As I am out a purveyor for your journal, and not a contributor, I am bound to see that they, from whose writings I pilfer, come by no wrong. I must therefore enter a complaint on behalf of the friend whose letter I sent you, describing a scene on the Mississippi. His "clumps" of trees your compositor has cut down to "stumps." Can you wonder that your neighbor (_contemporary_ I believe is the word in fashion,) thought his letter but "_so so_?" He was no more bound to suppose that this was a misprint, than to reflect that a traveller, writing from the wilds of Missouri to a friend, might innocently make an unimportant mistake in quoting from a book that perhaps never crossed the Mississippi. But though he has to bear the brunt of the censure, it should in justice fall on you or me. The thing was well enough as a letter. The fault was in publishing it. But I shall attempt no defence. I thought it but "so so-ish" when I sent it to you, and therefore I said so. It was a plain unvarnished description, which had enabled me to see very distinctly what was well worth seeing, and I wished others to see it too. Had the composition been of a different character--had the painter thrust _himself_ between the spectator and his picture, or so glossed it over that every object was lost in undistinguished glare, I should have given it to the public eye by other means. I should certainly not have defaced with it your modest pages. It surely would not be hard to fix on some periodical in which any sort of tinsel would be welcome, and find itself in congenial company. Such is the proper receptacle for all the trumpery wares of frothy declamation, incongruous metaphor, false eloquence and flippant wit, which make up what is commonly called fine writing. There, in the gay confusion of glass bead and gewgaw, any bauble, however worthless, finds its place, escaping censure by escaping notice. To take more shame to myself, I acknowledge that the misquotation struck me as I copied the letter. But the turn of the passage did not admit of its correction; and I did not think it worth while to append a note to tell what every body knows, and no one needs to know. But I shall do better in future. While you continue to publish what I send you, I shall continue to cater for you. In doing this, I shall henceforth cross the t's and dot the i's in my copies, although this should have been omitted in the original. "I am wae to think" indeed, as Burns says, what small critics would do for want of such mistakes. A link in nature's chain (the last and lowest indeed) would be lost. The _auceps syllabarum_ "the word catcher that lives on syllables" would be starved out. The race would be extinct for want of food. The king of these insects bears among naturalists the formidable name of the _dragon fly_. The boys call him the _musquito hawk_. He shall have no more food from me. Your friend, X. Y. * * * * * FROM EASTERN VIRGINIA.