Supper is the last great business of the day upon Our Terrace, which, by eleven at night, is lapped in profound repose. The moon rides high in mid-sky, and the black shadows of the trees lie motionless on the white pavement. Not a footfall is heard abroad; the only sound that is audible as you put your head out of the window, to look up at the glimmering stars and radiant moon, is the distant and monotonous murmur of the great metropolis, varied now and then by the shrill scream of a far-off railway-whistle, or the 'cough, cough, cough' of the engine of some late train. We are sober folks on the terrace, and are generally all snug abed before twelve o'clock. The last sound that readies our ears ere we doze off into forgetfulness, is the slow, lumbering, earthquaky advance of a huge outward-bound wagon. We hear it at the distance of half a mile, and note distinctly the crushing and pulverising of every small stone which the broad wheels roll over as they sluggishly proceed on their way. It rocks us in our beds as it passes the house; and for twenty minutes afterwards, if we are awake so long, we are aware that it is groaning heavily onwards, and shaking the solid earth in its progress--till it sinks away in silence, or we into the land of dreams. SLAVES IN BRITAIN. It has sometimes been predicted, not without plausibility, that if this great empire should sink before the rising genius of some new state, when all it has accomplished in arts and arms, and its wealth, its literature, its machinery, are forgotten, its struggles for humanity in the abolition of negro slavery will stand forth in undiminished lustre. All the steps of this mighty operation are interesting. It is a peculiarity of England and its institutions, that many of the most momentous constitutional conflicts have taken place in the courts of law. In despotic countries, this seldom occurs, because the rulers can bend the courts of law to their pleasure; but here, even under the worst governments, whatever degree of freedom was really warranted by law, could be secured by the courts of justice. When it was said that the air of Britain was too pure for a slave to breathe in--that his shackles fell off whenever he reached her happy shore--the sentiment was noble; but the question depended entirely on the law and its technical details. The trials resulting in a decision against slavery, have thus much interest from the influence they exercised on human progress.