Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

PUBLIC LIBRARY

143362

LEGOX AND
JDATIONS.

1900.

COPY RIGHT SECURED.

MR. PLEASANTS,

THE manuscript from which the following letters are extracted, was found in the bed chamber of a boarding house in a sea port town of Virginia. The gentleman who had previously occupied that chamber, is represented by the mistress of the house to have been a meek and harmless young man, who meddled very little with the affairs of others and concernng whom no one appeared sufficiently interested to make any enquiry. As it seems from the manuscript that the name by which he passed was not his real name, and as, moreover, she knew nothing of his residence, so that she was totally ignorant to whom and whither to direct it, she considered the manuscript as lawful prize and made a present of it to me. It seems to be a copy of letters written by a young Englishman of rank during a tour through the United States, to a member of the British parliament. They are dated from almost every part of the United States, contain a great deal of geographical description, a delineation of every character of note among us, some literary disquisitions, with a great mixture of moral and political observation. The letters are prettily written. Persons of every description will find in them a light and agreeable entertainment; and to the younger part of your readers they may not be uninstructive. For the present I select a few which were written from this place, and by way of distinction, will give them to you under the title of the BRITISH SPY.

THE

LETTERS

OF THE

BRITISH SP Y.

LETTER I.

Richmond, September 1. YOU complain, my dear S......., that although I have been resident in Richmond upwards of six months, you have heard nothing from me since my arrival. The truth is, that I have suspended writing until a more intimate acquaintance with the people and their country should furnish me with the materials for a correspondence.... Having now collected those materials, the apology ceases and the correspondence begins. But first, a word of myself.

I still continue to wear the mask, and most willingly exchange the attentions which would be paid to my rank, for the superior and exquisite pleasure of inspecting this country and this people, without attracting to myself a single eye of curiosity, or awakening a shade of suspicion.... Under my assumed name, I gain an admission close enough to trace, at leisure, every line of the American character; while the plainness, or rather humility of my appearance, my manners and conversation, puts no one on his guard, but enables

me to take the portrait of nature, as it were, asleep and naked. Besides there is something of inno cent roguery in this masquerade which I am playing that sorts very well with the sportiveness of my temper. To sit and decoy the human heart from behind all its disguises....to watch the capricious evolutions of unrestrained nature, frisking, curvetting and gambolling at her ease, with the curtain of ceremony drawn up to the very sky....O! it is delightful!

You are perhaps surprised at my speaking of the attentions which would be paid in this country to my rank. You will suppose that I have forgotten where I am : no such thing. I remember well enough that I am in Virginia, that state, which, of all the rest, plumes herself most highly on the democratic spirit of her principles.... Her political principles are, indeed, democratic enough in all conscience. Rights and privileges, as regulated by the constitution of the state, belong in equal degree to all the citizens; and Peter Pindar's remark is perfectly true of the people of this country, that "every blackguard Scoundrel is a king." Nevertheless, there ex

its in Virginia a species of social rank, from which no country can, I presume, be entirely free. I mean that kind of rank which arises from the different degrees of wealth and of intellectual refinement. These must introduce a style of liv ing and of conversation, the former of which a

*The reader needs scarcely to be reminded. that the writer is a Britton and true to his charac ter.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »