building a hut and a barn, and in fencing and sowing his fields. His wife, as placid and patient as himself, will second all his labours, and they will sometimes pass away six months without seeing the face of a stranger. In four or five years, comfort, convenience, and ease, will grow up around them, and a competence will recompense their solitary toils.

"The Frenchman, on the contrary, will be up betimes, for the pleasure of viewing and talking over matters with his wife, whose counsel he demands. Their constant agreement would be quite a miracle; the wife dissents, argues, wrangles, and the husband has his own way, or gives up to her, and is irritated or disheartened. Home perhaps grows irksome, so he takes his gun, goes a shooting, or a journey, or to chat with a neighbour. If he stays at home, he either whiles away the hour in good-humoured talk, or he scolds and quarrels. Neighbours interchange visits, for to visit and talk are so necessary to a Frenchman, that along the frontier of Canada and Louisiana, there is nowhere a settler of that nation to be found, but within sight or reach of some other. On asking how far off the remotest settler was, I have been told, He is in the woods with the bears, a league from any house, and with nobody to talk to.'

"This temper is the most characteristic difference between the two pa tions; and, the more I reflect upon this subject, the firmer is my persuasion, that the Americans, and the northern Europeans from whom they are descended, chiefly owe their success in arts and commerce to habitual taciturnity. In silence they collect, arrange, and digest their thoughts, and have leisure to calculate the future; they acquire habits of clear thinking and accurate expression; and hence there is more decision in their conduct, both in public and domestic exigencies; and they at once see the way to their point more clearly, and pursue it more directly.

* On the contrary, the Frenchman's ideas evaporate in ceaseless chat; he exposes himself to bickering and contradiction; excites the garrulity of his wife and sisters; involves himself in quarrels with his neighbours; and finds, in the end, that his life has been squandered away without use or benefit."

LETTER II.

Weld.

DEAR SIR;

AMONG the English travellers in America, whose books I have seen, Weld is clearly one of the most respectable. The greater part of these men appear to be destitute both of understanding and principle. From this imputation, however, I except Harriot and Wansey: the former a military officer; the latter a plain, honest clothier, not destitute of good common sense. The errors of Weld, which are numerous, are derived either from misapprehension, misinformation, or prejudice. The last of these characteristics was a predominant trait in the mind of Mr. Weld. From some unfortunate circumstances, which, as I am imformed, attended him not long after his arrival, he conceived a strong dislike both to the country and its inhabitants; and never resumed his candour until after his book was completed.

His work contains a multitude of misrepresentations. Yet they seem never to have sprung from the want either of understanding, or of sincerity. He is, however, censurable, both for the obliquity of his views, and for the absolute and downright tenor of his assertions, in cases where he knew not that his assertions were true; and where, certainly, they were either wholly or partially erroneous.

As this writer, so far as he has informed us, travelled over a part only of the region, which is the subject of these Letters, and as I shall rarely trouble either you or myself with remarks on other parts of the United States, I shall not detain you long by my observations on his book.

In the second Letter, p. 31 of the fourth edition, he observes, "In a few instances only it would be possible to find a woman, at the age of forty, who has had a large family."

This declaration was not improbably intended to respect only the city of Philadelphia. Even thus limited, it is a gross mistake, as I know by the evidence of my own eyes. In the countries, through which the journies, mentioned in these Letters, lay, there are, it is believed, as many women of this description, in proportion to the whole number of inhabitants, as probably in any other.

Page 189. "Between the town and the Posaick (Passaic) river there is one marsh, which alone extends upwards of twenty miles, and is about two miles wide where you pass over it."

Mr. Weld should have said, that its breadth (as I should judge from passing over it eight or ten times) is not less than eight miles.

Page 190. "It" (that is, the Passaic)" suddenly precipitates itself in one entire sheet over a ledge of rocks, of nearly eight feet in perpendicular height."

For nearly eight feet read seventy feet. Mr. Weld certainly never saw the fall of the Passaic. I visited this spot in May, 1811. The rocks, over which this river descends, rise immediately on the western border of a little settlement, called Patterson. They are of green stone, or whin. The river, immediately before its descent, winds for some distance to the north-east, and, precipitating itself down a steep of seventy feet perpendicular, directs its course nearly south; forming a large and deep basin at the foot of the precipice.

To future travellers, who visit this scene, the solemnity will be deeply enhanced by the remembrance of the following melancholy incident. The Rev. Mr. Cumming, minister of the north Presbyterian church in Newark, having lately married a lady of an excellent character, and fine accomplishments, and having occasion to preach at Patterson, took Mrs. Cumming with him. On the Monday following they visited this cataract. While they were standing on the brow of the precipice, on the north side of the river, Mr. Cumming, having turned to look at some object behind him, found, when he again cast his eye forward, that his wife was missing. While she was looking with intense pleasure on the magnificent sheet of foam before her, she probably became giddy, and fell into the basin below. She was taken up as soon as it was possible;

but she was dead. This is said, whether correctly or not I am ignorant, to be the third instance, in which life has been lost in a similar manner at this fascinating spot.

