The vigilant spirit of Slavery did not fail to note this correspondence. Immediately upon its appearance, a well-known Virginian, the reputed owner of large plantations in right of his wife, and long resident in Paris, addressed a letter to _Galignani’s Messenger_, in which he undertook to set forth what he called Mr. Sumner’s mission in Europe. Here is a specimen. “That mission, certainly ‘without any diplomatic privilege,’ but peradventure not without perquisites, is to initiate, and, if the exigencies of the cotton market and manufacture do not forbid it, to organize, a systematic agitation in this and the British capital against the Southern States of the Confederacy, and that ‘peculiar institution’ of theirs, so tenderly nursed of yore, and transmitted to them by dear Old Mother England, and which in very modern times has been not less cherished and sustained by the ‘enterprise and activity’ on the coast of Africa of some of her Puritanical progeny in the New World. Under these circumstances can any such subdolous plea as that put forward excuse these ‘American merchants’ from lending themselves to such agencies and influences? If they were sordid and self-seeking adventurers, in pursuit of _political_ capital, rather than the honorable rewards of a liberal and enlightened trade, one could understand, or rather would not marvel at, this pseudo-patriotic partisanship, this unfraternal display of their _sectional_ colors in a foreign land.” Thus was the invalid in search of health pursued by the same malign spirit from which he had originally suffered. OUR POLITICS SEEN FROM A DISTANCE. LETTER TO A FRIEND, DATED HEIDELBERG, SEPTEMBER 11, 1857. The following letter found its way into the papers of the time. HEIDELBERG, September 11, 1857. MY DEAR ----,--Weeks have now passed since I have seen a letter or newspaper from home. During this time I have been travelling away from news, and am now famished. On arrival at Antwerp, I trust to find letters at last. I have been ransacking Switzerland; I have visited most of its lakes, and crossed several of its mountains, mule-back. My strength has not allowed me to venture upon any of those foot expeditions, the charm of Swiss travel, by which you reach places out of the way; but I have seen much, and have gained health constantly. I have crossed the Alps by the St. Gothard, and then recrossed by the Grand St. Bernard, passing a night with the monks and dogs. I have spent a day at the foot of Mont Blanc, and another on the wonderful Lake Leman. I have been in the Pyrenees, in the Alps, in the Channel Isles. You will next hear of me in the Highlands of Scotland.