e to put things to rights, and she herself had enough to do besides.

The husband was a tanner, which accounts for his looking so young as he did ; as your tanners, you know, will last longer than other people. A sturdy dog — he would not take naif a dollar 1 offered him for a bowl of milk, but actually looked as if he would gouge me when I insisted upon it. I could only account for his stupid indifference to money, from there being no banks in this neighbourhood. People are always more rational and enlightened where banks are plenty, and will take " kicks and coppers" with great thankfulness, provided they come together. I am sorry to bn under the necessity of confessing, that this refusal of the tanner furnishes another proof of the inferiority of the people of the back country to those of the cities, in politeness, refinement, and. above all, in that most precious of all knowledge. a knowledge of the value of money. The inside of this ignorant man's house was furnished with two beds below, and the LOrd knows how many above — a cradle — plenty of straw-bottomed chairs —a ride hanging again&t the wall — -good etore o(

bacon — plenty of children — a staunch hound, and notable pussy, both acknowledged members of the family. The poor soul was content, for he did not know any better ; and though I could easily have proved to him how miserable he was, I thought it better to let him alone.

And now for the story, which he related, in answer to my inquiries about rattlesnakes. He told me, that somewhat more than six miles off, in the recesses of one of the most unfrequented mountains, there was a deep, circular valley, the bottom of which is covered with loose, flat stones that have fallen down its steep sides. A gentleman on a visit to the springs once hired him and another person, a hunter, to accompany him to this valley, in order to ascertain whether the stories he had heard, but disbelieved, about it, were true. They descended it, but without seeing a single snake ; and the gentleman began to banter the hunter, who told him to stamp hard upon the flat stone where he was standing. He did so, and presently a good dozen rattlesnakes came out, to see who knocked at the door, I suppose. Alarmed at sight of the strangers, the snakes began to sound their rattles like so many Philadelphia

watchmen waked from a sound sleep, and thereupon came forth several thousands of these reptiles, who rattled and hissed at such an execrable rate, that they were glad enough to retreat out of the valky with all convenient expedition. The tanneT moreover added, that there was a great smell of cucumbers, and that for his part he did not much mind the rattlesnakes, being used to them, but he could not reconcile himself to the looks of a rascally fellow, the like of which he had never seen before, who carried a great fin on his back, was shaped like a sunfish, and hissed ten times louder than his neighbours The existence of a valley somewhere in this part of the world, containing a vast number of rattlesnakes, is believed by many well-informed people: but as to the little fellow with the fin, his being must remain a matter of doubt for the present. Whether the laws of nature permit a snake to wear a fin, must be left to those who make laws for her. Good bye.

picture of good humour, and her house the abode of good cheer. I intended to reason a little this morning, on cause and effect — a new subject ! but, I reasoned, as people sometimes get up of a morning, wrong end foremost. I then joked the waiter, but got worsted; which only made me worse than before. This state of mind, under the influence of which the heart falls into a heavy depression, without any particular cause that we know of, is sometimes ascribed to a presentiment of approaching evil, a warning coming from some mysterious source with which we are altogether unacquainted. But this is a superstitious idea, and consequently is discarded by philosophers, who in general attribute it to an absence of real sources of misery, which leaves a vacuum for imaginary ones to creep in, and make a greatbustle. They say the best and most radical cure for this mental disorder, is substantial care and real trouble ; and accordingly agree in recommending matrimony as a sovereign remedy ; that being the great evil, which renders all others insignificant. But instead of flying to this desperate remedy, I will try what occupation of mind will do in the way of relief.

In truth, the little solitary noak into which I am just now thrown, bears an aspect so interesting, that it is calculated to call up the most touchingly pleasing exertions, in the minds of those who love to indulge in the contemplation of beautiful scenes. We are the sons of earth, and the indissoluble kindred between nature and man, is demonstrated by our sense of her beauties. I shall not soon forget last evening, which Oliver and myself spent at this place. It was such as can never be described— I will therefore not attempt it; but it was still as the sleep of innocence — pure as ether, and bright as immortality. Having travelled only fourteen miles that day, I did not feel tired as usual ; and after supper strolled out alone along the windings of a little stream about twenty yards wide, that skirts a narrow strip of green meadow, between the brook and the high mountain at a little distance.

You will confess my landscapes are well watered, for every one has a river. But such is the case in this region, where all the passes of , the mountains are made by little rivers, that in process of time have laboured through, and left a space for a road on their banks. If nature will do these

things, I can't help it — not I. In the course of the ramble the moon rose over the mountain te the eastward, which being just by, seemed to bring the planet equally near; and the bright eyes of the stars began to glisten, as if weeping the dews of evening. 1 knew not the name of one single star. But what of that ? It is not necessary to be an astronomer, to contemplate with sublime emotions the glories of the sky at night, and the countless wonders of the universe.

