The Indian talks to himself, or to the Great Spirit, in the woods, but is silent among men. We take many steps toward civilization as we get on in life, but it is an error to think that the heart keeps up with the manners. At least, with me, the perfection of existence seems to be, to possess the arts of social life, with the simplicity and freedom of the savage. They talk of "unbridled youth!" Who would not have borne a rein at twenty, he scorns at thirty? Who does not, as his manhood matures, grow more impatient of restraintmore unwilling to submit to the conventional tyrannies of society-more ready, if there were half a reason for it, to break through the whole golden but enslaving mesh of society, and start fresh, with Nature and the instincts of life, in the wilderness. The imprisonment to a human eye may be as irksome as a fetter--yet they who live in cities are never loosed. Did you ever stir out of doors without remembering that you were seen?

I have given you my thoughts as I went by my tall foresters, dear Doctor, for it is a part of trout-fishing, as quaint Izaak held it, to be stirred to musing and reverie by the influences of nature. In this free air, too, I

Nay, if it

scorn to be tied down to "the proprieties." come to that, why should I finish what I begin? Dame swallow, to be sure, looks curious to hear the end of my first lesson with the angle. But no! rules be hanged! I do not live on a wild brook to be plagued with rhetoric. I will seal up my letter where I am, and go a-field. You shall know what we brought home in the basket, when I write again.

LETTER IV.

MY DEAR DOCTOR,-Your letters, like yourself, travel in the best of company. What should come with your last, but a note from our friend Stetson of the Astor, forwarding a letter which a traveller had left in the bronze vase, with "something enclosed which feels like a key." "A key," quotha! Attar of jasmine, subtle as the breath of the prophet from Constantinople by private hand! No less! The small gilt bottle, with its cubical edge and cap of parchment, lies breathing before me. I think you were not so fortunate as to meet Bartlett, the draftsman of the American scenery-the best of artists in his way, and the pleasantest of John Bulls, any way. He travelled with me a summer here, making his sketches, and has since been sent by the same enterprising publisher, (Virtue, of Ivy Lane,) to sketch in the Orient. ("Stand by," as Jack says, for something glorious from that quarter.) Well-pottering about the Bezestein, he fell in with my old friend Mustapha, the attar-merchant, who lifted the silk curtains for him, and over sherbet and spiced coffee in the inner divan, questioned him of America-a country which, to Mustapha's

fancy, is as far beyond the moon as the moon is beyond the gilt tip of the seraglio. Bartlett told him the sky was round in that country, and the women faint and exquisite as his own attar. Upon which Mustapha took his pipe from his mouth, and praised Allah. After stroking the smoke out of his beard, and rolling his idea over the whites of his eyes for a few minutes, the old merchant pulled from under his silk cushion, a visiting-card, once white, but stained to a deep orange with the fingering of his fat hand, unctuous from bath-hour to bath-hour with the precious oils he traffics in. When Bartlett assured him he had seen me in America, (it was the card I had given the old Turk at parting, that he might remember my name,) he settled the curtains which divide the small apartment from the shop, and commanding his huge Ethiopian to watch the door, entered into a description of our visit to the forbidden recesses of the slave-market, of his purchase, (for me,) of the gipsy Maimuna, and some other of my six weeks' adventures in his company-for Mustapha and I, wherever it might lie in his fat body, had a nerve in unison. We mingled like two drops of the oil of roses. At parting, he gave Bartlett this small bottle of jasmine, to be forwarded to me, with much love, at his convenience; and, with the perfume of it in my nostrils, and the corpulent laugh of old Mustapha ringing in my ear, I should find it difficult at this moment to say how much of me is under this bridge in Tioga, North America. I am not sure that my letter should not be dated "attar shop, near the seraglio," for there, it seems to me, I am writing.

A DISCOVERY IN SCIENCE.

35

"Tor-mentingest growin' time, aint it!" says a neighbor, leaning over the bridge at this instant, and little thinking that on that breath of his I travelled from the Bosphorus to the Susquehannah. Really, they talk of steamers, but there is no travelling conveyance like an interruption. A minute since, I was in the capital of the Palæologi, smoking a narghile in the Turk's shop. Presto! here I am in the county Tiog', sitting under a bridge, with three swallows and a lobster, (not three lobsters at a swallow-as you are very likely to read it in your own careless way,) and no outlay for coals or canNow, why should not this be reduced to a science I'll lend the idea to the cause of know. ledge. If a man may travel from Turkey to New-York on a passing remark, what might be done on a long sermon? At present, the agent is irregular, so was steam. The performance of the journey, at present, is compulSo was travelling by steam before Fulton. The discoveries in animal magnetism justify the most sanguine hopes on the subject, and "open up," as Mr. Bulwer would express it, a vast field of novel discovery.

vass.

-like steam!

sory.

The truth is, (I have been sitting a minute thinking it over,) the chief obstacle and inconvenience in travelling is the prejudice in favor of taking the body with us. It is really a preposterous expense. Going abroad exclusively for the benefit of the mind, we are at no little trouble, in the first place, to provide the means for the body's subsistence on the journey, (the mind not being subject to "charges,") and then, besides trailing after us through ruins and galleries, a companion who takes

no enjoyment in pictures or temples, and is perpetually incommoded by our enthusiasm, we undergo endless vexation and annoyance with the care of his baggage. Blessed be Providence, the mind is independent of boots and linen. When the system above hinted at is perfected, we can leave our box-coats at home, item pantaloons for all weathers, item cravats, flannels, and innumerable hose. I shall use my portmanteau to send eggs to market, with chickens in the two carpet-bags. My body I shall leave with the dairy-woman, to be fed at milking-time. Probably, however, in the progress of knowledge, there will be some discovery by which it can be closed in the absence of the mind, like a town-house when the occupant is in the country-blinds down, and a cobweb over the key-hole.

In all the prophetic visions of a millenium, the chief obstacle to its progress is the apparently undiminishing necessity for the root of all evil. Intelligence is diffusing, law becoming less merciless, ladies driving hoops, and (I have observed) a visible increase of marriages between elderly ladies and very young gentlemen-the last a proof that the affections (as will be universally true in the millenium) may retain their freshness in age. But among all these lesser beginnings, the philanthropist has hitherto despaired, for, to his most curious search, there appeared no symptom of beginning to live without money. May we not discern in this system, (by which the mind, it is evident, may perform some of the most expensive functions of the body,) a dream of moneyless millenium-a first step towards that blessed era when