Cheered by the balmy spirit of the western gale our gallant ship sped her onward course, and the glad cry of land which echoed through the vessel as we approached the beetling coast of England fell on my ear like words of mercy to the prisoned captive. Standing on the quarter deck, I saw before me the bustle, hurry and turmoil of commerce. The surface of the water was chequered with a dense throng of vessels, while, broadly floating in the breeze, appeared that proud flag on whose glory the sun rises, and over whose empire he sets. As a Virginian! as one whom early education and childish associations had inspired, I gazed with a hallowed enthusiasm on that rugged land, which looked down from its iron-bound eyre, the eagle of the deep--that land which my boyish feelings had made the seat of intellect and the dwelling place of genius. The early colonists had called it by the tender name of Home; and the mellow tales of its glory, which had been poured into my infant ear, were now started into life and freshness. It was the land of Sir Philip Sydney, Hampden and Pope, and on each spot of its classic earth Poetry had raised her hallowed memorials, and Patriotism its stirring examples. From the frozen sea to the burning tropics her name is respected, her influence felt, her example imitated, her kindness cherished, her resentment dreaded, while a radiant wake of glory streams behind the path of her march. Far in the forests of the western world, the names of her gifted sons who have asserted the triumphs of virtue or the dignity of man, are heard, and are re-echoed back from the Thames to the Ganges, and from the Volga to the Mississippi. In the solitude of power she stands alone, {255} a massy trunk, resisting anarchy and bending to every storm of revolution, yet rising from each assault in more verdant and luxuriant foliage. Philosophy may claim the gigantic birth of Printing--Religion the Reformation, and Science the discovery of Gunpowder, as the great engines which opened the path of civilization. The mind of England seized these mighty levers, her hand perfected them, and achieved for herself that towering fame which pours its lustre from the table-land of the world. This picture was the dream of ignorance. Alas! how soon was its frost-work melted before the light of truth! Unconscious of the hideous vice which lurked beneath the gorgeous fabric, I saw only its glowing outline--I was ignorant of its rapine, fraud and avarice--its selfishness of motive and act--its singleness of empire and power, and of that universal corruption which yields power to wealth, and honors to knavery. The demon of gain is abroad throughout England--a pestilence which walketh in the darkness of the human heart, expanding its ravenous arms in her cities, or secretly hugging its penny in her lowliest cottages. Her metropolis is the shamble of the universe--a