We mention this subject, because the Northern people entertain in regard to it such very erroneous opinions. They have been told so incessantly of the lazy habits of Southerners, that they honestly believe them to be delicate good-for-nothings, like their own brainless fops and nincompoops—those amazingly good fellahs, who dawdle at watering-places during the summer months, and dance attendance all winter upon some fair Flora McFlimsy, who is in all respects as utterly stupid and worthless as themselves. Only those Northerners who have travelled in the Southern States, or whose associations otherwise have made them familiar with the gentlemen of the South, possess any correct knowledge of the physical perfectness of the latter. This these owe in part, doubtless, to those mailed ancestors who followed Godfrey and bold Coeur de Lion to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre, or to those knightly sires, may be, who, like Front de Boeuf and most of the other gallant gentlemen of those days, were great with battle-axes, and in every other kind of physical prowess, but who also always signed their names with a cross.

Much more reasonably, however, we think we may attribute the good size and graceful carriage of the Southern Gentleman, to his out-of-doors and a-horseback mode of living. For we might as well here inform our readers, the genuine Southern Gentleman almost invariably lives in the country. But let them not conclude from this circumstance that be is nothing more than the simple-hearted, swearing, hearty, and hospitable old English or Virginia Country Gentleman, of whom we have all heard so repeatedly. The time has been when such a conviction could have been truthfully entertained; but that was long ago. In those good old times the Southern Gentleman had little else to do than fox-hunt, drink, attend the races, fight chicken-cocks, and grievously lament that he was owner of a large horde of savages whom he knew not how to dispose of.

But times change, et nos mutamur in illis. The new order of things which succeeded the innovations of Mr. Jefferson made it necessary for the Gentlemen of the South, for all the old families who had before lived upon their hereditary wealth and influence, to struggle to maintain their position, else to be pushed aside by the thrifty middle classes, who thought it no disgrace to work by the side of their slaves, and who were, in consequence, yearly becoming more wealthy and influential. Besides, after the repeal of the Law of Primogeniture, the large landed estates, the former pride and boast of the first families, very soon were divided up into smaller freeholds, and the owners of these, of necessity, were frequently forced to lay aside the old manners and customs, the air and arrogance of the grand seignor, and to content themselves with the plain, unostentatious mode of life which at present characterizes most gentlemen in the South. The result of all which has been, that the Southern Gentleman of to-day is less an idler and dreamer than he was in the old days, is more practical, and, although not so great a lover of the almighty dollar as his Northern kinsman, still is far from being as great a spendthrift as his fathers were before him.

But, notwithstanding the old style of Southern Gentlemen has in a measure passed away, the young South is nurtured in pretty much the same school as formerly—at least so far as physical education is concerned—and participates more or less in all those rollicking out-door sports and amusements still common in England to this day. Scarcely has he gotten fairly rid of his bibs and tuckers, therefore, before we find him mounted a-horseback; and this not a hobbyhorse either, (which the poor little wall-flower of cities is so proud to straddle,) but a genuine live pony—sometimes a Canadian, sometimes a Mustang, but always a pony. By the time he is five years of age he rides well; and in a little while thereafter has a fowling-piece put into his hands, and a little black of double his age put en croupe behind him, (or in case mamma is particularly cautious, his father's faithful serving-man accompanies him, mounted on another horse,) and so accoutred, he sallies forth into the fields and pastures in search of adventures. At first he bangs away at every thing indiscriminately, and the red-headed woodpeckers more often grace his game-bag than quail or snipe; but by degrees he acquires the art and imbibes the spirit of the genuine sportsman, and ever after keeps his father's hospitable board amply supplied with the choicest viands the woods or fields or floods afford. By floods, the reader will please understand rivers, creeks, and ponds; for our young Southerner is as much of a fisherman as a Nimrod. When he tires of his gun, he takes his fishing-rods and other tackle, and goes angling; and when he tires of angling, provided the weather is favorable, he denudes himself and plunges into the water for a swim, of which he tires not at all. Indeed, he will remain in the watery element until the sun blisters his back, and if thus forced to seek terra firma, he does it “upon compulsion,” and under protest. As a general thing, the blue-noses of Nova Scotia, or the natives of South-America, are not greater lovers of the healthy exercise of swimming than the boys of the South, of all classes.

