A break. Found ---- in the breakfast-room. The morning was very unpropitious; but I settled to ride at one, if it was tolerably fine then. He remained pottering a long time: when he was gone, practised, habited, went in, for a few minutes, to Mrs. ----. At one the horses came; but mine was brought without a stirrup, so we had to wait, Lord knows how long, till the blundering groom had ridden back for it. At length we mounted. "Handsome is that handsome does," is verity; and, therefore, pretty as was my steed, I wished its good looks and itself at the devil, before I was halfway down Chestnut Street. It pranced, and danced, and backed me once right upon the pavement. We took the Laurel Hill road. The day was the perfection of gloom--the road six inches deep in heavy mud. We walked the whole way out! my father got the cramp, and lost his temper. At Laurel Hill we dismounted, and walked down to the river side. How melancholy it all looked! the turbid rhubarby water, the skeleton woods, the grey sky, and far winding away of the dark rocky shores; yet it was fine even in this gloom, and wonderfully still. The clouds did not move,--the water had not the faintest ripple,--the trees did not stir a branch; the most perfect and profound trance seemed to have fallen upon every thing. ---- and I scrambled down the rocks towards the water, expatiating on the capabilities of this place, which was once a country-seat, and with very little expense might be made a very enchanting as well as a very comfortable residence; always excepting, of course, the chance of fever and ague during the summer months, when the whole of the banks of the Schuylkill, high and rocky as they are, are considered so unhealthy, that the inhabitants are obliged to leave their houses until the winter season, when the country naturally loses half its attractions. At half-past three, we mounted, and, crossing the river, returned home by a much better road. My horse, however, was decidedly a brute,--pulled my arms to pieces, cantered with the wrong leg foremost, trotted in a sort of scuttling fashion, that rendered it utterly impossible to rise in the stirrup, and, instead of walking, jogged the breath out of my body. I was fairly done up when we reached home. Dressed, and dined; ---- dined with us. After dinner, went and sat with Mrs. ----. So it seems Carolina is in a state of convulsion. Reports have arrived that the Nullifiers and Unionists have had a fight in Charleston, and that lives have been lost. "Bide a wee," as the Scotchman says; we talk a good deal on the other side the water of matters that are far enough off; but as for America, the problem is not yet solved--and this very crisis (a more important one than has yet occurred in the political existence of this country) is threatening to slacken the bonds of brotherhood between the states, and shake the Union to its centre. The interests of the northern states are totally