with the boiling river struggling through the narrow gorge, look like streams of Peace and Passion flowing and struggling side by side.  As the “iron horse” hurries us onward, the ears are assailed, amid the wild majesty of Nature, with the puny cockneyisms of “Rome,” “Syracuse,” &c.  Such absurdities are ridiculous enough in our suburban villas; but to find them substituted for the glorious old Indian names, is positively painful.

Among other passengers in the train, was a man conspicuous among his fellows for clean hide and clean dimity; on inquiry, I was told he was a Professor.  He looked rather young for a professorial chair, and further investigation confused me still more, for I found he was a Professor of Soap.  At last, I ascertained that he had earned his title by going about the country lecturing upon, and exhibiting in his person, the valuable qualities of his detergent treasures, through which peripatetic advertisement he had succeeded in realizing dollars and honours.  The oratory of some of these Professors is, I am told, of an order before which the eloquence of a Demosthenes would shrink abashed, if success is admitted as the test; for, only put them at the corner of a street in any town, and I have no fears of binding myself to eat every cake they do not sell before they quit their oratorical platform.  The soapy orator quitted the train at Auburn, and soon after, the vandalism of “Rome” and “Syracuse” was atoned for by the more appropriate and euphonical old Indian names of “Cayuga” and “Canandaigua.”

On reaching the station of the latter, an old and kind friend to my brother, when he first visited America, was waiting to welcome us to his house, which was about a quarter of a mile distant, and a most comfortable establishment it proved, in every way.  Our worthy host was a Scotchman by birth, and though he had passed nearly half a century in the United States, he was as thoroughly Scotch in all his ways as if he had just arrived from his native land; and while enjoying his hospitalities, you might have fancied yourself in a Highland laird’s old family mansion.  In all his kind attentions, he was most ably assisted by his amiable lady.  Everything I had seen hitherto was invested with an air of newness, looking as if of yesterday:  here, the old furniture and the fashion thereof, even its very arrangement, all told of days long bygone, and seemed to say, “We are heir-looms.”  When you went upstairs, the old Bible on your bedroom table, with its worn cover, well-thumbed leaves, and its large paper-mark, browned by the hand of Time, again proclaimed, “I am an heir-loom,” and challenged your respect; and worthy companions they all were to mine host and his lady, who, while they warmed your heart with their cheerful and unostentatious hospitality, also commanded your respect by the way they dispensed it.

The following day our route lay across country, out of the line of stage or rail; so a vehicle had to be got, which my young American cicerone, under the guidance of mine host, very soon arranged; and in due time, a long, slight, open cart, with the seats slung to the sides, drove to the door, with four neat greys, that might have made “Tommy Onslow’s” mouth water.