MY DEAR FRIEND: You ask me to write you a very brief sketch of my Impressions of Country Life in Virginia. How can you make so unreasonable a request to a man who for thirty years of his life has been accustomed to prose in three volumes? Had you not put in that little word brief,' I might perhaps have made something of it. Impressions of Country Life in Virginia, in two

volumes quarto, by etc.,' would have been much more in my way, and would have been an imposing title: but a brief sketch! Good Heaven! it is a frightful undertaking! Moreover, there are a thousand other objections. I have no amanuensis here- no living pen- and my own hand-writing is so delicately fine, that printers have the greatest difficulty in discovering whether 'Constantinople' means 'Kamtschatka, or if 'St. Petersburg' is intended for 'Sebastopol.' Beside, where is the story?

'Story! God bless you, I have none to tell, Sir;'

and what can I do without a story?

Again, consider the variety of phases in Virginia country life: the farm life; the village life; the watering-place life; the negro life; the Eastern Virginia life; the Western Virginia life; the Panhandle life! My dear friend, it cannot be done! You might as well call the history of a Ring-tailed monkey brief tale.'

Above all, am I not the laziest man in the world, especially in hot weather? It is true, I am here in one of the calmest and sweetest spots in the world, where the beauty of the scenery, the gentle but well-marked undulations of the landscape, sink quietly into the spirit, and dispose to peaceful thought; where the gay, musical carol of the miserable, down-trodden,' happy, contented slave gives that vein of thought a far more calmly-cheerful turn than can ever be received among the sons of toil in great cities. True, also, that at Fauquier, cool shade from ancient trees can always be found without going five steps from your cabin-door, and that a delicious breeze plays in and out continually among the unencumbered trunks, while the fallow deer in the park sport about close by, as if they wished every one near to come and sport with them. True, the eye and the ear receive nothing but what is lovely from the hand of Nature. But alas! with me, this disposes only to greater laziness; and it is in the din of cities alone that I am disposed to shut out horrid sights and sounds, by the creations of fancy and art, or by the memories or treasured stores of the past. What makes me like this place so much - far more than any watering-place I have seen in Virginia - it would be difficult to say. Probably it is the shade and the trees. I remember, some twenty years ago or more, writing a little piece of verse on my thirty-fifth birth-day. It was composed-if that can be called composed which cost no trouble- in a fine grove of wellgrown trees standing upon clear turf; and the beginning, if I remember rightly, was as follows:

'Now half through life's allotted space,

I stand upon the brink

Of latter days' sere autumn-tide,

And pause a while to think:

To think and ask, of all that I

In the long past have seen,

What, had the choice been left to me -

What, what I would have been?

Of all conditions and degrees, on this side of the flood,

Oh! make me a king's forester in some old shady wood!'

The same tastes have remained with me. I love the shady wood as well as ever; and if I am to be any body's forester, let me be a king's. Not that I would imply that Fauquier is seated in the bosom of a forest, for there are wide fields and sunny glades between; but there are trees enough, and those well enough disposed, to afford shade at every hour to every walk. If there be salamanders, they can find sunshine enough, Heaven knows, to warm even their cold natures. For my part, give me the shade from beneath which, on the tall eastern hill,' I can see the wide expanse of glowing landscape in its rich harvest dress, and catch sweeps of the Blue-Ridge, with its magical and ever-varying gleams of light and shadow.

The Rappahannoc, too, gliding along in its fair valley, just beyond the park-like Tournament-ground, ought to make thought run sweetly on along with its flowing waters; but this, with me, only induces greater idleness. A running stream always does so. I am inclined to sit upon the bank and let time flow with the river: not without thoughts, not without fancies; but without the energy to put them down. Vague impressions of beauty and pleasure come over the spirit, without the aid of Hachiz; and the mere lapse of pleasant moments seems to bring us nearer to that Heaven, where the mere consciousness of the glory and goodness of the ALMIGHTY may form the beatitude of those who have served HIM faithfully on earth. Moreover, the comforts of this place, the absence of those wants and necessities which afflict one in many other watering-places the scramble for a bed that one can sleep upon, or a dinner that one can eat, or a pitcher of water that one can drink, or a towel wherewith one can wash-leads to the same lazy result. Delicately fed without paying the waiters for every dish; promptly attended without feeing the servants beforehand; civility amounting to kindness; and readiness instead of dull indifference, render these Springs a pleasant land of drowsyhead,' to use good old lazy Thomson's words, into which I would not advise any one to enter who is bent upon labor, but where the spirit freed from the load of business, or the mind absolved from the load of care, may find a month's Sabbath, and return refreshed to the duties and the toils of life.

