sitors. Close to the hotel, but in another building, is the ball-room, and a little below the hotel on the other side, is the spring itself; but beautiful as is the whole scenery, the great charm of this watering place is, the way in which those live who visit it. The rises of the hills which surround the valley are covered with little cottages, log-houses, and other picturesque buildings, sometimes in rows, and ornamented with verandahs, without a second story above, or kitchen below. Some

are very elegant and more commodious than the rest, having been built by gentlemen who have the right given to them by the company to whom the springs belong, of occupying them themselves when there, but not of preventing others from taking possession of them in their absence. The dinners and other meals are, generally speaking, bad; not that there is not a plentiful supply, but that it is so difficult to supply seven hundred people sitting down in one room. In the morning, they all turn out from their little burrows, meet in the public walks, and go down to the spring before breakfast; during the forenoon, when it is too warm, they remain at home; after dinner they ride out or pay visits, and then end the day, either at the ball-room, or in little societies among one another. There is no want of handsome equipages, many four in hand (Virginny long tails) and every accommodation for these equipages. The crowd is very great, and it is astonishing what inconvenience people will submit to, rather than not be accommodated somehow or another. Every cabin is like a rabbit burrow. In the one next to where I was lodged, in a room about fourteen feet square, and partitioned off as well as it could be, there slept a gentleman and his wife, his sister and brother, and a female servant. I am not sure that the nigger was not under the bed-at all events, the young sister told me that it was not at all pleasant.

There is a sort of major-domo here, who regulates every department: his word is law, and his fiat immoveable, and he presumes not a little upon his power; a circumstance not to be surprised at, as he is as

much courted and is as despotic as all the lady patronesses of Almacks rolled into one. He is called the Metternich of the mountains. No one is allowed ac commodation at these springs who is not known, and generally speaking, only those families who travel in their private carriages. It is at this place that you feel how excessively aristocratical and exclusive the Americans would be, and indeed will be, in spite of their institutions. Spa, in its palmiest days, when princes had to sleep in their carriages at the doors of the hotels, was not more in vogue than are these white sulphur springs with the élite of the United States. And it is here, and here only, in the States, that you do meet with what may be fairly considered as select society, for at Washington there is a great mixture. Of course all the celebrated belles of the different States are to be met with here, as well as all the large fortunes, nor is there a scarcity of pretty and wealthy widows. The president, Mrs. Caton, the mother of Lady Wellesley, Lady Strafford, and Lady Caermarthen, the daughter of Carrol, of Carrolton, one of the real aristocracy of America, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and all the first old Virginian and Carolinia families, many of them descendants of the old cavaliers, were at the springs when I arrived there; and I certainly must say that I never was at any wateringplace in England where the company was so good and so select as at the Virginia springs in America.

I passed many pleasant days at this beautiful spot, and was almost as unwilling to leave it as I was to part with the Sioux Indians at St. Peters. Refinement and simplicity are equally charming. I was introduced to a very beautiful girl here, whom I should not have mentioned so particularly, had it not been that she was the first and only lady in America that I observed to whittle. She was sitting one fine morning on a wooden bench, surrounded by admirers, and as she carved away her seat with her pen-knife, so did shre cut deep into the hearts of those who listened to her lively conversation.

There are, as may be supposed, a large number of negro servants here attending their masters and mistresses. I have often been amused, not only here, but during my residence in Kentucky, at the high-sounding Christian names which have been given to them. "Byron, tell Ada to come here directly.' "Now, Telemachus, if you don't leave Calypso alone, you'll get a taste of the cow-hide."

Among others, attracted to the springs professionally, was a very clever German painter, who, like all Germans, had a very correct ear for music. He had painted a kitchen-dance in Old Virginia, and in the picture he had introduced all the well-known coloured people in the place; amongst the rest were the band of musicians, but I observed that one man was missing. "Why did you not put him in," inquired I. "Why, sir, I could not put him in; it was impossible; he never plays in tune. Why, if I put him in, sir, he would spoil the harmony of my whole picture!"

I asked this artist how he got on in America. He replied, "But so-so; the Americans in general do not estimate genius. They come to me and ask what I want for my pictures, and I tell them. Then they say, 'how long did it take you to paint it?" I answer 'so many days.' Well, then they calculate and say, if it took you only so many days, you ask so many dollars a-day for your work; you ask a great deal too much; you ought to be content with so much per day, and I will give you that.' So that, thought I, invention, and years of study, go for nothing with these people. There is only one way to dispose of a picture in America, and that is, to raffle it; the Americans will then run the chance of getting it. If you do not like to part with your pictures in that way, you must paint portraits; people will purchase their own faces all over the world: the worst of it is, that in this country, they will purchase nothing else.

During my stay here I was told of one of the most remarkable instances that perhaps ever occurred, of the discovery of a fact by the party from whom it was of

the utmost importance to conceal it-a very pretty interesting young widow. She had married a promising young man, to whom she was tenderly attached, and who, a few months after the marriage, unfortunately fell in a duel. Aware that the knowledge of the cause of her husband's death would render the blow still more severe to her, (the ball having passed through the eye into his brain, and there being no evident gun-shot wound,) her relations informed her that he had been thrown from his horse and killed by the fall. She believed them. She was living in the country; when, about nine months after her widowhood, her brother rode down to see her, and as soon as he arrived went into his room to shave and dress. The window of his room, which was on the ground-floor, looked out upon the garden, and it being summer time, it was open. He tore off a portion of an old newspaper to wipe his razor. The breeze caught it, and carried it away into the garden until it stopped at the feet of his sister who happened to be walking. Mechanically she took up the fragment, and perceiving her husband's name upon it she read it. It contained a full account of the duel in which he lost his life! The shock she received was so great that it unsettled her mind for nearly two years. She had but just recovered, and for the first time re-appeared in public, when she was pointed out to me.

Returning to Guyandotte one of the travellers wished to see the view from the Hawk's Nest, or rather wished to be able to say that he had seen it. We passed the spot when it was quite dark, but he persisted in going there, and to help his vision, borrowed one of the coachlamps from the driver. He returned, and declared that with the assistance of the lamp he had had a very excellent view, down a precipice of several hundred feet, His bird's-eye view by candle-light must have been very extensive. After all, it is but to be able to say that they have been to such a place, or have seen such a thing that, more than any real taste for it, induces the majority of the world to incur the trouble and fatigue of travelling.

CHAPTER XXXII.

I was informed that a camp meeting was to be held about seven miles from Cincinnati, and, anxious to verify the accounts I had heard of them, I availed myself of this opportunity of deciding for myself. We proceeded about five miles on the high road, and then diverged by a cross-road until we arrived at a steep conical hill, crowned with splendid forest trees without underwood; the trees being sufficiently apart to admit of wagons and other vehicles to pass in every direction. The camp was raised upon the summit of this hill, a piece of table-land comprising many acres. About an

acre and a half was surrounded on the four sides by cabins built up of rough boards; the whole area in the centre was fitted up with planks, laid about a foot from the ground, as seats. At one end, but not close to the cabins, was a raised stand, which served as a pulpit for the preachiers, one of them praying, while five or six others sat down behind him on benches. There was ingress to the area by the four corners; the whole of it was shaded by vast forest trees, which ran up to the height of fifty or sixty feet without throwing out a branch; and to the trunks of these trees were fixed lamps in every direction, for the continuance of service by night. Outside the area, which may be designated as the church, were hundreds of tents pitched in every quarter, their snowy whiteness contrasting beautifully with the deep verdure and gloom of the forest. These were the temporary habitations of those who had come many miles to attend the meeting, and who remained there from the commencement until it concluded-usually a period of from ten to