uncles" who were located before the revolution in Charleston, and were in Mr. Faux's estimation, " generous fellows." One of them we are subsequently told, "often hesitated," yet agreed by the advice and reasoning of a friend "to remain true to his party," while said friend adhered to the rebels “in order that each might be useful to the country and serve the sufferers on both sides; which they did in an eminent degree during that long day of trial and unnatural strife." Famous fellows!!!

The conduct of the American Slave-Owners is represented as generally brutal, and the religion and morals of the country are in a sad plight.

"There seems so little here to remind me that it is Sunday, that I had almost forgotten it. Religion, however, became the theme, There is more intolerance here than in England. Methodists predominate, and are brimful of bigotry; and the Catholics are very fiery and violent in all spiritual matters, but, having no power, they cannot injure their fellow citizens. All sects hate my reverend friend, because he is an Unitarian, and hates slavery, and therefore nothing good can be in him or come out of him." P. 103.

"16th. Picture of the condition of the American people, agricultural and otherwise. Low ease; a little avoidable want, but no dread of any want; little or no industry; little or no real capital, nor any effort to create any; no struggling, no luxury, and, perhaps, nothing like satisfaction or happiness; no real relish of life; living like store pigs in a wood, or fattening pigs in a stye. All their knowledge is confined to a newspaper, which they all love, and consists in knowing their natural, and some political rights, which rights in themselves they respect individually, but often violate towards others, being cold, selfish, gloomy, inert, and with but little or no feeling. The government is too weak and too like-minded to support and make the laws respected, or to teach the people justly to appreciate their excellent, but affronted constitution.-There are amongst them,' says Mr. Perry, no materials or seeds of appreciation for it. It was by mere accident that they ever had a constitution; it came not from wise choice or preference. In England only exists such a preference and real love of liberty. She must continue to be the Great Nation in spite of all her enemies, foreign ór domestic, while America, you see, is retrograding and quite unable of herself to achieve any thing grand. Whatever she does is by instruction and foreign aid, without which she cannot advance. If A, B, C, be taught her, she cannot teach herself D ; yet she possesses the boasting, vain glorious egotism of all knowing Europe, although of and in herself, knowing nothing. Almost all Americans are boys in every thing but vice and folly! In their eyes Uncle Sam is a right slick, mighty fine, smart, big man." P. 125.

The confusion which pervades Mr. Faux's Memorable Days,

prevents our ascertaining whether these are his own sentiments, or whether he is merely transcribing the gossip of an acquaintance. In either case, the Americans may reasonably object to the qualifications of their judge, for he associated principally with British Emigrants and their agents, and made very little way among genuine Yankees. It is needless to say that they are no great favourites of ours. But when we are to decide not upon the merits of their institutions and laws, but upon their actual character and condition, common honesty requires that we should listen to more intelligent observers than an illiterate fen-farmer, a disciple of Drakard, Fordham, and Flower, who reckons Mr. Morris Birkbeck among the foremost of men.

Many a stupid and so far memorable page is devoted to the public and private history of that shameless impostor. Honest Farmer Faux considers him as a stupendous scholar, undertakes to explain the mystery of his present situation, and can hardly believe that such an "interesting," "noble," "benevolent" man should have ventured to tell so many lies. That the lies were told, that the " Letters from Illinois" are so many gross falsifications of the real state of Western America, and that Birkbeck had a great deal of land to sell when he so incautiously recommended his countrymen to buy, are points which Mr. Faux is too honest to dispute. He admits also that Birkbeck has neither cultivated or cleared any portion of those delightful prairies which he formerly vaunted to the skies; that English Settlement is supplied with provisions from Harmony, provisions not grown on Mr. Birkbeck's swamp, but purchased with Mr. Birkbeck's dollars; that said dollars are universally considered as being on the wane; that the English labourers who have flocked to this "second Columbus" leave him with heavy complaints of his deceitful encouragement and tyrannical airs, and that no individual in America approves of the situation which he has chosen. Yet in spite of all this Mr. Faux looks up to Mr. Birkbeck as a philosopher, patriot, and philanthropist, and will be exceedingly scandalized at the freedom with which we venture to treat so distinguished a man.

The plain truth is, although Mr. Faux was too simple to discover it, that Birkbeck wanted to make himself a man of consequence, and set about it after a pitiful fashion. In England he had no short cut to notoriety. He was too rich to imitate Thistlewood, too proud to vie with Hunt, and too prudent, though not too religious to rival Carlile. If his ambition had been adorned by any admixture of nobler qualities, he would have settled in Old America, and contested

the prize of pre-eminence and power with his equals. But a vulgar and grovelling spirit led him to the bogs of the Wabash-there to reign a petty tyrant, over men whom he had deluded and ruined; thirty or forty thousand dollars strong, among a population of paupers; well housed, and well clothed, while his neighbours camped out in rags; idle and pompous, and dictatorial, while his inferiors toiled and swate; and realising a few hundreds per cent upon his capital as a trifling reward for philanthropy. It was the love of power, not the fear of poverty, which transported Morris Birkbeck to America. Long may he reign Emperor of the Prairies.' Long may such sapient visitors as Farmer Faux stare at his library, and admire his taste.' And when he deems it

worth his while to vindicate his fair fame, and defend his moral character, and clear up present mysteries,' may he find an abler advocate than his present blundering panegyrist.

Our readers will hardly expect us to devote much space to the dissensions between Birkbeck and Flower.

Mr. Faux discusses the subject with astonishing gravity. The burden of the song is a young lady who left England in company with Birkbeck and his daughters, and subsequently married George Flower. Birkbeck took this sadly to heart, but why, or wherefore is not so clear. Flower having left one wife at home, wisely determined to take another in Illinois, and he attributes Birkbeck's wrath to jealousy. All the clan Flower charge him with being violently in love with Mrs. George Flower the younger, and with a desire of ruining her more successful admirer. Birkbeck says in his defence, (for the Emperor condescended to defend himself to Farmer Faux) that the Illinois Mrs. G. Flower was the sole cause of the disagreement between the English Mrs G. Flower and their common spouse; that this fact was concealed until the parties left England, and that he, Morris Birkbeck, found it out on the banks of the Wabash, and determined, in consequence of the discovery, to cut the whole family!! Mr. Faux seems quite satisfied with this explanation, and parts with deep regret from such distinguished and memorable characters. He assures us, that hundreds and thousands of our countrymen have been beguiled by these wretches into the pestilential swamps of America, and yet he is too prejudiced, or too stupid to speak boldly respecting their misconduct. Luckily, his facts are more sensible, and those whom his facts fail to convince, will never be convinced at all.

We extract a few passages from this part of the volume. They will serve to convey a faint idea of the charms of Birkbeck Prairie :

"My friend's log house, as a first, is one of the best I have seen, having one large room and a chamber over it, to which you climb by a ladder. It has, at present, no windows, but when the doors are shut the crevices between the rough logs admit light and air enough, above and below. It is five yards square and twenty feet high. At a little distance stand a stable for two horses, a corn crib, a pig-stye, and a store; for store-keeping is his intention, and it is a good one. Two beds in the room below, and one above, lodge us in the following manner; myself and Mr. Ingle in one bed; in the second, by our side, sleep six fine but dirty children; and in the chamber, Mrs. Ingle and a valuable English maid. Thus, on my account, husband and wife are divided. It is not unusual for a male and female to sleep in the same room uncurtained, holding conversation while in bed. In a yard adjoining the house are three sows and pigs half starved, and several cows, calves, and horses, very poor, having no grass, no pasture, but with bells about their necks, eternally ringing. Shame, or rather what is called false shame, or delicacy, does not exist here. Males dress and undress before the females, and nothing is thought of it. Here is no servant. The maid is equal to the master. No boy, or man-servant. No water, but at half a mile distant. Mr. Ingle does all the jobs, and more than half the hewing, splitting, and ploughing. He is all economy, all dirty-handed industry. No wood is cut in readiness for morning fires. He and the axe procure it, and provender for the poor hungry cattle, pigs, and horses. His time is continually occupied, and the young boys just breeched are made useful in every possible way." P. 235.