In his every foray, whether by flood or field, our young gentleman has for his constant attendant, Cuffee, junior, who sticks to him like his shadow. At the expiration of five years or so of this manner of living, (provided there is no family tutor, and in that case his mother has already learned him to read,) the master is sent to the nearest village, or district, or select school, returning home every night. Sometimes this school is from five to ten miles distant, and so he has to ride from ten to twenty miles every day, Saturdays and Sundays alone excepted. Again Cuffee is sent with his young master, and morning and evening the two are to be seen cantering to or from the school-house, the negro taking charge of their joint lunch for dinner, (to be eaten during “play-time,”) and the master carrying on the pommel of his saddle or his arm the bag which contains his books and papers, and maybe a stray apple or peach to exchange with the village urchins for fishing-rods, or to present to some schoolboy friend, who has a rosy-cheeked little sister, with a roguish black eye and a silvery laugh.

And although every day in the week, from Monday to Friday inclusive, is thus occupied, both master and slave sit up nearly all of Friday night, cleaning guns, arranging fishing-lines, and discussing enthusiastically the sports to be followed on the morrow. These change very materially, as our young Southerner begins to get higher and higher in his teens. He very soon surfeits of the tame pastime of shooting squirrels and ducks, woodcock and plover, or chasing of hares; when for a short while, say a couple of years, his chief delight is to hunt wild turkeys—a rare sport where turkeys are abundant and when one has a well-trained dog. But even this soon ceases to be attractive, and is succeeded by fox-hunting. Preparatory to entering upon the latter rare old English sport, our young gentleman gets some one of the many dusky uncles on his father's plantation, to procure him a deep intoned horn; which procured, he proceeds immediately to exchange his pony for the fleetest and most active of his father's stud. On a great many Southern plantations there are kept hunting horses, regularly trained for the sport as in England; and it is astonishing in what a little time they become as fond of the same as their riders. Even mules, after having been used a few times, will prick up their heavy ears at the sound of a merry horn, and will follow the hounds with all the eagerness of the best-blooded of their sires.

Having selected his steed, and mounted Cuffee on another, (usually a mule, by the way,) our young fox-hunter gives his horn a merry wind in the “wee sma' hours atween the twal” in the morning, answering to which well-known call, Ringwood, and Jowler, and Don, with all their yelping and barking mates, soon gather together and hasten after their master to the appointed place of rendezvous. Here soon assemble the sons of the neighboring gentry, or such of them at least as intend to participate in the morning's sport. Masters and negroes, horses and dogs, all sniff keenly the bracing morning air, and, after a brief parley, having settled the preliminaries, away they all hie to some old field filled with broom-sedge, or to some scarcely penetrable copse—these being Reynard's usual habitats; and ere a great while the rattling music of the “pack in full cry” breaks on the stillness of the hour:

Ah! it is impossible for your pale denizens of the dusty town, whose horizon on every side is bounded by dull brick walls and flaming side-boards, to appreciate the wild delight of a steeple-chase ride through brake and briars, over gullies and fences, adown green lanes and under the overshadowing boughs of majestic forests, with a whoop and halloo, and hark, tallyho! and all the accompanying bustle and excitement of a regular old-fashioned Virginia fox-hunt! We say Virginia fox-hunt, not that it is peculiar to the Old Dominion, but because the red fox most abounds in that ancient commonwealth, and this is the fox which gives the longest run and the greatest sport, and to win whose “brush” is the ambition of all aspiring hunters. Fox-hunting is more or less followed in all the Slave States, both by the sons of the gentry and of the middle-class planters and farmers; and such has been the practice ever since the first settlement of the country. It was originally introduced by the English cavaliers, was a favorite pastime with the Father of his Country, and in those days was adhered to by the lovers of the sport, even until their “frosty pows” admonished them that the greatest of huntsmen, Death, was about to “earth” them in his turn, as they had “earthed” many a noble fox before. At present, however, it is chiefly patronized by boys and young men, and in consequence, occupies much less of public attention than formerly, or than it still does in England. Nor have we ever known an instance in the South of a lady's indulging in the sport, which is a common practice in the old fatherland; and the foxes are so plenty, the copses, woods, and other breeding and hiding-places, being so abundant, instead of having to take the precaution to insure a continuance of the breed, as our English cousins have to do, the Southern farmers complain that the cunning rascals only breed too fast, despite the hunters and their hounds.

