HIGH ROAD TRAVELLING.

"How far my pen has been fatigued like those of other travellers, in this journey of it—the world must judge—but the traces of it, which are now all set o'vibrating together this moment, tell me it is the most fruitful and busy period of my life; for, as I had made no convention with my man with the gun as to time-by seizing every handle, of what size or shape soever which chance held out to me in this journey—I was always in company, and with great variety too.”—Sterne.

OUR first land travelling, in which we had to take our chance with the world in general, was across the State of New York. My account of what we saw may seem excessively minute in some of its details; but this style of particularity is not adopted without reasons. While writing my journal, I always endeavoured to bear in mind the rapidity with which civilization advances in America, and the desirableness of recording things precisely in their present state, in order to have materials for comparison some few years hence, when travelling may probably be as unlike what it is now, as a journey from London to Liverpool by the new railroad differs from the same enterprise as undertaken century and a half ago.

To avoid some of the fatigues and liabilities of

common travelling, certain of our shipmates and their friends, and ourselves had made up a party to traverse the State of New York in an "exclusive extra;" a stage hired, with the driver, for our own use, to proceed at our own time. Our fellow-travellers were a German and a Dutch gentleman, and the Prussian physician and young South Carolinian whom I have mentioned in the list of our shipmates. We were to meet at the Congress Hall hotel in Albany, on the 6th of October.

On our way from Stockbridge to Albany, we saw a few objects characteristic of the country. While the horses were baiting, we wandered into a graveyard, where the names on the tombstones were enough to inform any observer what country of the world he was in. One inscription was laudatory of Nelson and Nabby Bullis: another of Amasa and Polly Fielding. Hiram and Keziah were there too. The signs in the American streets are as ludicrous for their confusion of Greek, Roman and Hebrew names as those of Irish towns are for the arbitrary divisions of words. One sees Rudolphus figuring beside Eliakim, and Aristides beside Zerug. I pitied an acquaintance of mine for being named Peleg, till I found he had baptized his two boys Peleg and Seth.—On a table in a little wayside inn, I found Fox's Martyrs; and against the wall hung

a framed sampler, with the following lines worked upon it.

"Jesus, permit thine awful name to stand
As the first offering of an infant's hand:
And as her fingers o'er the canvass move,
O fill her thoughtful bosom with thy love.
With thy dear children let her bear a part,

And write thy name thyself upon her heart."

In these small inns the disagreeable practice of rocking in the chair is seen in its excess. In the inn parlour are three or four rocking chairs, in which sit ladies who are vibrating in different directions, and at various velocities, so as to try the head of a stranger almost as severely as the tobacco chewer his stomach. How this lazy and ungraceful indulgence ever became general, I cannot imagine; but the nation seems so wedded to it, that I see little chance of its being forsaken. When American ladies come to live in Europe, they sometimes send home for a rocking-chair. A common wedding present is a rocking-chair. A beloved pastor has every room in his house furnished with a rockingchair by his grateful and devoted people. It is well that the gentlemen can be satisfied to sit still, or the world might be treated with the spectacle of the sublime American Senate in a new position; its fifty-two senators see-sawing in full deliberation, like the wise birds of a rookery in a breeze. If such

a thing should ever happen, it will be time for them to leave off laughing at the Shaker worship.

As we approached Greenbush, which lies opposite to Albany, on the east bank of the Hudson, we met riding-horses, exercised by grooms, and more than one handsome carriage,-tokens that we were approaching some centre of luxury. The view of Albany rising from the river side, with its brownstone court-house and white marble capitol, is fine; but it wants the relief of more trees within itself, or of a rural back-ground. How changed is this bustling city, thronged with costly buildings, from the Albany of the early days of Mrs. Grant of Laggan, when the children used to run up and down the green slope which is now State Street,-imposing from its width, and the massiveness of the houses seen behind its rows of trees! A tunnel is about to be made under the Hudson at Albany; meantime we crossed, as every body does, by a horseferry boat; a device so cruel, as well as clumsy, that the sooner it is superseded the better. I was told that the strongest horses, however kept up with corn, rarely survive a year of this work.

We observed that, even in this city, the physicians have not always their names engraved on brass door-plates. On the most conspicuous part of their houses, perhaps on the angle of a corner house,-is nailed some glazed substance like floor

cloth, with " Dr. Such-an-one Fainted upon it. At Washington I remember seeing "MAGISTRATE" thus affixed to a mere shed.

As we surmounted the hill leading to our hotel, we saw our two shipmates dancing down the steps to welcome us. There certainly is a feeling among shipmates which does not grow out of any other relation. They are thrown first into such absolute dependence on one another, for better for worse, and are afterwards so suddenly and widely separated, that if they do chance to meet again, they renew their intimacy with a fervour which does not belong to a friendship otherwise originated. The glee of our whole party this evening is almost ridiculous to look back upon. Everything served to make a laugh, and we were almost intoxicated with the prospect of what we were going to see and do together. We had separated only a fortnight ago; but we had as much to talk over as if we had been travelling apart for six months. The Prussian had to tell his adventures; we our impressions; and the Southerner his comparisons of his own country with Europe. Then we had to arrange the division of labour by which the gentlemen were to lighten the cares of travelling. Dr. J., the Prussian, was on all occasions to select apartments for us; Mr. S., the Dutchman, to undertake the eating department; Mr. H., the American, was paymaster, and