"Sunday, 7th: More than half last night, Mr. and Mrs. Ingle, and maid, were out in the woods extinguishing the wide spreading fires, which threatened to consume their fences, houses, and cornfields. The whole horizon was brilliantly illuminated. These fires, if not arrested, or watched, sweep away houses, stacks of corn and hay, and every thing within reach. So fared Mr. Grant, late of Chatteris, who is now dead. The sound of the axe, splitting firewood, salutes the ear every morning, instead of the birds' song. I was smoked to death all night: our friends rested all day absent from meeting, but still the knees of all present were bent to the God of their good fathers. Sunday passes unnoticed in the English prairie, except by hunting and cricket matches." P. 237.

"Retrograding and barbarizing is an easy process. Far from the laws and restraints of society, and having no servants to do that for us which was once daily done, we become too idle in time to do any thing, but that which nature and necessity require; pride and all stimuli forsake us, for we find ourselves surrounded only by men of similar manners; hence, the face is seldom shaved, or washed, or the linen changed except on washing-days. The shoes are cleaned, perhaps, never; for if, indeed, a servant, from England, is kept, he, or she, is on a happy equality, rising up last and lying down first, and eating freely at the same time and table. None here ermit themselves to have a master, but negroes.

"A voyage in the stinking steerage of a ship, and then a journey over the mountains in waggons, sometimes camping out all night, or sleeping, like pigs, as did Mrs. Ingle and six children and maid, on the dirty floor of a bar-room, amongst blackguards, and then floating in a little stinking ark, full of unclean things, will prepare the mind and body for barbarizing in a little log-hole, like that in which I dined yesterday, belonging to Mr. Ferrel, who, with his family, some adults, male and female, in all ten souls, sleep in one room, fifteen feet by ten, only half floored, and in three beds, standing on a dirt floor. The table, or thing so called, is formed by two blocks and a broad board laid on them, and covered with a cloth, and seats or forms, in like manner, on each side of the table, which is only knee-high. Proper chairs and tables, they have none. When it rains, boards are laid over the chimney-top, (which I can reach with my hand) to prevent the rain putting the fires out. This goodnatured man has thus settled and removed, eight times, from one degree of barbarism to another. The victuals are surved up in a hand-bason; and thus one room serves for parlour, kitchen, hall, bed-room, and pantry." P. 240.

"Saw a poor Englishman, who some time since broke his leg, which from want of skill in the doctor, was not properly set; he is therefore now a cripple for life. This is an evil to which all are exposed. Many are now dying at Evansville of a bilious disorder; the doctor employed has lost nearly all who applied." P. 247.

"New settlers in this state, men, women, and children, seem all exposed to an eruption, ten times worse than the itch, inasmuch as it itches more, runs all over the body, crusting and festering the hands and other parts, and is not to be cured by the common treatment for the itch, which has been tried without effect, and one instance has been known, where the sulphur and grease killed the patient by obstructing perspiration, and driving in the eruption. The doctors know of no remedy, and suffer it to take its tedious course. It comes in the spring and fall, but not to the same peraon, it is hoped, more than once. It is attributed to the air, soil, and climate. Mr. Ingle's family are all suffering severely under it. Although the climate seems finer here than in the east, more humid and temperate, yet the bite of every insect and reptile, however insignificant, is highly poisonous; an evil not to be remedied at present. New comers and fresh flesh suffer most, and sometimes much inflammation is caused; but when the land becomes more cleared, it is hoped this scourge will be less afflictive." P. 256.

"The hunters, or Illinois Rowdies, as they are called, are rather troublesome. They come rudely with their hats on into the parlour, and when drunk, threaten Mr. Flower's life; but they are great cowards; firmness and a fearless resolution are necessary in dealing with them. One of a large offended party came drunk to Mr Flower's house, and said, he would enter and shoot him. Mr. Flower got his rifle and pointed it at the fellow, on which he rushed up and put his mouth madly to the muzzle, and said, "Fire." Mr.