casualties, etc., how can the father of a family divest himself of the cares and responsibilities of his situation, to indulge in even occasional relaxation and mirth? Worn out with the fatigues of the day, and greeted on his arrival at home with a list of wants and necessities, his life remains to the end one scene of self-denial and hardship. He maintains his independence, and that of his family, but at the expense of cheerfulness, and the foregoing of those innocent recreations, which nature, or the great God of Nature, intended for all. Exhausted at length with labor and anxieties, he sinks in premature old age to a welcome tomb. That this is the history of thousands, even in our own favored country, is undeniable; and if we cast our eyes over the vast continent of Europe, what find we but toil and wretchedness, unknown in our western world? Were those who sigh and lament over the miseries of slaves, to bestow a little of their superfluous sympathy on the owners of slaves, it would be exceedingly better appropriated. They need it more than their dependants, who are not only eye-servants, but seemingly wilfully stupid. That they are less intelligent and more brutish than many of the inferior animals, is a lamentable fact; and that the circumstances in which they have been placed, is one cause of this stupidity, is no less a fact; but that they can ever attain to the intelligence of whites, I am not inclined to admit. Nature, habit, opinion, have drawn lines of separation, which can never be totally removed. It was remarked in the presence of a French gentleman, who had spent some years in South America, that the greatest prejudice existing in the minds of whites against blacks was their color. 'Non, non,' he exclaimed with warmth; 'ce n'est pas seulement leur couleur; d'autres sens outre celui de la vue sont offensés.' And truly, place a person at a southern tea-table, with the thermometer above 90°, and two or three black waiters in attendance, with a half grown negro at his elbow, wielding a huge feather fan, and unless his olfactories were more than ordinarily obtuse, he would essay in vain to repeat with the tender Sappho, 'Come, gentle air!' That they are susceptible of culture, to a certain extent, is correct; and that many of them possess what is termed mother wit, I had daily opportunities of observing. This species of humor is most frequently shown in the composition of their songs, more particularly in their boat songs; in which I have known the whole family receive sly thrusts from their negroes, while being rowed by them, and which seldom failed in eliciting good-natured mirth. Music is the life and soul of a southern negro: he does every thing, but eat and sleep, with a tune.