It is this deplorable ignorance, which is prevalent over a large portion of South Carolina, that constitutes the most insuperable obstacle to the removal of slavery. Among the more wealthy and intelligent of the population, juster sentiments prevail in regard to that great evil; but their opinions and wishes are greatly overbalanced by the masses of the middling classes. They, wedded to the customs of their fathers beyond all hope of improvement; vegetators upon the soil cleared and prepared by their ancestors; ignorant, idle, and overbearing; driven by thriftless modes of agriculture, and the impoverishing system of slave-labor, to penurious economy, and scouting every suggestion of manual toil as servile and degrading; _they_ compose the great barrier around the institution of negro servitude, which the tide of public sentiment never reaches, and which the advancing intelligence of other portions of the world cannot soon affect. To them, hedged in by the antiquated prejudices of a barbarous age, alike unfitted to know and unwilling to receive the new truths of humanity and religion, the negro seems the connecting link between man and the brute. Of their own origin and destiny they know and care little; of him who toils for them, less; and it is vain to hope, until the States between them and the free people of the North shall have broken down the system which curses alike the owner and his soil, that the intelligence of an independent and virtuous people can ever reach them. In these Sketches, which are now brought to a close, I have endeavored to represent the condition of South Carolina as I saw it. Of slavery I have said what I believe, and of its white population what I know to be true. There, as elsewhere in a world tainted by evil, injustice too often embitters the cup of life. But it is not the slave only, bending to his irksome task, nor he who toils under the heat of a southern sky alone, who drains it to its dregs. The chalice is commended to the lips every where. And deeply has the writer drank, from the hands of those who profess to be guided by the divine precepts of Christ, banded as they were to subvert oppression and wrong in southern institutions, a draft of injustice more poisonous than the bitterest potion of slavery. TO PLEASURE. LIST a mortal's guest, sweet Pleasure! Why so fleeting, answer, pray? Lost as soon as found, thy treasure! None can thy dear presence stay. Thank thou Fate, she cried, whose minions, All the gods, love me alone; Were I fashioned without pinions, They would keep me for their own! W. P. P. THE TRYSTING HOUR. BY MRS. R. S. NICHOLS. I. BESIDE my casement's trailing vines, By meditation led, I sit, when Sleep his pinion waves Above each drooping head: When all the shadowy forms that haunt The bright abodes on high, Steal softly forth, in silvery troops From chambers of the sky. II.