Lafayette wished to know if I did not think the Union was getting too large for its safety. I thought not, so long as the means of necessary intercommunication were preserved, but just the reverse, as the larger the Union, the less probability there would be of agitating its whole surface by any one interest; and the parties that were tranquil, as a matter of course, would influence those that were disturbed. Were the Union to-day, for instance, confined to the coast, as it was forty years since, there would be no south-western states to hold the southern in check, as we all know is the fact at present, and the danger from nullification would be doubled. These things act both ways; for even the state governments, while they offer positive organised and _quasi_ legal means of resisting the federal government, also afford the same organized local means of counteracting them in their own neighbourhood. Thus, Carolina and Georgia do not pull together in this very affair, and, in a sense, one neutralizes the other. The long and short of the matter was, that the Union was a compromise that grew out of practical wants and _facts_, and this was the strongest possible foundation for any polity. Men would assail it in words, precisely as they believed it important and valued by the public, to attain their ends.--We were here summoned to the breakfast. I was well laughed at the table for my ignorance. The family of La Grange live in the real old French style, with an occasional introduction of an American dish, in compliment to a guest. We had obtained hints concerning one or two capital things there, especially one for a very simple and excellent dish, called _soupe au lait_; and I fancied I had now made discovery the second. A dish was handed to me that I found so excellent, _so very appropriate to breakfast_, that I sent it to A----, with a request that she would get its history from Madame George Lafayette, who sat next her. The ladies put their heads together, and I soon saw that they were amused at the suggestion. A---- then informed me, that it was an American as well as a French dish, and that she knew great quantities of it had been consumed in the hall at C----, in particular. Of course I protested that I had no recollection of it. "All this is very likely, for it is a good while since you have eaten any. The dish is neither more nor less than pap!"