ago--his great project was coming up
before Parliament, and he told me, in confidence, that he was sure of a
favorable result,--that he had counted noses, and had the most
comfortable assurances from all the great leaders of the day,--and in
short, between ourselves, that grass would be growing on the London
Exchange within two years. The petition came up on the day appointed,
and was allowed to drop out of the tail end of the cart, almost without
a remark. But so far was he from being disheartened, that he lost no
time in preparing for a trip across the Atlantic, which he had long had
in contemplation, but was hindered from taking by the hopes he had been
persuaded to entertain from his friends in Parliament, and by the
business at Lanark,--a manufacturing place which he had built up of
himself in Scotland, with eminent success, and most undoubted practical
wisdom.

Wishing to leave a record with me for future ages, he wrote as follows
in my album, with a cheerfulness, an imperturbability, a serene
self-confidence, past all my conceptions of a visionary or enthusiast.

"I leave this country with a deep impression that my visit to
America will be productive of permanent benefit to the Indian
tribes, to the negro race, and to the whole population of the
Western Continent, North and South, and to Europe.

"ROBERT OWEN.

"LONDON, 4th September, 1824."

What a magnificent scheme! How comprehensive and how vast! But nothing
came of it, beyond the translation of his son, Robert Dale Owen, to this
country,--a very clever, well-educated, and earnest, though rather
awkward and sluggish young man, who has achieved a large reputation
here, and will be yet more distinguished if he lives, being well
grounded and rooted in the foundation principles of government, and both
conscientious and fearless.

* * * * *

_Old Bailey._--This and other like places, of which we have all read so
much that we feel acquainted with them, not as pictures or descriptions,
at second hand, but as decided and positive realities, I lost no time in
seeing.

I found the court-room small, much smaller than the average with us,
badly arranged, and worse lighted. A prisoner was up for burglary. He
was a sullen, turbulent-looking fellow; and his counsel, an Old Bailey
lawyer, was inquiring, with a pertinacity that astonished while it
amused me, about the dirt in a comb. His object was to asce