We are thus particular to speak of these matters, since they are so imperfectly understood in the Free States, wherein every species of pastime which hinders the making of money is regarded as sinful; and wherein also the usual custom is, to hunt foxes with any kind of dog, while such a thing as a horse, or merry-sounding horn, is never once thought of. We remember being in Concord, Massachusetts, on a certain occasion, indeed, having driven thither from Cambridge in a sleigh, and stopping at a country-looking tavern, the bar-room whereof reminded one of the South-west. This licensed rum-hole was full of rough, unpolished people, dressed like laborers and farmers, and dogs—old dogs and young dogs, puppies, sluts, and snarling curs. After we had sufficiently thawed our frozen fingers to listen to the conversation of the bipeds in the room, (one of whom, in a kind of drunken glee, held an overgrown pup between his knees, and, while the brute made frantic efforts to lick its master's face, descanted in a doting, maudlin way on the pup's pints—for one we thought the master could boast of more pints than the dog,) we gathered that some of the company present had just returned from a fox-hunt; and learned, to our astonishment, that they actually had taken guns along to shoot poor Reynard, in case their “mongrel curs” should fail to catch him—which indeed happened; while, from the manner in which they recounted over and over again the various incidents of the chase, laughing the while immoderately, they certainly fancied they had had a deal of sport.

Now, the sport of a properly conducted fox-hunt consists in its adventurous character, in the wild excitement and general abandon of the long chase, and the eager cries of the hounds—all which are heightened and rendered more delightful by reason of the “merry bold voice of the hunter's horn.” Even when one is not a participant in the chase itself, there is an indescribable charm in listening to the various sounds which accompany it. Let any person, no matter how prejudiced he may be against the sport, only be aroused from his slumbers some still frosty morning, when the sky is cloudless and the moon is just beginning to wane in the first blush of the dawn, and all at once have borne to his ears, as in a dream, the distant winding of the hunter's horn, the echoing shouts of a dozen horsemen, the deep and varied cries of fifty hounds in hot pursuit, the whole mellowed by the distance and sweetly confused—at times almost indistinct, as the huntsmen dash madly through some sequestered glen—then again ringing clear and melodious as they brush past the brow of a neighboring hill, only to be lost so soon as they drive helter-skelter down its thither side; and he will prove singularly phlegmatic and lacking in enthusiasm who does not feel, for the moment, that he can heartily and conscientiously approve the sentiment so beautifully and musically uttered by Barry Cornwall:

After fox-hunting succeeds deer-hunting, which, in the Southern States, among gentlemen, is usually conducted somewhat after the same fashion as the former, or by what in hunter's parlance is called “driving,” although scholars, and men of quiet contemplative natures, frequently prefer to “still-hunt,” which is likewise much in favor with all “pot-hunters;” these latter adopting such a mode of killing their vension from necessity, and their inability to afford the horses and dogs necessary to a successful drive, while the former, being usually of a taciturn bent of mind, find opportunities in still-hunting to gratify their penchant for meditation and solitude. And truly there is a wondrous charm in being all alone in the shadowy woods—shut out as it were from the bright sunlight above, which only trickles down in little golden showers through the thick green leaves over one's head—and where the stillness is so profound, you distinctly hear even the faintest wimbling of the wriggling wood-worm in the very heart of the old log on which you sit down to rest. How pleasant a place, indeed, for one to look after the interests of his Chateaux en Espagne! In reality you sit on a very common sort of rusty old log, and rest your gun idly on your knee, while a red-headed woodpecker drums in a very prosy monotone on the decayed branch of the old oak over your head, and little gray squirrels skip about around you, stopping now and then merely to taste a savory acorn, or chasing one another from root to root and tree to tree; but oh! what different scenes does the arch magician Fancy spread out before you! You are in your own enchanted castle, and your trusty vassals are keeping faithful watch in the tower and at the portcullised gate. Yon are “monarch of all you survey,” and dream your dream of love, or fame, or wealth, with none to molest you or make you afraid. But when the dream has ended, (as all such dreams will end, alas!) and you awake to find the sun fast sinking in the West, it is not so pleasant to trudge homeward many a weary mile through marsh and bog and reedy swamp, with the gloomy shades of darkness fast gathering around your head, and the brambles and tangled grass growing every minute more tangled and intricate beneath your feet. Besides, one is sure almost to get wood-ticks and chigas on his person, by reason of his contact with the old log on which he sits down to ruminate; and these pestiferous little varlets render his night-dreams for a long time the very antipodes of the pleasant day-dreams in which he may have indulged, while they managed to fasten on his breeches.

