ible with those of its other members. And no doubt
these daily and nightly precautions are but trifling drawbacks upon the
manifold blessings of slavery (for which, if you are stupid, and cannot
conceive them, see the late Governor M'Duffy's speeches); still I should
prefer going to sleep without the apprehension of my servants cutting my
throat in my bed, even to having a guard provided to prevent their doing
so. However, this peculiar prejudice of mine may spring from the fact of
my having known many instances in which servants were the trusted and
most trustworthy friends of their employers, and entertaining, besides,
some odd notions of the reciprocal duties of _all_ the members of
families one towards the other.

The extreme emptiness which I observed in the streets, and absence of
anything like bustle or business, is chiefly owing to the season, which
the inhabitants of Charleston, with something akin to old English
feeling, generally spend in hospitable festivity upon their estates; a
goodly custom, at least in my mind. It is so rare for any of the
wealthier people to remain in town at Christmas, that poor Miss ----,
who had come on with us to pay a visit to some friends, was not a little
relieved to find that they were (contrary to their custom) still in the
city. I went to take my usual walk this morning, and found that the good
citizens of Charleston were providing themselves with a most delightful
promenade upon the river, a fine, broad, well-paved esplanade, of
considerable length, open to the water on one side, and on the other
overlooked by some very large and picturesque old houses, whose piazzas,
arches, and sheltering evergreens reminded me of buildings in the
vicinity of Naples. This delightful walk is not yet finished, and I
fear, when it is, it will be little frequented; for the southern women,
by their own account, are miserable pedestrians,--of which fact, indeed,
I had one curious illustration to-day; for I received a visit from a
young lady residing in the same street where we lodged, who came in her
carriage, a distance of less than a quarter of a mile, to call upon me.

It is impossible to conceive anything funnier, and at the same time more
provokingly stupid, dirty, and inefficient, than the tribe of
black-faced heathen divinities and classicalities who make believe to
wait upon us here,--the Dianas, Phillises, Floras, Caesars, et cetera,
who stand grinning in wonderment and delight round our