STATE OF SOCIETY, &C. IN THE

UNITED STATES.

[Hall's Travels in Canada, &c.]

On the banks of the Schuylkill, about two miles from Philadelphia, there is a wild scene of cliffs, breaking the river into several rushes and falls: the metallic brilliancy of these rocks, whenever their strata are broken up, indicates the ridge of talcous granite, which Volney has traced for nearly 500 miles, from Long Island to the Roanoke, and which probably extends as far as the Savannah. It is observed to limit the tide waters by the cascades it forms on crossing the rivers, and to separate the barren sand-coast from the fertile alluvion districts above it, striking the Delaware at Trenton, the Schuylkill at Philadelphia, the Susquehanna near Octarora Creek, the Gunpowder Creek near Joppa, the Patapsco at Elkridge, the Patowmac at George-town, the Rappahanock near Fredericksburg, the James at Richmond, the Appomatox above Petersburg, and the Roanoke near Halifax. The road to Washington follows the line of this ridge, which naturally modifies the features of the country: its apparent elevation is inconsiderable, just sufficient to undulate the face of the landscape, and occasionally presenting, especially round streams, bolder prominences, called bluffs in South Carolina The creeks and rivers, wearing through a yielding soil, have frequently their banks steep, and let the eye into deep woody glens; the soil in such situations is rendered fertile by a

mixture of clay with the sand which constitutes its basis. As far as Wilmington the stately Delaware enriches the prospect:

from thence the scenery is uniform, consisting of plantations, interspersed with oak and pine barrens.

Here the houses, universally shaded with large virandas, seem to give notice of a southern climate; the huts round them, open to the elements, and void of every intention of comfort, tell a less pleasing tale: they inform the traveller he has entered upon a land of masters and slaves, and he beholds the scene marred with wretched dwellings and wretched faces. The eye, which for the first time looks on a slave, feels a painful impression: he is a man for whom the laws of humanity are reversed; who has known nothing of society but its injustice, nothing of his fellow men but their hardened, undisguised, atrocious selfishness. The cowering humility, the expressions of servile respect, with which the negro ap. proaches the white man, strike on the senses, not like the courtesy of the French and Italian peasant, giving a grace to poverty, but with the chilling indication of a crushed spirit: the sound of the lash is in his accents of submission, and the eye which shrinks from mine, caught its fear from that of the task-master. Habit steels us to all things; and it is not to be expected that objects constantly present should continue to excite the same sensations which they cause, when looked upon for the first time (and this perhaps is one reason, why so much cruelty has been tolerated

in the world); but whoever should look on a slave for the first time in his life, with the same indifferent gaze he would bestow on any casual object, may triumph in the good fortune through which he was born free, but in his heart he is a slave, and, as a moral being, degraded infinitely below the negro, in whose soul the light of freedom has been extinguished, not by his own insensibility, but by the tyranny of others. Did the miserable condition of the negro leave him mind for reflection, he might laugh in his chains to see how slavery has stricken the land with ugliness. The smiling villages, and happy population of the eastern and central states, give place to the splendid equipages of a few planters, and a wretched negro population, crawling among filthy hovels-for villages (after crossing the Susquehanna) there are scarcely any; there are only plantations-the very name speaks volumes.

*

BALTIMORE.

While I was in Baltimore, I saw a sketch of the city, taken in 1750; it then consisted of about half a dozen houses, built round the landing-place: it now contains 50,000 inhabitants, and is growing rapidly. Here are reckoned to be some of the largest fortunes in the Union, that is, of from 500,000 to 1,000,000 dollars. To strangers, the polished hospitality of its inhabitants renders it a pleasanter residence than Philadelphia: for my own part, though very slightly introduced, I received more civilities

in proportion, during the week I spent in this city, than in the whole course of my travels besides. Perhaps this courteous disposition is in a certain degree an inheritance: during the colonial regime, Annapolis was the center of fashion to all America: the governors of Maryland were commonly men of rank and family, who brought with them a taste for social elegance, which seems to have become the appanage of the old families, who, since Annapolis has fallen into decay, have become residents of Baltimore.

