--at all events, the young sister told me that it was
not at all pleasant.

There is a sort of major-domo here who regulates every department: his
word is law, and his fiat immoveable, and he presumes not a little upon
his power; a circumstance not to be surprised at, as he is as much
courted and is as despotic as all the lady patronesses of Almacks rolled
into one. He is called the Metternich of the mountains. No one is
allowed accommodation at these springs who is not known, and generally
speaking, only those favourites who travel in their private carriages.
It is at this place that you feel how excessively aristocratical and
exclusive the Americans would be, and indeed will be, in spite of their
institutions. Spa, in its palmiest days, when princes had to sleep in
their carriages at the doors of the hotels, was not more in vogue than
are these white sulphur springs with the _elite_ of the United States.
And it is here, and here only, in the States, that you do meet with what
may be fairly considered as select society, for at Washington there is a
great mixture. Of course, all the celebrated belles of the different
States are to be met with here, as well as all the large fortunes, nor
is there a scarcity of pretty and wealthy widows. The president, Mrs
Caton, the mother of Lady Wellesley, Lady Strafford, and Lady
Caermarthen, the daughter of Carrol, of Carroltown, one of the real
aristocracy of America, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence,
and all the first old Virginian and Carolina families, many of them
descendants of the old cavaliers, were at the springs when I arrived
there; and I certainly must say that I never was at any watering-place
in England where the company was so good and so select as at the
Virginia springs in America.

I passed many pleasant days at this beautiful spot, and was almost as
unwilling to leave it as I was to part with the Sioux Indians at St
Peters. Refinement and simplicity are equally charming. I was
introduced to a very beautiful girl here, whom I should not have
mentioned so particularly, had it not been that she was the first and
only lady in America that I observed to _whittle_. She was sitting one
fine morning on a wooden bench, surrounded by admirers, and as she
carved away her seat with her pen-knife, so did she cut deep into the
hearts of those who listened to her lively conversation.

There are, as may be supposed, a large number of negro servants here
a