usual gifts. Their moral sense is, it seems to me, as pu: and delicate as their musical perception; their sensibility is acute and warm, and their good temper and cheerful disposition are evidently the peculiar gifts of nature, or, more correctly, gifts of God. And though they may not have shown themselves original in creative genius, yet there is in their way of comprehending and applying what they learn a really new and refreshing originality: that may be heard in their peculiar songs-the only original people's songs which the New World possesses—as soft, sweet, and joyous as our people's songs are melancholy. The same may be observed in their comprehension of the Christian doctrines, and their application of them to daily life.

Last Sunday I went to the church of the Baptist negroes here with Mr. F., one of the noble-minded and active descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers, who resides in Savannah, and who has shown me much kindness. The name of the preacher was Bentley, I believe, and he was perfectly black. He spoke extempore with great animation and case. The subject of his discourse was the appearance of the Savior on earth, and the purpose for which he came. "I remember," said he, "on one occasion, when the President of the United States came to Georgia, and to our town of Savannah-I remember what an ado the people made, and how they went out in great carriages to meet him. The carriages were decorated very grandly, and the great cannon pealed forth one shot after another. And so the president came into the town in a grand, beautiful carriage, and drove to the best house in the whole town, and that was Mrs. Scarborough's house! And when he came there he seated himself in the window. But a cord was drawn around the house, to keep us negroes and other poor folks from coming too near. We must stand outside, and only get a sight of the president as he sat at the window. But the great gentlemen and the rich

But

folks, they went freely up the steps and in at the door, and shook hands with him. Now, did Christ come in this way? Did he come only to the rich? did he shake hands only with them? No! Blessed be the Lord! he came to the poor! He came to us, and for our sakes, my brothers and sisters!" 66 Yes, yes! Amen! He came to us! Blessed be His name! Amen! Halleluiah!" resounded through the chapel for a good minute or two; and the people stamped with their feet, and laughed and cried, with countenances beaming with joy. The preacher then continued to tell how Christ proved himself to be the messenger of the Highest. "Now imagine, my friends," said he, "that we here are a plantation of negro laborers. But the owner of the plantation is away; he is a long, long way off, over the sea in England, and the negroes on the plantation have never seen his face. They have never seen the face of any man higher than the overseer. now they hear that the owner of the plantation, their lord and master, is coming there. And they are very curious to see him, and they inquire about him every day. One day they see the overseer coming, and with him another gentleman whom they have never seen before. But his dress is not so good, and much simpler than the overseer's; the overseer has a fine, buttoned coat on, a white cravat, a handsome hat on his head, and besides that, gloves on his hands. The strange gentleman, on the contrary, has no gloves on, and is dressed in quite a simple, careless way. And if the negroes had not known the overseer, they never would have believed that this was the master. They see, however, that the strange gentleman gives orders to the overseer that he shall send one negro here and another there, that many shall be called to him and to the overseer, and the negroes must do all that he wishes and commands, and from this they can see that he is the master."

How living and excellent is this representation of negro

life to the negroes, drawn as it is fresh from their everyday experience!

In the afternoon of the same day, I also accompanied Mr. F. to hear another negro preacher. This was an old mulatto, a powerful, handsome old man, who had acquired some property, and who was greatly looked up to by his people as a preacher and baptizer. He resembled the whites both in appearance and manner. He mentioned, during his discourse, that he was ninety-five years old; and he related his religious experience; his spiritual afflictions and agony, which were so extreme as to drive him almost to self-murder; and, lastly, his feelings when the comprehension of Christ, and salvation through Him, became clear to his understanding. "The whole world became changed to me," continued he; "every thing seemed as if new-born, and beaming with new beauty. Even the companion of my life, my wife, seemed to me to be again young, and shone before me in new beauty, and I could not help saying to her, 'Of a truth, my wife, I love thee!" A young woman on the bench where I sat bent down, almost choked with laughter. I bent down also, but to shed tears, which pleasure, sympathy, my own life's experience, and the living, child-like description, so faithful to nature, had called forth. After the sermon Mr. F. and I shook hands with the powerful old Andrew Marshall.

The choir in the gallery-negroes and negresses-sang quartettes, as correctly and beautifully as can be imagined. At the close of the service a woman came forth, and, kneeling before the altar, seemed to be under great distress of mind, and the old preacher prayed for her, in her sorrows and secret grief, a beautiful and heartfelt prayThus to pray in the chapel for the afflicted seems to De customary among the Baptists in this country.

er.

May 15th. It is now very warm here, and the heat is enervating. If it were not so I should enjoy myself in

Savannah, in the family where I am staying; where the master and mistress, as well as the domestics-negroesseem all to be influenced by the same spirit of good temper and kindness, and where I have made some very agreeable acquaintance. Among those whom I love most are a family named M'I., one of those who labor for the instruction and colonization of the slaves. The daughters themselves instruct the little negro children on their father's estate, and praised very much their facility of learning; in particular, they seemed to have pleasure in pictures and stories, and easily understood them. This gave me great delight; and what a beautiful sphere of action. is opened by this means for the young daughters of the South! But I fear they are yet few who embrace it. I have arranged, next year, to take a pleasure trip with this amiable family to Florida, where they have a son residing. But man proposes, and God disposes!

There are many beautiful places in the neighborhood of Savannah, on the high banks of the river, and the number of beautiful trees and flowers is untold. It delighted me to hear Swedish family names in many of the appellations of these, and thus to recognize tokens of Linnæus; as, for instance, I here found Kudbeckia Lagerströmia, a very pretty shrub with pale-red flowers, resembling Tellandsia, and many others. The kind ladies here-and I have become acquainted with some extraordinary women among them-drove me about in their carriages to see the places and forest parks in the neighborhood. Bonaventura is a natural park, and is one of the remarkable features of the place and the South. The splendid liveoaks, growing in groups and avenues, with their long hanging moss, form on all sides the most beautiful Gothic arcades, and when the evening sun casts his glowing beams through these deep, gloomy vistas, the most lovely effects are produced. The young artists of America ought to come here and study them.

A portion of this beautiful park is being converted inte a burial-ground, and white marble grave-stones raise themselves below the hanging mosses of the live-oaks. This moss vegetation is now in blossom; the blossom is a small green button-like flower of the pentandria class, with a delicate scent. Other magnificent flowers of the South, the Magnolia grandiflora, the Cape jasmin, and many others, are now beginning to be generally in bloom, but the socnt of these is strong, and too powerful for my taste. The scent of the woods is overpowering, and not wholesome. Ladies of delicate complexions become flushed, and suffer from riding through the woods at this season. The flowers operate upon them like poison. To me they appeared suffocating. What odor is there so pleasant and refreshing as that of our fir-woods and our lilies of the valley?

To-day, when I went out alone to a little grove in the midst of the plain of sand, near the town, I found an abundance of the most beautiful strawberries, and wondered how it could be that the negro children left them in peace. I gathered and tasted them, nay I did not taste them, for they had no sign of taste. They were a kind of spurious strawberry. Another spurious beauty in the green fields of the South is a little, low shrub, a kind of Cactus, which is very common, called "the prickly pear," and which bears a beautiful pale-yellow flower, like a single mallow, but which is full of an invisible kind of minute hooked prickle, and after gathering a flower it is many days before you can free your fingers from the tiny spines.

One beautiful institution which I visited here is the asylum for the orphan children of all nations and all religious persuasions. It is under the direction of ladies, also of various nations and religious opinions. I visited it with one of the directresses, who was a Jewess, and much attached to her peculiar religious doctrines, which, according to her representation, approached those of the