But, even conceding that “still-hunting” has its charms for quiet people of an imaginative turn, despite a few drawbacks of the kind we have adverted to, we still think that most persons would prefer “driving.” This is in truth a right royal sport, and engages the attention of the Southern Gentleman in matured life, after he has given up most other field-sports, although it is followed by the younger men and boys also. It is most popular in the far South and South-west, because of the greater abundance of deer in these parts of the country; for in the more northerly Slave States it is rarely indulged in more than once in a twelvemonth, and then parties of gentlemen have to retreat to the mountains in the autumn, and participate in what is called a camp-hunt, which lasts from two to six weeks. Driving, to prove successful, requires a skillful horsemanship, a quick eye and steady aim, thoroughly trained horses and dogs, and a partial familiarity at least with the geography of the hunting-ground, as well as the “range” of the deer thereon. Above all things else, however, the hunter should be endowed with steady nerves; for even the oldest and most experienced hand sometimes trembles and fails to draw the trigger until the right moment has been lost forever; while, if you were to station an ordinary cockney sportsman at a “stand,” and some lordly “monarch of the forest” were to come bounding towards him, with tail waving a like a banner in the breeze, his kingly head thrown back and the branching antlers thereof tossing a proud defiance to both hounds and huntsmen, ninety-nine times in a hundred he would be suffered to pass by unharmed, receiving only a bewildered stare from his ambushed enemy, who for the moment is totally oblivious that he has a gun in his hands; or even did he recall this circumstance, it would be all the same, since a hundred guns would be of no service whatever to a man already nearly shaken out of his boots by the terrible “buck-ague.”

It is mainly owing, as we conceive, to such out-door sports as we have briefly described above, and others like them—which are common in most parts of the South—that the Southern Gentleman possesses that fine physical development which we have already adverted to. Such pastimes, aided materially by plenty of pure country air, do almost if not wholly counteract the pernicious influences of certain dissipations—unfortunately too prevalent in the South—but more particularly the dissipations and close confinement incident to college-life. Herein, indeed, lies the chief reason why the Southern people, though living in a warmer climate, are far less nervous and spasmodic than their fellow-citizens of the Free States. The latter pay so little regard to the proper culture of the physical man—have so persistently banned and anathematized all rollicking field-sports and healthy out-door amusements, and at the same time have taken such great pains to stimulate into undue and excessive activity the mental faculties— that we are by no means surprised the London Times should conclude that the Americans have physically deteriorated in the last hundred years. Nor do we wonder that Spiritualism, and every other blind fanaticism of the hour, should possess the minds of men, whose bodies are unsound and whose secretions are altogether abnormal. We do not wonder that, from Maine to Minnesota, there should have been one general bonfire on the success of the Atlantic Cable, while the English continued to eat their roast-beef as quietly as usual, and scarcely a bell was rung in a single Slave State. Comparisons are “odorous,” we know, as the learned Dogberry hath said; but the writer means nothing unkind by these remarks. We entertain for our Northern fellow-citizens the highest regard, take them en masse. Among them we have many personal friends also; but we never allow our friendships to blur our vision. The fault is not confined to one class alone at the North, but to all those above the laboring or farming classes. Foreigners, when they visit America, see it and speak of it. Sir Charles Fox, one of the Commissioners of the Crystal Palace, while in Boston, visited one of the high-schools for girls. On coming away he remarked to his friend: “You seem to be training your girls for the lunatic asylum.” Such was the impression made upon this practical Englishman by their wonderful intellectual achievements, in connection with their pale and sallow faces. And as for the Northern boys, here is what Mr. Theodore Sedgwick said, in a recent address before the Alumni of Columbia College, New-York:

“From the time that the boy whose fortune it is to be educated is immured in school, till the period when he is again to be immured in a lawyer's office or counting-room, and from that time again until he enters upon the profession of his life, no systematic attention whatever is paid to the subject of physical education. All the health, all the exercise that he gets, he gets by nature or by chance. No regular opportunity is provided for it—no authoritative encouragement is given to it, no stimulus, no prize; all the ambition, all the zeal, all the ardor of his young, ignorant, and unreflecting nature is concentrated on the vigil and the midnight lamp. Severe labor, long terms, short vacations, crowded rooms, late hours, bad air—what is the result?”

Must we answer for Mr. Sedgwick and our readers? Who are the leaders of the Northern masses at this time? Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, Ward Beecher, Dr. Cheever, John Brown, and their “compatriots!”—men whose early excesses of one kind or another have impaired their reason, and who ought, as has been found necessary in the case of Gerrit Smith, to be confined in a Maison de Santé.

Believe us, our readers, without a sound body a well-balanced mind is not to be thought of. In all seriousness, we think a good digestion has about as much to do with great thoughts and great actions as a good brain. The fable of the freedman Æsop is as true today as it was when the old fellow uttered it. If you keep a bow bent too long, in time it will lose its elasticity; and if you tax the mind too greatly, both it and the body must suffer. It is all work and no play, you know, that makes Jack a dull boy.

