tunity was presented to me of journeying under most favourable circumstances. I had, in my visits at the factory, become acquainted with an Englishman named L, who, unlike most of his nation, had sojourned in our country from motives of curiosity on y. He was on the eve of returning home; and on my opening my wishes, besought me to become his companion; offering an asylum in his own dwelling, and to point out much that would be novel and striking to a stranger, in the institutions of his countrymen. Such a temptation was irresistible: the goal I had so long panted to reach, seemed close. His preparations for departure were already complete, and a short time sufficed for mine. At once I embarked on the world of waters, without bidding adieu even to thee; and buoyant with hope, turned away from the land of my fathers. Our friendship demands this explanation; for lack whereof thou mightest deem me unkind. Thou shalt from time to time receive my observations and records of passing events among the people I am going to visit: I think thou wilt be interested in my narration. Farewell. LETTER II. England. OUR journey is ended. Our passage across the Great Water was marked by no particular occurrence; so, at least, the persons who navigated our vessel declared; but to my simple faculties all was new and wonderful. When the shores faded from the sight, and we entered on an expanse which seemed boundless, as we shot like a swan before the gale, I felt an emotion of terror to which my bosom had been hitherto a stranger. This was increased by the depression produced from the nausea of unnatural motion. In the intervals of sickness, I could not help thinking the sea was an element unnatural to man, else why this new sensation so foreign to that felt by us while treading on earth? While traversing our woods, the thought of sinking through the surface to a fathomless depth had never occurred to me: and if my canoe upset, confidence in swimming enabled me to pass its greatest width. But now, I fancied the wind which bore us along sounded as a breath inhaled by the Spirit of the deep, to draw us : within his jaws. Our companions, however, seemed incapable of understanding my feeling from habit or indifference they were wrapped in perfect confidence, and spoke of terminating our career safely, as a matter of course: and in proportion as indisposition subsided, and the tide of my spirits flowed in the usual channel, I too, began to wonder at my former fear. As to my friend, he had been the same under every change; whether in the evening or the morning, in rough weather or calm; though he spoke little to any one but myself. But towards the end of our journey he became more thoughtful and reserved, and began to keep more and more aloof from conversation. I even thought I saw on him symptoms of melancholy irritation. In the evening of the day before our landing, a day which had been to him one of increased abstraction and silence, we were near each other; I marked the dejection of his countenance and manner, but concluding they were caused by painful recollections, somehow connected with our now near approach to England, I forbore to harass him with questions; and waited for some external incident to dissipate the gloom which gathered round him. Already he had endeared himself to me by a thousand kind attentions; already our minds seemed to vibrate with one impulse: and I sat in silence, wishing, yet not daring, to break a pause becoming every moment more irksome. I was not doomed to hope in vain: a day sultry and cloudy, was closed by an evening so calm, so cool, and clear, that the ocean lay smooth as a mirror; all around was peaceful, and the beauty of the scene roused the slumbering sympathies of L As the sun hastened to dip beneath the western water, he suddenly grasped my arm with one hand, and pointing into the distance with the other, exclaimed, energetically, "See you that dusky ridge stretching along the farthest verge of the horizon ?” 66 "I see," said 1, a long cloud, which seems to rise from the deep." "That which you call a cloud," said he, "is the place of our destination; those are the shores of Britain; on which I trust to-morrow's sun will see us safely landed. You have, no doubt," continued he, "observed my late difference of manner; I fear it has caused pain to your sensitive heart: forgive me, my friend, if I have seemed estranged and altered; this lovely sunset has recalled me to myself: my apparent neglect has arisen solely from increasing anxiety on your account. You have left home to accompany me amidst the scenes of civilized life, and I fear your guileless simplicity will be disappointed at the result: I am hacknied in European manners, to you they are comparatively new. You are going to plunge into the tide of society, which, like our Thames when full, presents security to the eye of inexperience, which perceives not the shoals beneath the surface. You are going to visit that great city, who is drunk with her own abominations; where exist more virtue and more vice, more freedom and more slavery, more riches and more poverty, more truth and more falsehood-in short, more opposite extremes in every shape, than on any spot of like magnitude in our globe. You are going to witness closely in the aggregate, what as yet you have seen only in perspective, in a small circle of adventurers, who had left home in search of what was denied to them there: you will behold the great ones of the earth stamping on the necks of prostrate fellowmen: you will, as your intellects expand with daily exercise, see the debasing fetters of superstition and slavery binding reason, the only attribute by which man is distinguished above the beasts of the field, in bonds more durable than iron. You will see man goaded with the lash of tyranny, until driven to frenzy he loses native purity, and becomes more ferocious than a hungry lion. You will hear |