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as one of the dishes at table; it tasted very much like roasted goose, but heavier. Tammany Hall is one of the public hotels, and noted for the public meetings of the democratic party, or Bucktails, as they are called. Like the other hotels it is the residence of a good many permanent boarders; some of them merchants of considerable wealth, who sit down every day at the public table. The inn is with us proverbially the traveller's home, but here it is the home of a great many besides travellers. This feature in the American system I cannot admire; nor can I imagine what comfort there can be amidst the bustle and noise of a public tavern, or in smoking segars and drinking spirits and water in the bar-room.

The dinner hour at Tammany Hall is three o'clock, and covers are every day set for from thirty to eighty. The resident boarders are generally found at the upper end of the table, and the travellers farther down. They take their seats at the sound of the dinner bell, and in little more than a quarter of an hour most of them are ready to leave the table. During dinner rum and water is the usual beverage; few take wine unless they are entertaining a friend. The dinner is always excellent, combining every variety of substantial cheer with a plentiful allowance of the delicacies of the season. After dinner three or four may

• From their wearing the tail of a buck in their hats at an annual festivity.

occasionally linger singing songs and smoking segars over a bottle of wine, but the practice is by no means general. Americans spend little time at table, retiring very soon either to their business, or the bar-room to read the newspapers. Boarding is moderate at Tammany Hall; Mr. — tells me that he pays eight dollars a-week, while some of the more fashionable private boarding-houses charge ten or twelve, and the inmates are moreover by usage almost necessitated to drink wine during dinner. For economy of time and money, retirement, and freedom from temptation, the system of private lodgings, as in our native country, is decidedly preferable to either the one or the other.

21st. Spent the greater part of the day in writing home, and in the evening called and took tea in Mr.'s. After tea several gentlemen called one after another. This is a prevalent practice in New York, and is an agreeable and unceremonious way of visiting, if mere visiting were worth the sacrifice of time which it occasions. As soon as tea is over, most families, particularly if there are young ladies in them, prepare to receive visitors. The street doors in general open from without, with an ordinary latch, and all who are on terms of tolerable intimacy with the family walk in without ceremony. Shaking of hands is not at all in fashion, the visitors bow to the ladies, and seat themselves. The ordinary topics of conversation are discussed in the usual way; a servant hands

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round a few nuts or apples, and in a little the callers take their leave as abruptly as they entered. In a family circle at tea, a servant generally attends to carry round the cups; the voluntary attentions of the gentlemen, which are so common in Scotland, would be thought exceedingly vulgar here.

22d. Paid a visit of congratulation to Mr. who has been married during my absence in Canada. The young couple do not keep house, but live in the family of the lady's father. This custom, like that of living in a boarding-house, is here very common. In place of becoming at once the master of his own house, the young husband draws in his chair at his father-in-law's fireside, and is content, frequently for years, to live as a lodger; his wife and he sitting as guests at the side of the table. It is all very well to have a fatherin-law so much disposed to be friendly, and it would doubtless be very agreeable to spend occasionally an afternoon in his family, but to have no other home must surely be a most uncomfortable thing, and connected with sacrifices to which I should be very unwilling to submit. Were I married I should be disposed to have a house which I could call my own, and use as my own, even although it should be a very small one.

23d. The New York newspapers are like our own filled with lottery puffs, and Lucky Office' stares you in the face in every street. The pre

valence of this licensed gambling in the United States is an evil token of the state of the public mind. We cannot indeed say that we are clean in this matter, so long as our Chancellor of the Exchequer has recourse to the same dishonourable expedient, in the ways and means of every year, but if we have one licensed lottery, we have but one; here are lotteries for almost every purpose; -for making roads, for building bridges, for erecting public buildings, for endowing universities, and would you believe it? for building churches! Indeed the pretexts for lotteries are as numerous as the demands for money, and the legislatures of many of the States scarcely ever assemble without authorizing some new ones, and thus virtually passing acts to promote avarice, dishonesty, unthriftiness, and a numerous train of inseparable vices. The following is quoted from an act of the Maryland legislature, passed in the spring of this year, "A supplement to an act, entitled an act to regulate lotteries. And be it enacted, that the lottery for the benefit of the university of Maryland, and the Fell's Point Masonic Hall lottery, and the lottery for raising a sum of money to buy a lot of ground in Frederickstown, in Frederick county, and build a church and parsonage house thereon, be, and the same are, excepted from the provisions of an act, entitled an act to regulate lotteries."

They have what they call a 'Literature Lottery' in New York, going on regularly from year to year,

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and the price of tickets, and divisions of tickets, is so small as to be within the reach of almost the poorest classes. A trial has recently taken place, in which it has been proved that some very unfair dealing had occurred at the drawing of a lottery; some of the managers it seems had found means to arrange, when and by whom the higher prizes should be drawn!

Another and a greater abomination, in the newspapers, are the advertisements of Slaves for Sale. These are not indeed frequent in the New York papers, although occasionally to be seen; but in those to the south they are numerous and revolting. A few days ago one of the papers here advertised, "For Sale, an excellent servant, 26 years old, with or without a child six months old," and the following I copy verbatim ac literatim, from a Baltimore paper:

"A FAMILY OF NEGROES FOR SALE.'

"For sale, a negro MAN and his WIFE with their FOUR CHILDREN. The man is about fifty years of age, and has been accustomed to work on a farm. His eldest son about twenty, is a stout active fellow, and has been brought up to the same employment. The woman, aged forty-three, is an excellent plain cook and laundress. They have a daughter aged thirteen, a son ten, and a little girl of four years old. It would be preferred to sell the whole family to one person, or in the same neighbourhood. Security will be required for not sending them out of the State of Maryland. To avoid unnecessary trouble, it may be mentioned that the price is two thousand dollars (£450 sterling) for the whole family. For farther particulars enquire at this office."

The averment in the Declaration of Independence