Now, as has been intimated already, the natural manner of living in the Slave States helps to cover up a multitude of Southern shortcomings—tobacco-chewing, brandy-drinking, and other excesses of a like character —which would otherwise without doubt render the masses of the Southern people as fickle and unstable, as nervous and spasmodic, as the masses of the North. God knows dissipation and debauchery are rife enough in all conscience over the whole land; and our own opinion is, neither the North or the South would be justifiable in casting the first stone at the head of the other. Such irregularities, however, are not so frequently committed by the gentlemen of the South as by a certain class of underbred snobs, whose money enables them for a time to pretend to the character and standing of gentlemen, but whose natural inborn coarseness and vulgarity invariably lead them to disgrace the honorable title they assume to wear. The real gentlemen of the South are restrained by considerations of family pride, and family prestige, if by none more honorable, from participating in those disgraceful practices so well calculated to tarnish the family escutcheon, and to render themselves the unworthy descendants of the compatriots of the Hero of Mt. Vernon. Perhaps in no one place in the South is the truth of the above observation illustrated with greater force and clearness than at the University of Virginia. Here congregate from all portions of the South the flower and bloom of her chivalrous youth, as well as the scum and dregs of her whisky-swilling snobs and bullies. While the writer attended this first of our Universities, there were about five hundred students, either actually or nominally pursuing their studies in its various departments. Of this number, at least one hundred were more or less dissipated; while of these not more than a dozen at the farthest could have been the sons of gentlemen. The rest were either needy adventurers—beggared in purse as in character—living in a kind of shabby-genteel way, and indulging in cards, and wine, and loose women only to that extent which insured their becoming intimate with vulgar greenhorns and new-rich swells, whom they hoped to fleece, and who formed the larger proportion of those given to dissipation; for, besides themselves, and the chevaliers d' industrie whom they helped to support, and the single dozen of gentlemen already named, there were but a few others, and these, singularly enough, were State students. What is meant by “State students” may need some explanation. The University of Virginia is a State institution, (as the reader is doubtless aware,) and undertakes to educate free of charge a certain number of Virginia young men every year—boarding and lodging them gratuitously also, unless we misremember; at all events they have lodgings separate and apart from the rest of the students, and dress very poorly, being usually selected from the most destitute families in the State. Under such circumstances it is hard to credit the statement, but it is true, that some of this very class are the most dissolute and worthless of all the young men who attend the University lectures. At first they come clothed in suits of russet, with freckled sun-tanned faces, large red bony hands, loose matted locks of hair, and having in their pockets neither scrip nor purse. But so soon as they begin to associate with the “spreeing fellows,” by some sort of talismanic influence they seem to become transformed almost in a day—completely metamorphosed in their whole appearance. 'Tis true for a time they appear somewhat awkward in their flash apparel, and do not get rid very soon of their shuffling country gait; but they attempt, to the best of their ability, to imitate the swaggering strides of their more wealthy associates, and on the whole succeed pretty well, considering their “chances.” They remind one, however, in some of their assumed airs, of Dr. Livingstone's friend, Sambanza, a high functionary attached to the court of the royal Shinte, king of the Balondas, in Central Africa. Shinte's chief dress consisted of a series of heavy brass rings, which reached, one above the other, from his ankles to his knees; and owing to their great weight, his sooty Majesty was perforce obliged to walk in a right royal straddling fashion. Sambanza, too poor to wear the same amount of brass on his legs as his royal master, made up the deficiency by another species of brass not wholly unknown in this country; and so out-Shinted Shinte himself in his performance of the fashionable royal straddle, making believe that he bore on his own stout calves all the brass in heathendom!

We shall not deny that one will occasionally meet in the South, as elsewhere, persons of the smallest possible calibre of mind—whose respectable position in society is owing to no merit of their own, but to that of their fathers—who imagine that their social status is a license to do wrong with impunity; but our readers need never fear to set down as a parvenu that Southerner who is openly and notoriously dissipated in his habits, or loose in his morals. They may sometimes mistake their man, but we apprehend they will do so very rarely. One of the most mortifying trials we ever had to endure was a day's journey by rail through a Northern State in company with one of that class of drunken, snobbish, but ignorant as conceited Southerners, who claim to be Southern gentlemen, but whose claim is about as reasonable as was that of the painted jackdaw to a place in the dove-cot. So long as such worthies can manage to hold their tongues, they succeed in deceiving strangers very well; but, like most other shallow-pated fools, they would burst could they not way their unruly little members upon all occasions. Our companion, in personal appearance, was presentable enough, but his speech spoiled every thing; and yet claiming to know an intimate friend of ours, we could not well treat him with that contempt which his conduct merited. He was near upon “half-seas over” most of the time, and rendered himself peculiarly obnoxious to every body by insulting the sun-imbrowned but honest yeomanry who occupied the same car as ourselves—sneering at the customs of the country in a tone of supercilious hauteur altogether insufferable, and for which he deserved to be ejected from the train. On another occasion, we attended Chapel at Harvard, in company with another Southerner of the same stamp—a purse-proud upstart, as different from the gentlemen of his native State as a boor is from a prince. This fellow's impudence and ill-breeding passed all bounds. Notwithstanding the chaplain was occupied with the morning services, he kept continually staring about the room, occasionally nudging us with his elbow while he indulged in the most disparaging remarks relative to different young gentlemen present, and in a tone sufficiently loud for the subjects of his criticisms to hear plainly every word he spoke. We never felt less devotional or much savager than we did on this occasion. It is a consolation to know that we have seldom met with such glaring instances of ill-breeding—only a few times in the persons of Southerners, and about as many in the persons of fanatical Down-Easters, whom either self-interest or some worse motive had induced to visit the Southern States. We recall at this moment one instance of the latter, which we will put on record as a set-off to what we have said touching the former, and because, also, it may enable some good people to see themselves as others see them.

