On account of their early training being impregnated with superstition, the imaginary ghost that moves gloomily around at midnight is always their terror. The tongue or pen of critics is never prostrated when in search of material for feasts of fault-finding--a multitude of remarks being made with reference to the apparent indolence of the natives, not thinking that the atmosphere by which they are surrounded is in no way conducive to great physical exertion. The inhabitants follow hunting and fishing, besides cultivating their gardens, while some of them have cow-pens for their cattle, and land outside the city, which they till. They are a quiet, frugal people, retiring in their manners, and simple in their ways--the very opposite in every respect of the grasping, bustling, overreaching Yankee--devoted Catholics, warm in their friendship, but timid toward strangers. The young girls in the community have a type of feminine beauty which can be seen at no other place, except on the shores of the Mediterranean, or in the Madonnas of the Italian masters--in short, St. Augustine is an Italian town on the shores of America, and in that respect differs from any on the Western Continent. The language spoken by their progenitors is supposed to have been identical with that used in the Court of Spain before the days of Ferdinand and Isabella. It has the terseness of the French, without the grandiloquence of the Spanish, being derived directly from the Latin. There is nothing now remaining of courtly splendors. A few only of the ancient tenements are left, some of them tumbling down by degrees; those having occupants are a class of persons struggling for an existence, with adverse circumstances surrounding them which cannot be overcome, but must be borne in silent submission. Our imagination before visiting declining architecture is always to conceive that they have an air of the picturesque--a softness reflected on them by moonlight, or a panorama with dulcet strains floating somewhere in our fanciful dreams. All visitors come with an object, well or ill defined--the student to look, the historian to gather dates and make records, while the restless spirit that roves everywhere is here in search of something new or wonderful for his eyes to rest on a brief period of time. At this place there is an unchanging serenity of sky, a clear and harmonious blending of two colors--white and blue--with a soft shading, and the line of distinction lightly drawn. Long level stretches of sandy country lie before us on the beach, covered by the canopy of heaven, and lighted by the luminary of day. The Matanzas River is ever in view, and, like other waters, has its moods, with its surface sometimes smooth as the downy cheek of infancy, then wrinkled as the brow of age, or stirred like the impulses of an enraged partisan in a political contest. Every morning the same sun rises over Anastasia Light-house, and beams across the