ment has treated him, he
says, most liberally and handsomely in every respect. He thinks of
sailing for Liverpool on the 7th of April, passing a short time in
London, and then going to Paris. Perhaps you may meet him. If you do, he
will know that you are my dearest friend, and will open his whole heart
to you at once. His secretary of legation, Mr. Coggleswell, is a man of
very remarkable information, a great traveler, a good talker, and a
scholar.

"I am going to sketch you our trip here from Washington, as it involves
nine miles of a 'Virginny Road.' That done, I must be brief, good
brother.". . .

The reader of the _American Notes_ will remember the admirable and most
humorous description of the night steamer on the Potomac, and of the
black driver over the Virginia road. Both were in this letter; which,
after three days, he resumed "At Washington again, Monday, March the
twenty-first:

"We had intended to go to Baltimore from Richmond, by a place called
Norfolk; but, one of the boats being under repair, I found we should
probably be detained at this Norfolk two days. Therefore we came back
here yesterday, by the road we had traveled before; lay here last night;
and go on to Baltimore this afternoon, at four o'clock. It is a journey
of only two hours and a half. Richmond is a prettily situated town, but,
like other towns in slave districts (as the planters themselves admit),
has an aspect of decay and gloom which to an unaccustomed eye is _most_
distressing. In the black car (for they don't let them sit with the
whites), on the railroad as we went there, were a mother and family,
whom the steamer was conveying away, to sell; retaining the man (the
husband and father, I mean) on his plantation. The children cried the
whole way. Yesterday, on board the boat, a slave-owner and two
constables were our fellow-passengers. They were coming here in search
of two negroes who had run away on the previous day. On the bridge at
Richmond there is a notice against fast driving over it, as it is rotten
and crazy: penalty--for whites, five dollars; for slaves, fifteen
stripes. My heart is lightened as if a great load had been taken from
it, when I think that we are turning our backs on this accursed and
detested system. I really don't think I could have borne it any longer.
It is all very well to say 'be silent on the subject.' They won't let
you be silent. They _will_ ask you what you think of it; and _will_
expatiate on slaver