from home, on his first arrival, in a Canadian city, as I did in the forests on the Mississippi. As he looks round him, he feels more and more in a foreign land; and the foreign language and gentle manners of the native Canadians confirm the impression. The pomp of monarchy, even when dimly seen in the regalia of a viceroy: the aristocratical distinctions apparent even in a colony: the vestiges of the feudal system to

be traced in the surrounding seignories; the nunneries, and the Catholic churches, with their vesper and matin bells; the priests and friars walking in the streets, and the boards of plenary indulgence suspended from the walls, are all calculated to recall impressions connected rather with the old world, than with the newly discovered continent, where man still shares his divided empire with the beasts of the forest. Here no gray tower meets the eye, to call back the imagination to scenes and incidents of elder times; no monastic edifices, to revive the memory of ancient superstitions; no regalia, transmitted through a line of kings; no feudal magnificence; no baronial splendour; no sacred depositories of the ashes of generations, who have slept with their fathers during a thousand years: all is new, fresh, and prospective; and if the mind will take a retrospective glance, it is but to expatiate in the regions of fancy, or to lose itself in the clouds which rest on the early history of the aborigines. But I shall have tired you,

Letter XXEX.

Philadelphia, 6th Nov. 1820.

-NEITHER am I able to write to you as fully as I could desire on the subject of emigration to the United States, upon which you say you should wish to hear what occurs to me. On this difficult and interesting topic, I will enter more particularly shortly; and, in the mean time, will send you the result of my observations on the inducements which Canada appeared to me to offer to English labourers and other persons of little or no property. Those observations were necessarily both rapid and superficial; and my information is proportionably scanty, although I endeavoured to seize every opportunity of obtaining intelligence.

The lands which the Government is at present distributing in Upper Canada lie parallel to the St. Lawrence and the Lakes, and constitute a range of townships in the rear of those already granted. They are said to be no where above ten or fifteen miles distant from the old settlements. Land offices are established in ten different districts, in order to save the emigrants the trouble

of going up to York; but their power is restricted to grants of a hundred acres. When an emigrant has chosen the township in which he wishes to settle, and has complied with the necessary formalities, he receives, by lot, a location-ticket for a particular hundred acres, with a condition that he is not to dispose of them for three years. The title is not given till he has performed his settling duties; which are, to clear five acres in each hundred, and the half of the road in front. Now these certainly appear to be very easy conditions on which to obtain the feesimple of a hundred acres: and the proposal to emigrate must therefore be a tempting one to a starving labourer or mechanic.

The real inducements, however, are so much less than the apparent ones, that although many would wisely emigrate even with a full conviction of the difficulties they had to encounter, I believe that, at present, there is not one emigrant in five hundred who does not feel bitterly disappointed on his arrival at Quebec. Instead of finding himself, as his confused ideas of geography had led him to expect, on the very borders of his little estate, he learns with astonishment that he is still five hundred miles from his transatlantic acres; and, if he has no money in his pocket,