The city is built round the head of a bay, or inlet of the Patuxent, about eight miles above its junction with Chesapeak Bay. The entrance of the harbour at Gossuch Point is 150 yards across, and defended by a fort, which our fleet ineffectually bombarded during the war. A sand-bank, about fifty feet in height, evidently the ancient boundary of the bay, forms a natural glacis round the town, and terminates at its southern extremity, in the hill of the signal post, from which there is a beautiful panoramic view of the city, fort, and har bour. It was on this natural terre-plein the lines were constructed against our threatened attack.

The public buildings of Baltimore being all of brick, have little architectural beauty; they evince the prosperity and good polity, rather than the taste of the city. There is, however, a monument erecting to the memory of Washington, in a kind of park, adjoining the town; it consists of a marble column, adorned

with trophies in bronze: the design, like the man whose fame it records, is nobly simple. This is the first token of public gratitude America has consecrated to her first citizen; and, strange to tell, the design was set on foot not by an American citizen, but by an Irish exile,

Annapolis continues to be the seat of government for Maryland. Most states choose some secondrate town for this purpose, to preserve their legislators, either from the seductions or the mobs of a great city; though there seems to be little cause for alarm on either head.

WASHINGTON.

The traveller having passed through Bladensburg, on the east branch of the Patuxent, where the action was fought, which the Americans have nick-named the "Bladensburg races," crosses a sandy tract, interspersed with oak barrens and pine woods, until suddenly mounting a little rise, close to a poor cottage with its Indian corn patch, he finds himself opposite to the capitol of the federal city. It stands on an ancient bank of the Patowmac, about eighty feet above the present level of the river, the course of which it commands, as well as the adjacent country, as far as the Allegany ridges. The edifice consists of two wings, intended to be connected by a centre, surmounted by a dome or cupola. The design is pure and elegant, but the whole building wants grandeur: each wing would not be a large private mansion: the interior has

consequently a contracted appearance, a kind of economy of space disagreeably contrasting with the gigantic scale of nature without, as well as with our ideas of the growing magnitude of the American nation. The staircase, which is a kind of vestibule to the impression to be produced by the whole building, is scarcely wide enough for three persons to pass conveniently. The chambers of the senate and representatives are of very moderate dimensions, and the judgment-hall, with its low-browed roof and short columns, seems modelled after the prison of Constance in Marmion. Some of the decorations too are of very dubious taste. Mr. Latrobe has modelled a set of figures for the chamber of representatives, to personify. the several states of the Union; but as it is not easy to discover an attribute, to say nothing of a poetical characteristic, by which Connecticut may be distinguished from Massachusetts, North Carolina from South Carolina, or Kentucky from Ohio, recourse must be had to the ungraceful expedient of a superscription to point out his own tutelary saint to each representative: Mr. Latrobe has indeed hit upon one device for Massachusetts; she is leading by the hand an ugly cub of a boy, representing Maine, which boy becomes a girl when Maine assumes her proper state; -a puerile conceit. One cannot help regretting the Americans should have neglected to give their new Capitol a character of grandeur worthy of their territory and ambition. Private edifices rise, decay, and are replaced by

others

others of superior magnificence, as the taste or growing opulence of the nation require; but public buildings should have a character answerable to their purpose; they bear upon them the seal of the genius of the age, and sometimes prophetically reveal the political destinies of the nations by which they are raised. The Romans communicated to their erections the durability of their empire. The Americans, in "their aspirations to be great," seem sometimes to look towards Roman models, but the imitation must be of things, not names; or instead of a noble parallel, they are in danger of producing a ludi

crous contrast.

