With one of his questions, which was personal to myself, I was both startled and amused. “_De quel pays étes vous, vraiment?_” he asked, laying particular emphasis on the last word. Had he not discovered too much knowledge of America previously, I might have suspected the old difficulty of colour was a stumbling-block; but as this was out of the question, suspicion was drawn another way. I believe the simple solution of this unusual question to be as follows:--Not long before, I had taken an opportunity to expose the motives and policy, that had given rise to the systematic and enduring abuse of the English press on America. Any one might have accomplished this duty, for such it had actually become; but favoured by circumstances, my own publication had made its way in Europe, where most American books would never have penetrated. As a matter of course, I had been blackguarded,--for the Anglo-Saxon race seems to take natural refuge in blackguarding when it can neither refute or disprove. By way of weakening my testimony, a report had been industriously circulated that I was a renegado Englishman, and an honest indignation for unmerited national calumny was ingeniously imputed to personal disaffection and personal discontent. As half-a-dozen of those rumours had fallen under my eyes in the public journals, I was at no loss to understand the drift of the grand duke’s inquiry; and this the more especially, as he awaited the answer with evident curiosity. Determined to set him right on this subject, which if of no importance to the state of Tuscany, was of some importance to myself, I told him, with commendable particularity, I was a native of the small state of New Jersey, a territory lying between the two great states of Pennsylvania and New York; though a citizen of the latter from infancy. He wished to know if New Jersey was an original state, and whether my father had not been an Englishman. On this hint, I added that my family had migrated to America, in 1679, from England certainly, but I had every reason to believe that I was the first member of it, in the direct line, who had been out of the country since; and, moreover, that Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York were original states in the heart of America, and that more than a hundred men of my name and blood were at this moment among their citizens. I believe this satisfied the grand duke: for so general is the disgust created by the English system of calumniating, that I have often had occasion to observe that the inhabitants of other countries are usually pleased to find the islanders put in the wrong.