I left Professor S. de V. and his charming wife yesterday morning with mutual good wishes, and hope in a short time to have good tidings from them.

The business at Charlottesville on Saturday consisted for the most part of speeches and the distribution of diplomas. I could not hear much of the former, and my principal pleasure was the contemplation of the assembly of ladies, among whom I remarked a great number of very lovely and happy countenances. If the Juno style of

beauty is not met with in America as it is in Europe, there are, on the contrary, a greater number of cheerful, lovely countenances, and scarcely any which can be called ugly. The men are not handsome, but have a manly appearance, and, in a general way, are well made and full of strength. This, I believe, I have said once or twice. before, but I have not said, what nevertheless should be said, that among the Americans are not found that decided type of one distinct race as we find it among the English, Irish, French, Spaniards, Germans, &c. An American, male or female, might belong to any nation, in its beautiful human character, but divested of nationality; nay, even the Swedish, that is to say, when this is found in the most perfect faces, because a well-formed, fine nose, and an oval countenance, is almost universal among the ladies. Our full-moon countenances, and noses which come directly out of them like a handle, or a projecting point of rock, are not seen here; neither are potato-noses, like my own. Still, I have seen many a blooming young girl in the Northern States of America, many a handsome young man, more like Swedes than the English or the French. Nevertheless, light hair and light eyes

are rare.

July 2d. How wearisome is this interrogative, this empty and thoughtless chatter of mere callers, especially ladies! Want of observation, want of an ear for life, is, after all, one of the greatest wants here, and the school which,

before every other, is needed most in the New World, is the old Pythagorean.

Life, with its large, holy interests, its earnest scenes, passes by these childish, undeveloped beings without their either seeing or thinking about it. Dissipated by the outward and ordinary, they do not listen to the great still voice which calls to them every day from the midst of the life in which they live, like insects of a day.

July 3d. I have to-day, in company with an estimable German gentleman, resident at Richmond, visited some of the negro jails, that is, those places of imprisonment in which negroes are in part punished, and in part confined for sale. I saw in one of these jails a tall, strong-limbed negro, sitting silent and gloomy, with his right hand wrapped in a cloth. I asked if he were ill.

"No," replied his loquacious keeper, "but he is a very bad rascal. His master, who lives higher up the river, has parted him from his wife and children, to sell him down South, as he wanted to punish him, and now the scoundrel, to be revenged upon his master, and to make himself fetch a less sum of money, has cut off the fingers of his right hand! The rascal asked me to lend him an ax to knock the nails into his shoes with, and I lent it him without suspecting any bad intention, and now has the fellow gone and maimed himself for life!"

I went up to the negro, who certainly had not a good countenance, and asked him whether he were a Christian. He replied curtly "No!" Whether he ever had heard of Christ? He again replied "No!" I said to him, that if he had known him, he would not have done this act; but that even now he ought not to believe himself abandoned, because He who has said "Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden," had spoken also to him, and would console and recreate even him.

He listened to me at the commencement with a gloomy countenance, but by degrees he brightened up, and at the

close looked quite melted. This imbittered soul was evidently still open and accessible to good. The sun shone into the prison-yard where he sat with his maimed hand, and the heavy irons on his feet, but no Christian had come hither to preach to him the Gospel of Mercy.

The door of the prison was opened to us by a negro, whose feet also were fettered by heavy irons. He looked so good-tempered and agreeable, that I asked, with some astonishment,

"But this man, what has he done that he should then be in irons ?"

"Ah!" said the keeper, "just nothing but that his master had hired him out to work in the coal-pits, and something disagreeable happening to him there, the fellow after that would not work there, and refused to go; so his master wishes to sell him, to punish him; and he ordered that we should put him in irons, just to mortify him.”

And this plan had succeeded completely. The poor fellow was so annoyed and ashamed that he did not seem to know which way to look while the keeper related his story; and besides that, he looked so good-tempered, so full of sensibility, that, strong fellow as he was, he seemed as if he would suffer rather from an injustice being done to him than be excited by it to defiance and revenge, as was the case with the other negro. He was evidently a good man, and deserved a better master.

In another prison we saw a pretty little white boy of about seven years of age sitting among some tall negro girls. The child had light hair, the most lovely light brown eyes, and cheeks as red as roses; he was, nevertheless, the child of a slave mother, and was to be sold as a slave. His price was three hundred and fifty dollars. The negro girls seemed very fond of the white boy, and he was left in their charge, but whether that was for his good or not is difficult to say. No motherly Christian mother visited either this innocent imprisoned boy or the negro

girls. They were left to a heathenish life and the darkness of the prison.

In another "jail" were kept the so-called "fancy girls," for fancy purchasers. They were handsome fair mulattoes, some of them almost white girls.

We saw in one jail the room in which the slaves are flogged, both men and women. There were iron rings in the floor to which they are secured when they are laid down. I looked at the strip of cowhide, "the paddle," with which they are flogged, and remarked, "Blows from this could not, however, do very much harm."

"Oh, yes, yes; but," replied the keeper, grinning with a very significant glance, "it can cause as much torture as any other instrument, and even more, because one can give as many blows with this strip of hide without its leaving any outward sign; it does not cut into the flesh." The slaves may remain many months in this prison before they are sold.

The Southern States are said to be remarkable for their strict attention to religious observances: they go regularly to church, they send out missionaries to China and to Africa, but they leave the innocent captive slave in their own prisons without instruction or consolation.

Yet once more-what might not women, what ought not women to do in this case!

I have heard young, beautiful girls declare themselves proud to be Americans, and, above every thing else, proud to be Virginians! I should like to have taken them to the jails, and have seen whether, in the face of all this injustice, they could have been proud of being Virginians, proud of the institutions of Virginia.

July 5th. Here also, as every where on my pilgrimage, have I become acquainted with good and thoughtful people, who form a perfect counterbalance to the unthinking and the bad, and who attach me to the place and the community where I am. Foremost among the good stands

I do not say that this is high ground for them to take, because no injustice should prevent our doing that which is just and wise; but it is natural, and, to a certain extent, I myself can sympathize in it.

But now that the Northern States, for the preservation of peace, have conceded to the Southern the honorable. and holy right of sanctuary which their states had afforded-now that they have given up the precious privilege of protecting the fugitive slave, out of regard to the constitutional rights of the Southern States-and now that violent abolitionism is more and more giving place to a nobler and calmer spirit, nothing, I think, ought any longer to prevent the middle slave states from carrying out such measures as would contribute to their highest interests.

The slave institution of Virginia has not merely permitted a vast amount of the white population to grow up -eighty thousand, I have understood-without being able either to read or write, and who are as low in morals as in education, but it has here, as well as elsewhere, prevented the development of industry and the extension of emigration, and has caused a want of enterprise in public works, and hence want of employment for an increasing poor population. The consequences of this have assumed every year a more threatening aspect. There is here no background of strong and noble popular life, as in the free states, in which the government of the states and the schools are filled as by a fresh germ of life. Immorality, ignorance, and poverty increase; and it can not be otherwise when one half of the people hold the other in slavery. The planters of Virginia, proud of their historic memories and of their slaves, among whom they fancy that they live like feudal princes of the Middle Ages, although this is a great mistake, intrenched behind their traditions and slave institutions, have styled themselves "high-blooded" and "high-minded," and other such terms, have sat still