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should have been employed during all that time as a diplomatic agent of his government."

"Thomas Jefferson," observed my friend, "has said a number of clever things, and warned us against a great many mistakes into which we have since fallen. He particularly dreaded the influence of British example on our public and private character; and the result has proved that he was not mistaken."

"And yet how little did he suspect that our political partisans would find professional statesmen willing to become the fee'd advocates of their doctrines, after the manner of O'Connell !" rejoined the physician.

"What do you mean ?" interrupted I, astonished at the boldness of the remark.

"I mean what I say," replied he; "I know a senator for whom the manufacturers of his district are said to make an annual purse, on the ground that his Congressional duties interfere with the exercise of his profession as a lawyer."

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"I cannot believe it," interrupted my friend with some vehemence; " and I will not believe it but, even if it were true," added he, with a sardonic smile," the honourable senator would, for the honour of his State, be the very reverse of the vulgar Irish agitator; one is paid by his rich and respectable constituents, the other by the very beggars of his country! None of our Whig senators, I am sure, would ever condescend to become the hired advocates of the mob."

"A fine piece of news this!" ejaculated the physician; "but I suspected as much as this when I saw the change wrought on the manners and customs of our people since my absence; how the simple, unsophisticated habits of our citizens have given way to cold formality and conceit,-and how the generous hospitality which was wont to grace our people is fast yielding to a vulgar and ostentatious display of wealth.

"I am actually afraid of meeting my old acquaintance, and it is for this reason you see me play the owl at this late hour; at which, at

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least, I am allowed to have my own way, without being intruded upon by my friends, or pushed aside by the busy multitude, to whom I must for ever remain an unprofitable stranger.'

CHAPTER VIII.

Return Home.-A Passage from the Edinburgh Review, apologetical of American Federalism.-Speculation on the Subject.-Little Reward of Democracy in the United States. The Higher Classes contending for the Purse.— Consequence of this Policy.-Declaration of an American Reviewer with regard to American Poets their Reward in Europe.-Falling asleep.—The Nightmare.

"The earth has bubbles as the water has,

And these are of them."

Macbeth, Act i. Scene 3.

ON On my return home, I found it impossible for me to go to sleep. The events of the day were yet fresh upon my mind, and I required some abstraction to set my thoughts to rest, and efface the disagreeable impressions produced by the conversation of the stranger. Undetermined as to the means of escaping from

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my own reflections, I searched the books and papers on my writing-table; where, unfortunately for my quiet, I happened to glance my eye on an American republication of the "Edinburgh Review," and a few scattered. numbers of the "Southern Literary Messenger." I mechanically opened the first, and, as misfortune would have it, found my attention at once riveted by the following passage:

"Purge the British constitution of its corruptions," said Adams, "and give to the popular branch equality of representation, and it would be the most perfect institution ever devised by the wit of man.

'Purge it of its corruptions," replied Hamilton, "and it would become an impracticable government: as it stands at present, with all its supposed defects, it is the most perfect government that ever existed."

These remarks, I thought, proceeding from the two saints by which the American Whigs still swear on solemn occasions, prove at least Hamilton to have been the abler statesman,