The instance to which allusion is made attracted our notice while traveling in Virginia, in the depth of winter, on the route from Richmond to Washington by the Orange and Alexandria railroad. The train was crowded with passengers, and had been delayed for some hours by a heavy snow-drift—the thermometer standing meanwhile below zero, while the fires in the stoves seemed to give out not the least bit of warmth. It was truly a most uncomfortable situation, but the Virginians present took the matter pleasantly, chatting and laughing as unconcernedly as if they were in their own parlors. There chanced, however, to be some rude and untutored Yankees aboard, seated in different parts of the “coach”—as they call a rail-car in the Old Dominion—though, as afterwards appeared, evidently belonging to one and the same party. For some time these ascetic individuals discreetly kept their own counsel and their tongues between their tooth; but becoming cold and restless, one of them presently popped his sharp nose out of a window, designing, doubtless, to take a survey of the adjacent landscape. Through the driving snow nothing was visible but old field pines, with here and there a shivering darkey holding a lantern in one hand and a shovel in the other; without exaggeration, a gloomy picture enough, and was so reported by our observant Yankee, in a loud vulgar tone, and broad accent, as if addressing himself to the rest of his party. For immediately, like as when you have thrust a burning stick into a coil of snakes in winter time, the whole batch of Down-Easters opened their “shrivelled jaws” at once, and began right off a most abusive tirade, against the noble old “Mother of States and Presidents;” taking occasion meanwhile to sneer at the institutions and people of the South, cheering each other on to the glorious work, by laughing long and delightedly at their own coarse and vulgar witicisms. Filled with shame and mortification at such an unlooked-for display of ill-breeding on the part of their fellow-travellers, every gentleman present, whether Virginian or Yankee, remained silent until the poor boobies had sufficiently vented their spleen; and this was the only notice taken of them; for the moment they again relapsed into moody silence, the conversation once more became as lively and general as before the ungracious interruption. Doubtless there were those present who, in their ignorance of the “land of steady habits,” imagined these loutish New-England provincials to be fair specimens of the noble stock of Puritans; as it is equally probable, that many of the pale students of the Chapel mistook the vulgar fellow from the South for a genuine representative of the chivalry; and with just about as much truth in the one case as in the other.

But to proceed once more with our subject.

When the Southern Gentleman has fully completed his academic labors—has honorably gone through the University Curriculum—if his means be ample, he seldom studies a profession, but gives his education a finishing polish by making the tour of Europe; or else marries and settles down to superintend his estates, and devotes his talents to the raising of wheat, tobacco, rice, sugar, or cotton; or turns his attention to politics, and runs for the State Legislature. Should, however, the patrimonial estate be small, or the heirs numerous, (and the generous clime of the South renders the latter supposition highly probable,) he then devotes himself to some one of the learned professions, or becomes an editor, or enters either the Army or the Navy. But of all things, he is most enamoured of politics and the Army; and it is owing to this cause, that the South has furnished us with all our great generals, from Washington to Scott, as well as most of our leading statesmen, from Jefferson to Calhoun. In order to attain either eminence or success, men must do whatever they undertake con amore. Hence the popular outcry against the undue political influence of the Slave Power, or the Southern Oligarchy, is just as senseless and absurd as if the little retail grocer, who sells brown sugar by the two-penny paper package, should denounce his fellow-citizens because they prefer “loaf” of the best quality, and in order to obtain it patronize his more wealthy neighbor on the opposite side of the street; for the laws of supply and demand govern in both cases— the best in the market will always be most eagerly sought after, as well as command the highest prices.

