license which prevails in times of pestilence. Life is a reckless game, and death is a business transaction. Warehouses of ready-made coffins, stand beside warehouses of ready-made clothing, and the shroud is sold with spangled opera-dresses. Nay, you may chance to see exposed at sheriffs' sales, in public squares, piles of coffins, like nests of boxes, one within another, with a hole bored in the topmost lid to sustain the red flag of the auctioneer, who stands by, describing their conveniences and merits, with all the exaggerating eloquence of his tricky trade.

There is something impressive, even to painfulness, in this dense crowding of human existence, this mercantile familiarity with death. It has sometimes forced upon me, for a few moments, an appalling night-mare sensation of vanishing identity; as if I were but an unknown, unnoticed, and unseparated drop in the great ocean of human existence; as if the uncomfortable old theory were true, and we were but portions of a Great Mundane Soul, to which we ultimately return, to be swallowed up in its infinity. But such ideas I expel at once, like phantasms of evil, which indeed they are. Unprofitable to all, they have a peculiarly bewildering and oppressive power over a mind constituted like my own; so prone to eager questioning of the infinite, and curious search into the invisible. I find it wiser to forbear inflating this balloon of thought, lest it roll me away through unlimited space, until I become like the absent man, who put his clothes in bed, and hung himself over the chair; or like his twin-brother, who laid his candle on the pillow, and blew himself out.

You will, at least, my dear friend, give these letters the credit of being utterly unpremeditated; for Flibbertigibbet himself never moved with more unexpected and incoherent variety. I have wandered. almost as far from my starting point, as Saturn's ring is from Mercury; but I will return to the varieties in New-York. Among them I often meet a tall

Scotsman, with sandy hair and high cheek bones→→→→ a regular Sawney, with tartan plaid and bag-pipe. And where do you guess he most frequently plies his poetic trade? Why, in the slaughter-houses! of which a hundred or more send forth their polluted breath into the atmosphere of this swarming city hive! There, if you are curious to witness incongruities, you may almost any day see grunting pigs or bleating lambs, with throats cut to the tune of Highland Mary, or Bonny Doon, or Lochaber No More.

Among those who have flitted across my path, in this thoroughfare of nations, few have interested me more strongly than an old sea-captain, who needed only Sir Walter's education, his wild excursions through solitary dells and rugged mountain-passes, and his familiarity with legendary lore, to make him, too, a poet and a romancer. Untutored as he was, a rough son of the ocean, he had combined in his character the rarest elements of fun and pathos; side by side they glanced through his conversation, in a manner almost Shaksperean. They shone, likewise, in his weather-beaten countenance; for he had the eye of Wordsworth and the mouth of Moliere.'

One of his numerous stories particularly impressed my imagination, and remains there like a cabinet picture, by Claude. He said he was once on board a steamboat full of poor foreigners, going up the Mississippi to some place of destination in the yet unsettled wilderness. The room, where these poor emigrants were huddled together, was miserable enough. In one corner, two dissipated-looking fellows were squatted on the floor, playing all-fours with dirty cards; in another, lay a victim of intemperance, senseless, with a bottle in his hand; in another, a young Englishman, dying of consumption-kindly tended by a venerable Swiss emigrant, with his helpful wife, and artless daughter. The Englishman

was an intelligent, well-informed young man, who, being unable to marry the object of his choice, with any chance of comfortable support in his own country, had come to prepare a home for his beloved in the Eldorado of the West. A neglected cold brought on lung, fever, which left him in a rapid decline; but still, full of hope, he was pushing on for the township where he had planned for himself a domestic paradise. He was now among strangers, and felt that death was nigh. The Swiss emigrants treated him with that thoughtful, zealous tenderness, which springs from genial hearts deeply imbued with the religious sentiment. One wish of his soul they could not gratify, by reason of their ignorance. Being too weak to hold a pen, he earnestly desired to dictate to some one else a letter to his mother and his betrothed. This, Captain T. readily consented to do; and promised, so far as in him lay, to carry into effect any arrangements he might wish to make.

Soon after this melancholy duty was fulfilled, the young sufferer departed. When the steam-boat arrived at its final destination, the kind-hearted Captain T. made the best arrangements he could for a decent burial. There was no chaplain on board; and, unused as he was to the performance of religious ceremonies, he himself read the funeral service from a book of Common Prayer, found in the young stranger's trunk. The body was tenderly placed on a board, and carried out face upwards, into the silent solitude of the primeval forest. The sun verging to the west, cast oblique glances through the foliage, and played on the pale face in flickering light and shadow. Even the most dissipated of the emigrants were sobered by a scene so touching and so solemn, and all followed reverently in procession. Having dug the grave, they laid him carefully within, and replaced the sods above him; then, sadly and thoughtfully, they returned slowly to the boat.

Subdued to tender melancholy by the scene he had witnessed, and the unusual service he had performed, Captain T. avoided company, and wandered off alone into the woods. Unquiet questionings, and far-reaching thoughts of God and immortality, lifted his soul towards the Eternal; and heedless of his foot-steps, he lost his way in the windings of the forest. A widely devious and circuitous route brought him within sound of human voices. It was a gushing melody, taking its rest in sweetest cadences. With pleased surprise, he followed it, and came, suddenly and unexpectedly, in view of the new-made grave. The kindly Swiss matron, and her innocent daughter, had woven a large and beautiful Cross, from the broad leaves of the papaw tree, and twined it with the pure white blossoms of the trailing convolvulus. They had placed it reverently at the head of the stranger's grave, and kneeling before it, chanted their evening hymn to the Virgin. A glowing twilight shed its rosy flush on the consecrated symbol, and the modest, friendly faces of those humble worshippers. Thus beautifully they paid their tribute of respect to the unknown one, of another faith, and a foreign clime, who had left home and kindred, to die among strangers in the wilderness.

How would the holy gracefulness of this scene have melted the heart of his mother and his beloved!

I had many more things to say to you; but I will leave them unsaid. I leave you alone with this sweet picture, that your memory may consecrate it as mine has done.

LETTER XI.

December 9, 1841.

A friend passing by the Methodist church in Elizabeth street, heard such loud and earnest noises issuing therefrom, that he stepped in to ascertain the cause. A coloured woman was preaching to a full audience, and in a manner so remarkable that his attention was at once rivetted. The account he gave excited my curiosity, and I sought an interview with the woman, whom I ascertained to be Julia Pell, of Philadelphia. I learned from her that her father was one of the innumerable tribe of fugitives from slavery, assisted by that indefatigable friend of the oppressed, Isaac T. Hopper. This was quite a pleasant surprise to the benevolent old gentleman, for he was not aware that any of Zeek's descendants were living; and it was highly interesting to him to find one of them in the person of this female Whitfield. Julia never knew her father by the name of Zeek; for that was his appellation in slavery, and she had known him only as a freeman. Zeek, it seems, had been 'sold running,' as the term is; that is, a purchaser had given a very small part of his original value, taking the risk of not catching him. In Philadelphia a coloured man, named Samuel Johnson, heard a gentleman making inquiries concerning a slave called Zeek, whom he had bought running.' 'I know him very well,' said Samuel; as well as I do myself; he's a good-for-nothing chap; and you'll be better without him than with him.' 'Do you think so?' 'Yes; if you gave what you say for him, it was a bite-that's all. He's a lazy, good-for-nothing dog; and you'd better sell your right in him the first chance you get.' After some further talk, Samuel

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