Ah me! When I look over my broad acres, some in rustling corn, some in bristling wheat, and some in rank tobacco, omitting tracts of old-field thickly set with volunteer pines, and prairies of stubbly broomsedge, I find every part indissolubly connected with that relation of master and servant, which is an abomination to Mr. Bull and Master Jonathan. I have read the great writers on this head, from Clarkson down. I have familiarized myself with the portrait of the slaveholder, strong in colors of crimson, and illustrated with borders of whips and manacles. But, for my life, I cannot see in yonder cheval-glass any resemblance. Alice, dear child, does not discern in my face any decided lines of truculence; and the very Africans, who have grown old beside me, manifest no dread, but rather cling to my tottering form with a loving regard that is almost filial. I turn my eyes to them, but they are not like the pictures on certain books and hand-bills. Sometimes they are hard-worked; so am I. Sometimes they have felt the burden of bad seasons; so have I. But they are not haggard, they are not melancholy, and they are not malignant. I see the smoke from their little hamlet of clustered houses (for the negro loves his fire at all seasons;) I hear the resonant laugh echoing among the rocks, and shall shortly hear the banjo and the chorus. In bed and board they are better off than the peasants I have seen in the Scotch Highlands, in Savoy, and in Normandy. Of physical suffering they have less than soldiers and sailors. In morals and religion they surpass their free brethren in Philadelphia and New York. I wish in my heart they were all free—if it would make them any happier. But I would no sooner cast them on the wide world, in their actual condition, than I would disperse a family of babes, proclaim a republic in Madagascar, or tear a tortoise from the bondage of his shell. It was not I who stole them from Africa; they were born on the same lands where we live together; and there is not a sunlight or a shade falling on my lot, which does not in due proportion cheer or sadden theirs. Let us call another case, Alice! This philanthropic mystery is too deep for my decrepit wits. CHAPTER VII. “Ilion in Tyriam transfer felicius urbem.” Ovid—Heroides.