The Northern people have interested themselves chiefly in commerce, manufactures, literature, and the like; and we behold the result in the ships, the steamers, telegraphs, the thousand practical inventions, the works of art and genius they have already furnished the world. On the other hand, the South has interested herself in agriculture mainly, political economy, and the nurture of an adventurous and military race; and the fruits of her labors are to be witnessed in her long lists of Presidents, Cabinets, Generals, and Statesmen, as well as in her teeming agricultural resources, which add every year some two hundred millions of dollars' worth of exports to our country's commerce. It is also traceable to this marked difference between the two great sections of our Republic, that, while the North has not extended her limits Northward a single degree since the birth of the Constitution, the South has already seized on Florida, Louisiana, and Texas, and her eagle eye is even now burning with a desire to make a swoop on Cuba, Central America, and Mexico. Understand us, however. We do not claim that the South has any thing to boast over the North, no more than do we believe the latter possesses any superiority over the former. They each have their own separate sphere of action, and both, in their respective spheres, have done nobly and well. They each have their own “manifest destiny” too; but by Union alone can they ever hope to achieve the same—by a union such as existed when the first guns fired off in behalf of Independence reverberated along the bleak hills of Massachusetts—a Union of Hearts and of Hands—a Sacred Union which we trust will never be dissevered.

One chief reason why the North has never yet furnished what might be truly called a great party leader, is the fact that the Northern people are too intent on other pursuits to find time to study, much less to master, the great science of Political Economy. And moreover, owing to the great diversity of interests in the Free States, their public men are not continued long enough in service—an indispensable requisite to the thorough accomplishment of the statesman. If there were in the North some one predominating interest, no matter what, which would command always a popular support, it would not be a great while before a change for the better would be observable in her public men. As matters now stand, however, the wealthy and influential citizens of the Free States are so divided in interests—some being producers, while others are manufacturers; some being for protection, and others opposed thereto—that there seems to be only one subject upon which they can consent to agree; and in that not a single Northern citizen is interested, and all the addresses about which are only so many appeals to the passions of the unthinking rabble, who know not how to understand any more a profound State-paper than a doggerel political hymn sung by political mountebanks to the tune of “Du-dah” or “A Few Days,” and who always elevate to office, by their “sweet voices,” the oily demagogue who most flatters and cajoles them.

And so the practical effect of the unstatesmanlike proceedings consequent upon such a state of affairs has been to drive away from politics the choicest spirits in the North, until it is a common observation in the Free States, that no person who wishes to live “cleanly and like a gentleman” ever condescends to dabble in politics at all. Hence many Northerners of wealth and culture spend most of their time abroad, in idleness and fashionable dissipation, until they gradually lose all respect for their native land, as well as all love for free institutions, and in the end become nothing better than mere tuft-hunters and toad-eaters. Instead of leading useful lives themselves, and rearing up sons and daughters of whom a free people might be proud, they waste their own time and talents, and educate their children to be nothing better than obsequious flunkies to a titled and debauched aristocracy. This is why the historic names of New-England are so rapidly passing off the stage of modern action, the unworthy owners of the same preferring to bask in the questionable smiles of Old World princes to doing yeoman's service in the country of their ancestors, (we shall not call it their own country, for theirs it is no longer.) A son of one of these degenerate sons—a descendant of one of our most illustrious families, of one of those noble gentlemen who stood shoulder to shoulder with the ever-loved Washington during the Revolutionary War—we once chanced to know. He was at that time a minor, as was the writer; but at the age of twenty-one he would fall heir to an annual income of thirty thousand dollars, and in this respect our fortunes were very dissimilar, alack-a-day! But how do you presume he was preparing himself to use his fortune? A man with thirty thousand a year could accomplish much good for himself and his fellowmen; a fool with the same income would accomplish his own ruin, and perhaps the ruin of many others more deserving than himself: and, alas! the fool's part was the sole ambition of this unworthy scion of a noble stock. Although bordering on twenty years of age, he reasoned like a little child—amused himself like a boarding-school miss, with gilt-edged story-books and costly bijouteries for presents to his acquaintances, and felt as much pride in never knowing his lessons (that being vulgar in his eyes) as ever his great-grandfather felt while winning those laurels which have rendered the name illustrious. He had spent even then the greater portion of his life in Europe—had already tasted those forbidden pleasures which in Paris are to be had “for the asking”—and he solemnly asseverated that, so soon as he came of age and thereby got rid of the control of his governor, he should return to Europe again, and every year thereafter make it a point of honor to squander his whole income in riotous living, gratifying all the lasts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye, and the pride of life! Now we shall not charge that the sons of all American gentlemen who desert their native shores to play second-fiddle to some Lord Tomnoddy in the Old World, are so utterly brainless as this unfortunate youth; but let them beware, for if they are not, their children will yet come to be such, since it is God's will that every man who is not a natural fool should have something to do, and whoever fails to find that something to keep alive the manhood that is in him, will eventually become both an unnatural as well as a natural fool.

