tance of about six or ten miles from the shore of Lake Erie. On either side I met a constant succes. sion of farms partially cleared, and in cultivation, but no village, town, or hamlet. One part of the country through which I passed to-day is settled chiefly by Highlanders, who bring hither all their clannish attachments, and their thrifty, dirty habitsadd also their pride and their honesty. We stopped about noon at one of these Highland settlements, to rest the horses and procure refreshments. The house was called Campbell's Inn, and consisted of a log-hut and a cattle-shed. A long pole, stuck into the decayed stump of a tree in front of the hut, served for a sign. The family spoke nothing but Gaelic; a brood of children, ragged, dirty, and without shoes or stockings, (which latter I found hanging against the wall of the best room, as if for a show,) were running about-and all stared upon me with a sort of half-seared, uncouth curiosity, which was quite savage. With some difficulty I made my wants understood, and procured some milk and Indian corn cakes. This family, notwithstanding their wretched appearance, might be considered prosperous. They have a property of two hundred acres of excellent land, of which sixty acres are cleared, and in cultivation : five cows and forty sheep. They have been settled here sixteen years,— had come out destitute, and obtained their land gratis. For them, what a change from abject poverty and want to independence and plenty! But the advantages are all outward; if there be any inward change, it is apparently retrogradation, not advancement.

I know it has been laid down as a principle, that the more and the closer men are congregated together, the more prevalent is vice of every kind; and that an isolated or scattered population is favourable to virtue and simplicity. It may be so, if you are satisfied with negative virtues and the simplicity of ignorance. But here, where a small population is scat. tered over a wide extent of fruitful country, where there is not a village or a hamlet for twenty or thirty or forty miles together-where there are no manufactories-where there is almost entire equality of condition-where the means of subsistence are abundant-where there is no landed aristocracy-no poor laws, nor poor rates, to grind the souls and the substance of the people between them, till nothing re. mains but chaff,-to what shall we attribute the gross vices, the profligacy, the stupidity, and basely vulgar habits of a great part of the people, who know not even how to enjoy or to turn to profit the inestimable advantages around them?—And, alas for them! there seems to be no one as yet to take an interest about them, or at least infuse a new spirit into the next generation. In one log-hut in the very heart of the wilderness, where I might well have expected primitive manners and simplicity, I found vulgar finery, vanity, affectation, under the most absurd and disgusting forms, combined with a want of the commonest physical comforts of life, and the total absence of even elementary knowledge. In another I have seen drunkenness, profligacy, stolid indifference to all religion; and in another, the most senseless fanaticism. There are people, I know, who think-who fear, that the advancement of

knowledge and civilization must be the increase of vice and insubordination; who deem that a scattered agricultural population, where there is a sufficiency of daily food for the body; where no schoolmaster interferes to infuse ambition and discontent into the abject, self-satisfied mind; where the labourer reads not, writes not, thinks not-only loves, hates, prays, and toils—that such a state must be a sort of Arcadia. Let them come here!—there is no march of intellect here!-there is no "schoolmaster abroad" here! And what are the consequences? Not the most agreeable to contemplate, believe me.

I passed in these journeys some school-houses built by the wayside: of these, several were shut up for want of schoolmasters; and who that could earn a subsistence in any other way, would be a schoolmaster in the wilds of Upper Canada? Ill fed, ill clothed, ill paid, or not paid at all-boarded at the houses of the different farmers in turn, I found indeed some few men, poor creatures! always either Scotch or Americans, and totally unfit for the office they had undertaken. Of female teachers I found none whatever, except in the towns. Among all the excellent societies in London for the advancement of religion and education, are there none to send missionaries here?-such missionaries as we want, be it understood-not sectarian fanatics. Here, without means of instruction, of social amusement, of healthy and innocent excitements-can we won. der that whiskey and camp-meetings assume their place, and "season toil" which is unseasoned by any. thing better?

Nothing, believe me, that you may have heard or

read of the frantic disorders of these Methodist love. feasts and camp-meetings in Upper Canada can ex、 ceed the truth; and yet it is no less a truth that the Methodists are in most parts the only religious teachers, and that without them the people were utterly abandoned. What then are our church and our government about?* Here, as in the old country, they are quarrelling about the tenets to be inculca. ted, the means to be used; and so, while the shepherds are disputing whether the sheep are to be fed on old hay or fresh grass-out of the fold or in the fold the poor sheep starve, or go astray.

This night I met with a bed and supper at the house of Mrs. Wheatly, the widow of an officer in the commissariat. She keeps the post-office of the Howard township. She told me, as a proof of the increasing population of the district, that the receipts of the post-office, which six years ago had been below ten dollars a quarter, now exceed forty dollars.

"When we consider the prevalent want of a missionary spirit in that branch of the Church of England which has been transplanted to this colony, we doubt whether its members will not be regarded rather as novices in their holy religion, mis. trustful of their qualifications to become the instructors of the ignorant; or, which is worse, in the light of men half persuad. ed themselves, and therefore hesitating to attempt the conversion of others."-Vide Report of the Church Society for converting and civilizing the Indians, and propagating the Gospel among destitute settlers.

The poor emigrants who have not been long from the old country, round whose hearts tender remembrances of parents, and home, and home friends, yet cling in all the strength of fresh regret and unsubdued longing, sometimes present themselves at the post-offices, and on finding that their letters cost three shillings and four pence, or perhaps five or six shillings, turn away in despair. I have seen such letters not here only, but often and in greater numbers at the larger post-offices;* and have thought with pain how many fond, longing hearts must have bled over them. The torture of Tantalus was surely nothing to this.

I supped here on eggs and radishes, and milk and bread. On going to my room, (Mrs. Wheatly had given me up her own,) I found that the door, which had merely a latch, opened into the road. I expressed a wish to fasten it, on which the good lady brought a long nail, and thrust it lengthways over the latch, saying, "That's the way we lock doors in Canada!" The want of a more secure defence did not trouble my rest, for I slept well till morning. After break

• At Brandtford I saw forty-eight such letters, and an adver. tisement from the postmaster, setting forth that these letters, if not claimed and paid for by such a time, would be sent to the dead-letter office.

The management of the post-office in Upper Canada will be found among the "grievances" enumerated by the discontented party; and without meaning to attach any blame to the func tionaries, I have said enough to show that the letter-post of Canada does not fulfil its purpose of contributing to the solace and advantage of the people, whatever profit it may bring to the