And yet you ask me to write a brief sketch of, etc.!' How can I do it? How can I write at all in such a place? The only way, I suppose, will be to fall into the old strain, and make a picturesque story of it, thus:

One beautiful summer's evening when the movement of the gentle waters of the Rappahannoc brought a sweet refreshing gale to temper the heat of the July sun, and the over-hanging trees of the lovely valley afforded shade to the temples of the weary tra veller; when the singing of the birds and the murmur of the doves spread a pleasing and musical tranquillity around, and the slowly-moving masses of light cloud, throwing blue flitting shadows as they passed, gave infinite variety to the fields golden with the

wheat, or verdant with the yet immature corn, a solitary horse

man

Stop: that will never do. I intend to make some capital out of that solitary horseman yet, if it be but in favor of my good-nature: but I must not bring him in here; and while the pen is still running on upon the paper, I will try to give a few of my impressions of Virginia Country Life in a more sober and solemn form.

VIRGINIA COUNTRY LIFE.

PLANTATION LIFE.

HOSPITALITY, in one shape or another, is spread over the whole United States; but its form varies much, according, I believe, to the different races from which the adjacent population sprung. In great cities, indeed, there cannot be much true hospitality shown by any citizen, unless he be enormously wealthy, or one of those benevolent persons who loves to entertain the pertinaceous dropper-in at dinner-time. It is a curious thing that the near proximity of human beings, like the approach of the reverse ends of magnets, produces repulsion and not attraction; but so it is. The country is the only real scene of hospitality, and this is very general, I might say universal, throughout these States. In the North, peopled principally by the descendants of the old Lollards after they had gone through the phase of Puritanism, it is a more square and angular virtue, sometimes impinging a little upon other people's rounds and curves. But still, from Maine to Connecticut, I suppose there are few men who would refuse some entertainment to the weary wayfarer. In the far West there is not a cabin where, as long as there was a place left upon the floor, the traveller might not lie down to rest, and be welcome to a meal, if it were to be had.

The Virginians, sprung for the most part from the old Cavaliers, retain the more frank and profuse spirit of their race. They will in general eat with you, drink with you, fight with you, or let you do the same with them, without the slightest ceremony. To them hospitality seems a mere matter of course. There is no ostentation about it, no parade. Every now and then there may be a formal dinner-party, it is true; and it is possible, nay, I think it is likely, that every one at the board feels himself more or less uncomfortable at a certain degree of ceremonious restraint. But the usual course is quite different. In every well-to-do planter's house there is a dinner provided for the family, which may consist of five or six. Now, in this quarter of the world, what will do for five or six will do for five or six and thirty, and there will be no want. There is always plenty, though perhaps we could not add no waste. There is a lavish abundance, which in some degree smacks of the olden time in the green island, and still farther back was not unknown in England. The day's round is simply this: all rise early; then, in most families, come prayers; then the ample breakfast, to which the household drop in one by one, as it

suits them; and then the separation to various pursuits, according to the various seasons of the year. The studious man takes up his book; the sporting man shoulders his gun; the mistress of the house seeks her basket of keys, and puts her household in order; the master or his sons go out to see that the blessed labors of the

plough or the hoe are not neglected by the servants in the field; the daughters have the piano or the song. About, or rather after noon, the visitors begin to drop in-sometimes neighbors and intimate friends, sometimes strangers with letters in their hands. Then comes the universal Will you not stay to dine? Of course you are going to remain the night.' It is to be remarked,