" These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights,

" That give a name to every fixed star,

" Have no more profit of their living nights,

' Than those that walk and wot not what they are.

Men may be too wise to wonder at any thing ; as they may be too ignorant to see any thing without wondering. There is reason also to believe, that astronomers may be sometimes so taken up with measuring the distances and magnitude of the stars, as to lose, in the intense minuteness of calculation, that noble expansion of feeling and intellect combined, which lifts from nature up to its great first cause. As respects myself, I know no more of the planets, than the man in the moon.

I only contemplate tliem as unapproachable, udextinguishable fires, glittering afar off, in those azure fields whose beauty and splendour have pointed them out as the abode of the Divinity; as such, they form bright links in the chain of thought that leads directly to a contemplation of the Maker of heaven and earth. Nature is, indeed, the only temple worthy of the Deity. There is a mute eloquence in her smile j a majestic severity in her frown ; a divine charm in her harmony ; a speechless energy in her silence ; a voice in her thunders, that no reflecting being can resist. It is in such scenes and seasons, that the heart is deepest smitten with the power and goodness of Providence, and that the soul demonstrates its capacity for maintaining an existence independent of matter, by abstracting itself from the body, and expatiating alone in the boundless regions of the past and the future.

As I continued strolling forward, there gradually came a perfect calm — and even the aspen-tree whispered no more. But it was not the deaihiike calm of a winter's night, when the northwest wind grows quiet, and the frosts begin in silence to forge fetters for the running brooks, and the

gentle current of life, that flows through the veins ©f the forest. The voice of man and beast was indeed unheard ; but the river murmured, and the insects chirped in the mild summer evening. There is something sepulchral in the repose of a winter night j but in the genial seasons of the year, though the night is the emblem of repose, it is the repose of the couch, not of the tomb — nature still breathes in the buz of insects, the whisperings of the forest, and the murmurs of the running brooks. We know she will awake in the morning, with her smiles, her bloom, her zephyrs, and warbling birds. " In such a night as this," if a man loves any human being in this wide world, he will find it out, for there will his thoughts first centre. If he has in store any sweet, or bitter, or bittersweet recollections, which are lost in the bustle of the world, they will come without being called. If, in his boyish days, he wrestled, and wrangled, and rambled with, yet loved, some chubby boy, he will remember the days of his childhood, its companions, cares, and pleasures. If, in his days of romance, he used to walk of evenings, with some blue-eyed, musing, melaaroly Hiaid, whom the ever-rolling wave of life

dashed away from him for ever — he will recall her voice, her eye, and her form. If any heavy and severe disaster has fallen on his riper manhood, and turned the future into a gloomy and unpromising wilderness ; he will feel it bitterly at such a time. Or if it chance that he is grown an old man, and lived to see all that owned his blood, or shared his affections, struck down to the earth like dead leaves in autumn ; in such a night, he will call their dear shades around, and wish himself a shadow.

It is just clearing up ; and Oliver, as usual, is in the fidgets to set out — so good bye ; and for fear you will think 1 have been indulging my imagination at your expense, about Mrs. B 's in the

mountains, I mention her name, that you may find out the place next summer, and see with your own eyes, and sleep within hearing of one of the most musically melancholy, murmuring brooks in all the AUeganies. — Good bye.

X OU may chance to recollect, in one of my former letters, I warned you Oliver would ere long break out into an ebullition of geology, occasioned probably by the subterraneous heat of Dr. Hutton's theory, which has already performed such wonders. The expected eruption took place the day before yesterday.

We passed from the little retreat in the mountains I gave you a sketch of in my last, through a country of most singularly romantic aspect. The hills became more rugged, barren, and broken, than any we had yet crossed ; the declivities more abrupt; and here and there bare and prodigious masses of rocks were piled on their tops, or hung on their sides. Often we rode along the banks of little rivers, foaming at the depth of a hundred

feet below; their sides in many places composed of dark limestone rocks, piled one ledge on another, with the regularity of art, and topped with moss or fern. Cascades, with beautiful basins at their foot, fit haunt for the trout and the Naiad, succeeded each other at every little distance, and the whole scene was calculated to awaken the most lofty and affecting musings. I, who fortunately have never seen Dovedale, Matlock, the lakes of Cumberland, the Welch hills, nor any of those famous places that make such a figure in the pretty picture-books we buy here with such avidity — because we have nothing beautiful, it would seem, in our own miserable country — I enjoyed this succession of interesting objects, and fell into an enormous brown study. But Oliver, who, ever since he became a geologist, is much oftener employed in studying how this world was made, than in enjoying its beauties, ran his hobby-horse against my Kentucky pony, and unhorsed my imagination in a twinkling.