. . .Having no time to write out a complete account of my journey of last month, I will only transcribe for you some fugitive notes scribbled along the road in stages or railroad carriages. They bear the stamp of hurry and constant interruption. Leaving Boston the 16th of October, I went by railroad to New Haven, passing through Springfield. The rapidity of the locomotion is frightful to those who are unused to it, but you adapt yourself to the speed, and soon become, like all the rest of the world, impatient of the slightest delay. I well understand that an antipathy for this mode of travel is possible. There is something infernal in the irresistible power of steam, carrying such heavy masses along with the swiftness of lightning. The habits growing out of continued contact with railroads, and the influence they exert on a portion of the community, are far from agreeable until one is familiar with them. You would cry out in dismay did you see your baggage flung about pell-mell like logs of wood, trunks, chests, traveling-bags, hat-boxes, all in the same mill, and if here and there something goes to pieces no one is astonished; never mind! we go fast,--we gain time,--that is the essential thing. The manners of the country differ so greatly from ours that it seems to me impossible to form a just estimate regarding them, or, indeed, to pronounce judgment at all upon a population so active and mobile as that of the Northern States of the Union, without having lived among them for a long time. I do not therefore attempt any such estimate. I can only say that the educated Americans are very accessible and very pleasant. They are obliging to the utmost degree; indeed, their cordiality toward strangers exceeds any that I have met elsewhere. I might even add that if I could complain of anything it would be of an excess, rather than a lack, of attention. I have often found it difficult to make it understood that the hotel, where I can work at my ease, suits me better than the proffered hospitality. . . But what a country is this! all along the road between Boston and Springfield are ancient moraines and polished rocks. No one who had seen them upon the track of our present glaciers could hesitate as to the real agency by which all these erratic masses, literally covering the country, have been transported. I have had the pleasure of converting already several of the most distinguished American geologists to my way of thinking; among others, Professor Rogers, who will deliver a public lecture upon the subject next Tuesday before a large audience.