My approach to the Coast of America, after the first voyage I had ever made, had greatly disappointed me. Long, flat lines, like low islands in a river, were not the contrast one anticipated after sailing over the vast Atlantic; but as we now bore onward, I suddenly beheld upon the left, a number of immense rocky masses, of a pale violet color, with the sea, even in that calm weather, breaking furiously upon them, and not long after, on the right, some high, precipitous rocks, detached from what seemed to be the main land, and forming as I imagined the point of a peninsula, sheltering the beautiful bay into which we seemed slowly gliding. I asked the helmsman what these two objects were; and he replied—“The Scilly Islands and the Needles.” This then was England—the England of which all the world had heard so much—the fortress of the deep: slow to engage in warfare: resolute when once engaged: unconquerable: inexpugnable: with a vitality that defied time and change: with a progress which had something sublime in its calm, fearless, equable march. This was the England which had twice produced the conquerors of France, which had subjected a world to the influence of its science and its literature; whose sails were on every sea; whose arms were in each hemisphere; whose name was a redoubted passport in every land; whose language was spoken on the coasts of every continent. This then was England! And those rocky cliffs, and rugged peaks, in their grand, silent majesty, seemed to me the image and the emblem of the people. As we slowly sailed on, keeping very near the coast, to get the most favorable wind, and under the directions of a pilot, steering in and out amongst banks, which added the interest of some peril to the general charm of the scenery, the aspect of the country softened. Beautiful green slopes, rich woods, gay looking towns, a picturesque country-house here and there, and a group of cottages crowning a bold cliff or nested at its foot, were seen all along the line of coast, and the very first sight of that country filled the mind with ideas of home comfort, and sweet domestic peace, and the rich prosperity of an industrious, law-fearing people, and an equable, but firm government, more strongly than the aspect of any other land I had ever seen. Oh! how all my prepossessions vanished before that sight—and when about nine o’clock I persuaded Father Bonneville to come upon deck, as we were proceeding calmly up a channel between two lands, both plainly visible, the good old man would hardly believe his eyes that this fair, sunshiny, beautiful country, was the England of which he had so often heard.