muster at the Herald’s Visitation, though I hold them to have been more reputable, inasmuch as many of them were honest tradesmen and artisans, in some measure exiles for conscience’ sake, who would have smiled at the high-flying nonsense of their descendants.  Some of the more respectable were Jews.  The absurdity of supposing a population of eight millions all sprung from gentle loins in the course of a century and a half is too manifest for confutation.  The aristocracy of the South, such as it is, has the shallowest of all foundations, for it is only skin-deep,—­the most odious of all, for, while affecting to despise trade, it traces its origin to a successful traffick in men, women, and children, and still draws its chief revenues thence.  And though, as Doctor Chamberlayne says in his Present State of England, “to become a Merchant of Foreign Commerce, without serving any Apprentisage, hath been allowed no disparagement to a Gentleman born, especially to a younger Brother,” yet I conceive that he would hardly have made a like exception in favour of the particular trade in question.  Nor do I believe that such aristocracy as exists at the South (for I hold, with Marius, fortissimum quemque generosissimum) will be found an element of anything like persistent strength in war,—­thinking the saying of Lord Bacon (whom one quaintly called inductionis dominus et Verulamii) as true as it is pithy, that, “the more gentlemen, ever the lower books of subsidies.”  It is odd enough as an historical precedent, that, while the fathers of New England were laying deep in religion, education, and freedom the basis of a polity which has substantially outlasted any then existing, the first work of the founders of Virginia, as may be seen in Wingfield’s Memorial, was conspiracy and rebellion,—­odder yet, as showing the changes which are wrought by circumstance, that the first insurrection in South Carolina was against the aristocratical scheme of the Proprietary Government.  I do not find that the cuticular aristocracy of the South has added anything to the refinements of civilization except the carrying of bowie-knives and the chewing of tobacco,—­a high-toned Southern gentleman being commonly not only quadrumanous, but quidruminant.

I confess that the present letter of Mr. Sawin increases my doubts as to the sincerity of the convictions which he professes, and I am inclined to think that the triumph of the legitimate Government, sure sooner or later to take place, will find him and a large majority of his newly-adopted fellow-citizens (who hold with Daedalus, the primal sitter-on-the-fence, that medium tenere tutissimum) original Union men.  The criticisms toward the close of his letter on certain of our failings are worthy to be seriously perpended, for he is not, as I think, without a spice of vulgar shrewdness.  As to the good-nature in us which he seems to gird at, while I would not consecrate a