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swarm from the English press, and particularly Cobbett, conceive, certainly, very erroneous opinions of the real state of things I believed, in America, with many others, and I know that several persons at the head of the American government believe now, that England is on the eve of a revolution, which, it is supposed, will free them from her maritime pretensions; and if it is possible to be thus deceived in a country so similar to England, what must it be in France, where no adequate idea can be formed of party exaggeration? Far from taking these party writers literally, I find the greatest part of the English public look upon them only as professed wrestlers, whose display of strength and abilities interests and amuses them, but whose object, besides the gratification of some malice and vanity, is merely money. They are not believed sincere, and without that belief there is no real persuasion. To be fully sensible of this, it is sufficient to observe, with how much more attention the simple charge of the judge is listened to at the close of a trial, than all the eloquent pleadings that preceded it. Mixed with

abundance of undeniable facts, and under the garb of downright truth and honest surliness, Mr Cobbett deals out principles the most fallacious, with great art, and wonderful force of popular eloquence; but his frequent and outrageous contradictions of his own principles have, in a great degree, neutralized them. He is to receive judgment this day, having been tried for a libel, with intention to excite the troops to mutiny.

There is not another government in Europe who could long withstand the attacks to which this is continually exposed. The things published here would set on fire any other heads in the world; but

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either from insensibility, reason, or habit, they make but little impression. This sort of impassibility extends in some degree to personal attacks. Private anecdotes and secret stories are brought to light daily, of such a nature as ought to make the individuals concerned so ashamed to show themselves, as absolutely to drive them from society for the rest of their lives. Nothing of the kind :-the neck is no sooner out of the pillory, and the shoulders hardly healed after the castigation administered by the hands of newspaper-writers, and other practitioners in the art of abuse and invective, than the person appears in the world as if nothing had happened. It is strange that a people so proud, and certainly full as moral as its neighbours, should show this strange callousness.

From our hotel at Bristol we see and hear continually the troops quartered here exercising on the square before the cathedral. There are five regiments, principally employed in guarding a depot of prisoners of war. The soldiers, compared at least to the guards in London, are by no means stout-looking. The officers are in general larger made than the men; and this is a confirmation of what I think I have observed before, that the class of gentlemen in England is a finer race of men than the same class in France; but there is not the same difference between the common people of the two countries respectively.

We have had several days in June and July, called here very warm, which may be considered as a fair sample of English summer heat, and that was quite moderate, compared to the heat in America. The climate, both winter and summer, is never extreme; and although rarely resplendent, is best for use, more favourable for exercise,

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either for labour or pleasure. The people; accordingly, are visibly more active here than in America.

A

July 10.-We left Bristol this morning; twelve miles to the ferry over the Severn, of most beautiful country, in the highest state of cultivation, and every where gentlemen's houses, and ornamented grounds. The ferry is two or three miles across, very expensive, and ill contrived;-our carriage suffered a little in getting over. Thence to Chepstow. Piercefield, a spot noted by all travellers, is near it ;—we went there, and are just returned. walk is carried for three miles along the very brink of an abrupt terrace of rocks, 150 or 200 feet perpendicular, not in a straight line, but either sweeping round, or projecting and retiring in deep angles. The precipice is generally masked by overhanging bushes and trees, and only now and then, and in the most favourable points, the prospect is thrown open to the view, with only a gardefous for your security, and a seat for your repose. There you see trees and coppice far below your feet; then the Wye, twisting about like a snake, or a narrow ribbon of liquid mud, deeply cased in banks of solid mud; for the tide was low, and there is about 50 feet perpendicular between high and low! On the other side of this deep slimy bed is a knoll of head-land, unfortunately of very rich soil, as it causes it to be nicely divided in square patches, carefully ploughed and dug up, and everything going on in the way of husbandry, picturesque or not, all under your eye. Beyond that, again, is another abrupt terrace of rocks, higher than the one you stand upon, calcareous, and breaking in better forms than the primitive class of rocks. Now and then you catch a glimpse of the Severn at a distance. Such a prospect has

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of course, many great beauties, and great faults, and did not appear to me, on the whole, equal to its reputation. At one place, the body of a large intercepting rock has been pierced through for the walk, the length of perhaps 20 yards. Inside of this ring of rocks and precipices is a lawn of more than a hundred acres, in soft swells and undulating lines, with a distant crest of dark wood, serving as a back-ground to the mansion, which seems, at a distance, something like the house at Stourhead. This fine green carpet of 100 acres spread before it is shorn by 500 sheep; and clumps of glorious oaks and elms are scattered about in careless profusion. This is all beautiful. The prospect from the house, which stands high, must be excellent; but it is not shewn. This house, and 3000 acres of land, not all good, cost the present owner L. 90,000 sterling. The rent of good arable land, or of woodland, that is, coppice cut every fourteen years, is from 30s. to 40s. an acre, and it sells at thirty years' purchase; labourers 2s. 6d. a-day and small-beer, twenty years ago, 1s. 2d. In this interval of time land has doubled. This progression, being universal, does not injure any one but stockholders or mortgagees. Butcher's meat is 9d. apound; a good fowl is 4s. 6d.; fuel is cheap. The land here is exposed to drought, from the rocks being near the surface; therefore their crop of wheat and grass will be particularly scanty this

year.

July 11-Ross. We left our carriage this morning at Chepstow, near the mouth of the Wye, and came to this place in a hired chaise, proposing to return by the river; 31 miles of very fine but very hilly country. From a height we had an extensive view of a most rich tract, the Vale of Monmouth,