Our Transatlantic friends are morbidly sensitive as to the strictures of strangers. They hate the whole tribe of Travellers and Tourists, Roamers and Ramblers, Peepers and Proclaimers, and affect to ridicule the idea of men who merely pass through the country, presuming to give opinions on things which it is alleged so cursory a view cannot qualify them fully to understand. Our cousins have, doubtless, had occasional provocations from the detested race in question; but their feeling on this point amounts to a national weakness. It is always worth knowing how we appear to the eyes of others, and what impression the first sight of us is apt to produce; and this knowledge none can communicate but the stranger, the tourist, the passer-by. What faults and failings soever we may have in England, and their "name is legion," by all means let them be unsparingly exposed by every foreign tourist that treads upon our soil. Let us be satirized, ridiculed, laughed at, caricatured, anything, so that we may be shamed out of all that is absurd and vicious in our habits and customs. In the present instance our Western kinsmen are described by one, if they will believe his own testimony, of the most candid and truthful of travellers,--one who has viewed them and all their institutions, except _one_, with the most friendly eye, and who deeply regrets that so much of what is lovely and of good report should be marred and blotted by so much of what is disgraceful to a great and enlightened people. As to the performance in a literary point of view, the Author will say nothing. The public will form their own judgment. If they like it, they will read; if not, the most seductive preface would not tempt them. E. DAVIES. LONDON, _January_ 1, 1849. CONTENTS. LETTER I. Occasion of Visit to the United States--First Impressions of the Mississippi--Magnitude of that River--Impediment at its Entrance--The New Harbour--The "Great" and "Fat" Valley--High Pressure Steam-Tug Frolics--Slave-Auction Facetiae LETTER II. American Oysters--Becalmed in the Mississippi--Anchor raised--Ship ashore--Taken off by a Steam Tug--Slave-Sale Advertisements--Runaway Negroes--Return of Fever--Terrific Storm--Frightful Position--Ashore at New Orleans--A Ship-Chandler's Store--American Wheels--A Joltification--The St. Charles's Hotel LETTER III. New Orleans--The Story of Pauline--Adieu to the St Charles's--Description of that Establishment--First Sight of Slaves for Sale--Texts for Southern Divines--Perilous Picture LETTER IV. A Sabbath in New Orleans--The First Presbyterian Church--Expectoration--A Negro Pew--The Sermon LETTER V. First Religious Service in America (continued)--A Collection "taken up"--Rush out--Evening Service--Sketch of the Sermon--Profanation of the Sabbath--The Monthly Concert for Prayer LETTER VI. "Jack Jones"--A Public Meeting for Ireland--Henry Clay--Other Speakers--American Feeling in reference to the Irish Famine--A Slave-Auction LETTER VII.