has left on those upon whom he inflicted it.  No doubt the scanty number of travellers enables Americans to exercise more universal hospitality than they could do if the country were filled with strangers in the same way as Great Britain is.  The increased travelling of late years has necessarily made a marked difference on that point among ourselves, and doubtless it may hereafter act upon the United States; but the man who does not admit hospitality to be a most distinctive feature of the Republic, at the present time, must indeed be rotten in the brain or the heart.

With regard to the political character of the Union, it is very much in the same state as that of England.  The two original parties were Whig and Democrat, the former being synonymous with the Tory party in this country—­i.e., an honest body of men, who, in their earnest endeavours to keep the coach straight, put the drag on so often that the horses get restive sometimes, and start off at score when they feel the wheel clogged.  The Democrats are more nearly represented by a compound of Whig and Radical—­i.e., a body of men who, in their energetic exertions to make the coach go, don’t trouble themselves much about the road, and look upon the drag as a piece of antiquated humbug.  Sometimes this carelessness also leads to the team-bolting; but in the States there is so much open country that they may run away for miles without an upset; whereas in England, when this difficulty occurs, the ribands are generally handed over to the Jarvey of the opposite party.  This old state of affairs is entirely changed in both hemispheres; each party is more or less broken up, and in neither country is there at present any distinct body sufficiently numerous to form a strong government.

In consequence of these disruptions, it may be imagined how difficult it would be to give any accurate description of the different pieces of crockery that constitute the political “service.”  Formerly, the two cries of “Protection to Home Manufacture” and “Free Trade” were the distinct rallying points.  At present there are Slaveholders, Slavery Extension, Free-soil, Abolitionist, Annexationist, and Heaven alone knows how many more parties, on the question of Slavery alone, into which the Democratic or dominant party is divided, independent of those other general political divisions which must necessarily exist in so large and varied a community.  From the foregoing you will observe that, to say a man is a Democrat conveys no distinct idea of his politics except that he is not a Whig; and the Whigs also have their divisions on the Slave question.