gacy which the streets of our large towns exhibit after dark; and in the country, as you may have observed in my letters, the female manners are distinguished by a very remarkable degree of propriety. Indeed, I hardly know any thing which has struck me more in America than the respectablé demeanor of the females of all ranks of life, and the evident attention in the domestic economy even of taverns or inns to exclude them from situations in which they might be exposed to insult. In New-Orleans, indeed, the picture is almost totally reversed. It must not be forgotten, however, that New-Orleans is still in many respects rather a French or Spanish, than an American city, and that it is improving just in proportion as it becomes American. The French inhabitants have still an ascendancy in the councils of the city; and the effect is no less conspicuous in the dirty streets and tainted air, than in its moral pollution. Before long, I trust, its streets will be cleansed by conduits from the Mississippi, for which it is admirably situated, and its moral atmosphere purified by the benign influence of religion, which the Christians in the Eastern States, with their accustomed activity, are exerting themselves to extend.

Pilfering, house-breaking, highway robbery, and murder, are far less common here than with us: the last three, indeed, are very uncommon, although I have heard of the mail being robbed at least twice since I have been here, and once (in the wild parts of the country, where it is carried on a horse,) with murder, and aggravated circum

stances of cruelty. Duelling, except in the Eastern States, is more common, and more deadly.

The bribery of subordinate custom-house officers, so disgracefully common in England (not indeed to defraud the revenue, but to obtain despatch) is very rare here. I have been informed by active respectable merchants in New-York and Philadelphia, that they never knew an instance, and should be extremely surprised to hear of one; that in the only case in which they had known of it ever being offered, the officer considered himself insulted, and knocked the offender down. In Boston, I omitted to inquire on this subject; but in point of morals there is every reason to infer that it stands at least as high as New-York and Philadelphia.

To what extent smuggling, slave-trading, and privateering, under Spanish colours, are carried on, I found it difficult to learn; since these practices, though by no means uncommon, are considered as disreputable as with us, and shun the light. The instances of breaches of trust in responsible situations, especially in banks, of which I have heard in the last twelve months, are disgracefully numerous. This I attribute principally to the wretched system of the insolvent laws in this country, and the laxity of morals in pecuniary matters which they are calculated to produce. For the particulars of this system, so repugnant to the general intelligence and morality of the country, I refer you to your commercial friends. It is a perfect anomaly, and cannot long exist. Indeed, the Bankrupt Bill has already passed the Senate; and although other business may interrupt its pro

gress through the House of Representatives, it must, in some form or another, ere long become a law, and supersede a system over which, were I an American, I should never cease to mourn, deprecating it as calculated to injure the reputation of my country, and to depress her moral tone.

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 authorize gambling-houses is sold either by the city or the state authorites: 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 one line of gambling-shops. These, with the open theatres, the dances of the slaves in all the environs of the city, 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 is prevalent 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 imagination;-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 the sources of some of its tributary streams. near the rocky mountains. I have before alluded to the beauties of the close of day, in a climate so delicious, at that hour, and the succeding ones, when the vault of heaven has a deeper blue than with us, when

"Milder moons disperse serener light,

And brighter beauties decorate the night."

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 popula

tion; 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. Instead of a succession of slave plantations, whose owners, by supplying them wholesale, prevent the existence of villages or towns, except at very distant intervals, (the 2000 slaves of one slave-holder, like General would make at least, one respectable village of themselves,) I find handsome thriving country towns, on every side; and I have already told you how beautiful a New-England town is, with its white frame-houses, its little courts, its planted squares, its fine wide streets, or rather avenues, and most especially its numerous spires. From one spot I have counted more than twenty-five spires; and yet I have been asked, in England, if there were any churches, or places of worship in America!

LETTER X.

Philadelphia, Oct. 1819.

the

As I am now resting a little after my wanderings, I am anxious to take the earliest opportunity of complying with your wishes, and of giving you impressions I have received of the American character in the course of my route. I might indeed have done this at an earlier period, but it would have been with less satisfaction to myself. Indeed, I have occasionally been led to doubt whether I have viewed the subject with impartiality, either