Ibid. "From the Passaic to the North river, the country is hilly, barren, and uninteresting."

As Mr. Weld took the stage road, he must, after leaving the Passaic, have crossed a wide extent of marsh, perfectly flat (as will be supposed), before he reached the Hackinsack, a much larger river than the Passaic. After leaving the Hackinsack, the flat country continues through a moderate extent. Then the traveller ascends the elevated ground, on which stands the village of Bergen; a narrow, and not a barren, neck of land, perhaps from a mile and a half to two miles in breadth.

Page 205. "Gen. Washington told me, that he was never so much annoyed by musquitoes as at Skenesborough; for that they used to bite through the thickest boot."

A gentleman of great respectability, who was present when General Washington made the observation referred to, told me, that he said, when describing these musquitoes to Mr. Weld, that they "bit through his stockings, above his boots." Our musquitoes have certainly a sharp tooth, and are very adroit at their business; but they have not been sufficiently disciplined, hitherto, to bite through the thickest boot.

There are in this writer several other observations concerning some of the interior parts of the state of New-York, which are incorrect; but are of little moment. There are, also, some invidious remarks concerning the character of the Americans, which merit animadversion*; but as they are

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Mr. Weld, after having mentioned, that himself and his company stopped on his passage down Lake Champlain at one house to breakfast, and at another to dine; at the first of which he says, "We got a little milk and about two pounds of bread, absolutely the whole of what was in the house; and at the second a few eggs and some cold salted fat pork, but not a morsel of bread;" proceeds to describe the latter of these mansions. "The wretched appearance also of this last habitation was very striking; it consisted of a wooden frame, merely with a few boards nailed against it; the crevices between which were the only apertures for the admission of light, except the door; and the roof was so leaky, that we were sprinkled with the rain even as we sat at the fire-side." He then goes on to observe, "That people can live in such a manner, who have the necessaries and conveniences of life

found in those parts of the work which describe the states south of my own limits, I will leave them, with a single ex

within their reach, as much as any others in the world, is really most astonishing! It is however to be accounted for, by that desire of making money, which is the predominant feature in the character of the Americans in general, and leads the petty farmer in particular to suffer numberless inconveniences, when he can gain by so doing. If he can sell the produce of his land to advantage, he keeps as small a part of it as possible for himself, and lives the whole year round upon salt provisions, bad bread, and the fish he can catch in the rivers and lakes in the neighbourhood; if he has built a comfortable house for himself, he readily quits it, as soon as finished, for money, and goes to live in a mere hovel in the woods till he gets time to build another. Money is his idol; and to procure it he gladly foregoes every self-gratification."

A man of common sobriety and good nature would naturally have attributed the wretchedness of this hovel, and the miserable circumstances of those by whom it was inhabited, to their poverty, or to the recency of their settlement in the wilderness; at least he would have asked the question, whether one or both of these might not probably have been the causes of what he saw. Gross prejudice, and rank ill-nature only could have resolutely determined, that avarice must be the sole assignable source of the sufferings undergone by these unfortunate beings. It is not, however, my design to dwell upon this subject. I have made the transcript for the purpose of introducing another from the fair-minded and gentlemanly Lambert; who, on his passage up the same lake, was forced to land upon the same shore, and has told us the following story of his reception by an American farmer.

"We were nearly two hours before we could get the vessel off the rocks. At length having succeeded, we coasted along the shore, till four o'clock in the morning, when we arrived in a small bay in the township of Shelburne, about sixty miles from St. John's, situate in the widest part of the lake. Here we went ashore at the first farin-house, at a little distance from the bay. The door was only on the latch, and we entered; but the people were not yet up. Having awaked the master of the house, and told him our situation, he said we were welcome, and that he would get up immediately. In the mean time, we collected some wood, and putting it upon the live embers in the fire place, soon made a large fire. This was a most comfortable relief, after the cold night we had passed on board our miserable sloop. We found that a considerable quantity of snow had fallen in this part of the lake, though we had not met with any during the passage.

"The master of the house, with two of his sons, were soon up, and having put the kettle on the fire, made preparations for breakfast. About six o'clock, his wife and daughters, two pretty little girls, came into the kitchen, where we were assembled, and in the course of half an hour we had the pleasure of sitting down to a substantial American breakfast, consisting of eggs, fried pork, beefsteaks, apple-tarts, pickles, cheese, cider, tea, and toast