From the foot of the Capitol hill, there runs a straight road (intended to be a street), planted with poplars for about two miles, to the president's house, a handsome stone mansion, forming a conspicuous object from the Capitol hill; near it are the public offices, and some streets nearly filled up;

about half a mile farther is a pleasant row of houses, in one of which the president at present resides: there are a few tolerable houses still farther on the road to George-town, and this is nearly the sum total of the city for 1816. It used to be a joke against Washington, that next door neighbours must go through a wood to make their visits; but the jest and forest have vanished together: there is now scarcely a tree betwixt Georgetown and the Navy-yard, two miles beyond the Capitol, except the poplars I have mentioned, which may be considered as the locum tenentes of future houses. I doubt the policy of such tho

聊

rough clearing; clumps of trees are preferable objects to vacant spaces, and the city in its present state, being commenced from the extremities instead of the centre, has a disjointed and naked appearance. The fiery ordeal has, however, fixed its destiny. Land and houses are rising in value, new buildings are erecting, and with the aid of the intended university, there is little doubt that Washington will attain as great an extent as can be expected for a city possessed of no commercial advantages, and created, not by the natural course of events, but by a political speculation. The plan indeed supposes an immense growth; but even if this were attainable, it seems doubtful how far an overgrown luxurious capital would be the fittest seat for learning, or even legislation. Perhaps the true interest of the Union would rather hold Washington sacred to science, philosophy, and the arts; a spot in some degree kept holy from commercial avarice, to which the members of different states may repair to breathe an atmosphere untainted by local prejudices, and find golden leisure for pursuits and speculations of public utility. Such fancies would be daydreams elsewhere, and are so perhaps here; but America is young in the career of political life; she has the light of former ages, and the sufferings of the present to guide her; she has not crushed the spirits of the many, to build up the tyranny of the few, and therefore the prophetic eye of imagination may dwell upon her smilingly.

I fell into very pleasant society at Washington. Strangers who

who intend staying some days in a town, usually take lodgings at a boarding-house, in preference to a tavern: in this way they obtain the best society the place affords; for there are always gentlemen, and frequently ladies, either visitors or temporary residents, who live in this manner to avoid the trouble of house-keeping. At Washington, during the sittings of congress, the boarding houses are divided into messes, according to the political principles of the inmates; nor is a stranger admitted without some introduction, and the consent of the whole company. I chanced to join a democratic mess, and name a few of its members with gratitude, for the pleasure their society gave me :-Commodore Decatur and his lady, the abbé Correa, the great botanist and plenipotentiary of Portugal, the secretary of the navy, the secretary of the navy board, known as the author of a humorous publication, entitled, "John Bull and Brother Jonathan," with eight or ten members of congress, principally from the Western states, which are generally considered as most decidedly hostile to England, but whom I did not on this account find less goodhumoured and courteous. It is from thus living in daily intercourse with the leading characters of the country, that one is enabled to judge with some degree of certainty of the practices of its government; for to know the paper theory is nothing, unless it be compared with the instruments employed to carry it into effect. A political constitution may be nothing but a ca

balistic form, to extract money and power from the people; but then the jugglers must be in the dark, and "no admittance behind the curtain." This way of living affords too the best insight into the best part of society; for if in a free nation the depositaries of the public confidence be ignorant or vulgar, it is a very fruitless search to look for the opposite qualities in those they represent; whereas, if these be well informed in mind and manners, it proves at the least an inclination towards knowledge and refinement, in the general mass of citizens by whom they are selected. My own experience obliges me to a favourable verdict in this particular. I found the little circle into which I had happily fallen, full of good sense and good humour, and never quitted it without feeling myself a gainer on the score, either of useful information or of social enjoyment.

The president, or rather his lady, holds a drawing-room weekly, during the sitting of congress. He takes by the hand those who are presented to him; shaking hands being discovered in America to be more rational and manly than kissing them. For the rest, it is much as such things are every where, chatting and tea, compliments and ices, a little music (some scandal, I suppose, among the ladies), and to bed. Nothing in these assemblies more attracted my notice, than the extraordinary stature of most of the Western members; the room seemed filled with giants, among whom moderately sized men crept like pigmies. I know not

well