of the adjacent States, all silent.  When Mr. Henry’s resolutions, far short of independence, flew like lightning through every paper, and kindled both sides of the Atlantic, this flaming declaration of the same date, of the independence of Mecklenburg county, of North Carolina, absolving it from the British allegiance, and abjuring all political connection with that nation, although sent to Congress, too, is never heard of.  It is not known even a twelvemonth after, when a similar proposition is first made in that body.  Armed with this bold example, would not you have addressed our timid brethren in peals of thunder, on their tardy fears?  Would not every advocate of independence have rung the glories of Mecklenburg county, in North Carolina, in the ears of the doubting Dickinson and others, who hung so heavily on us?  Yet the example of independent Mecklenburg county, in North Carolina, was never once quoted.  The paper speaks, too, of the continued exertions of their delegation (Caswell, Hooper, Hughes,) ‘in the cause of liberty and independence.’  Now, you remember as well as I do, that we had not a greater tory in Congress than Hooper; that Hughes was very wavering, sometimes firm, sometimes feeble, according as the day was clear or cloudy; that Caswell, indeed, was a good whig, and kept these gentlemen to the notch, while he was present; but that he left us soon, and their line of conduct became then uncertain until Penn came, who fixed Hughes, and the vote of the State.  I must not be understood as suggesting any doubtfulness in the State of North Carolina.  No State was more fixed or forward.  Nor do I affirm, positively, that this paper is a fabrication:  because the proof of a negative can only be presumptive.  But I shall believe it such until positive and solemn proof of its authenticity shall be produced.  And if the name of McKnitt be real, and not a part of the fabrication, it needs a vindication by the production of such proof.  For the present, I must be an unbeliever in the apocryphal gospel.

I am glad to learn that Mr. Ticknor has safely returned to his friends; but should have been much more pleased had he accepted the Professorship in our University, which we should have offered him in form.  Mr. Bowditch, too, refuses us; so fascinating is the vinculum of the dulce natale solum.  Our wish is to procure natives, where they can be found, like these gentlemen, of the first order of acquirement in their respective lines; but preferring foreigners of the first order to natives of the second, we shall certainly have to go, for several of our Professors, to countries more advanced in science than we are.

I set out within three or four days for my other home, the distance of which, and its cross mails, are great impediments to epistolary communications.  I shall remain there about two months; and there, here, and every where, I am and shall always be, affectionately and respectfully yours.