Now, when the facts in regard to politics and parties in the North are duly weighed, we do not see why any intelligent man should express surprise that all our national parties should have originated in the South, or that the leaders of those parties should, generation after generation, prove to be Southern men. Neither is it astonishing that the Northern people, after having denounced every Southern statesman in turn, should in time come to adopt their several opinions. Thus, when Mr. Jefferson overthrew the New-England Federalists, and inaugurated the principles of Democracy, nearly every political pulpit in New England thundered anathemas against his administration, and both priests and people vilified him without measure. But to-day the worthy old Federalists celebrate with all the honors the tough old Democrat's birth-day, and his chief panegyrist and encomiast is one who, when he was alive, thus damned him in flowing numbers: “And thou, the scorn of every patriot name,Thy country's ruin and her council's shame!Go, scan, Philosophist, thy Sally's charms, And sink supinely in her sable arms; But quit to abler hands the helm of State, Nor image ruin on thy country's fate.” So too when Jackson “set his face like a flint” against a National Bank, and all other great moneyed monopolies, he was denounced all through the Free States as an illiterate tyrant: but the name of Jackson is now an household word, and his memory is sacredly enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen. And as for the States-Rights doctrines of Mr. Calhoun, they are already beginning to find favor in the North; and by another decade we expect to see the name of Calhoun placed side by side with the names of Jefferson and Jackson; while the coming Southern leader, who shall inaugurate whatever new policy the shifting fortunes of our growing Republic must in time demand, will be vilified at first by the Northern people, until they learn to respect the wisdom and foresight of his measures, when they will inevitably applaud the same as heartily as they before condemned, and will embrace his principles with as much alacrity as the people of the South will ever continue to welcome the literary productions of Northern authors and the practical inventions of Northern mechanics, and to applaud the matchless eloquence and profound learning of those Northern statesmen whose constituents have the good sense to keep them in public life long enough to enable them to master the science and philosophy of government.

But to return.

No matter what may be the Southern Gentleman's avocation, his dearest affections usually centre in the country. He longs to live as his fathers lived before him, in both the Old World and the New; and he ever turns with unfeigned delight from the bustle of cities, the hollow ceremonies of courts, the turmoil of politics, the glories and dangers of the battle-field, or the wearisome treadmill of professional routine, to the quiet and peaceful scenes of country life. The glare of gas and the glitter of tinsel, the pride, the pomp, the vanity, and all the grace and wit of la bonne compagnie, he surrenders without a sigh of regret, and joyfully retires to the seclusion of his own fireside, grateful for the auspicious and happy exchange. The old hall, the familiar voices of old friends, the trusty and well-remembered faces of the old domestics—these all are dearer to the heart of the Southern Gentleman than the short-lived plaudits of admiring throngs, or the hollow and unsatisfactory pleasures of sense. Indeed, with all classes in the South the home feeling is much stronger than it is in the North; for the bane of hotel life and the curse of boarding-houses have not as yet extended their pernicious influences to our Southern States, or at best in a very small degree. Nearly every citizen is a landholder, and therefore feels an interest in the permanency of his country's institutions. This is one reason why the South has ever been the ready advocate of war, whenever the rights of the nation have been trampled on, or the national flag insulted. But if the patriotic feeling is strong in the breast of even the poorest citizen, whose home is a log-cabin and whose sole patrimony consists of less than a dozen acres of land, how must it be intensified in the bosoms of those whose plantations spread out into all the magnificence of old-country manors!

As it is our desire to present the reader faithful pictures of the home life of the Southern States, we wish we could fitly paint to his mind's eye how the Southern Gentleman appears when reclining under his own vine and fig-tree. Much has been said of his generous hospitality, but this to be fully appreciated should be enjoyed. We doubt if there is any where on the globe its parallel. Certainly, in some portions of the South the Southern Gentleman does not live in very grand style—his house is not always showy, nor his furniture elegant, nor his pleasure-grounds in the best keeping— but he is always hospitable, gentlemanly, courteous, and more anxious to please than to be pleased. A city-bred gentleman from the North will not always find in the planter's home “the rich curtains, the sumptuous sofas, the gorgeous picture-frames, or the thousand and one other dainty household gods, so carefully gathered and treasured in his own house;” but he will ever find a much heartier welcome, a warmer shake of the hand, a greater desire to please, and less frigidity of deportment, than will be found in any walled town upon the earth's circumference. And, to quote the words of one of his class: “As he begins to feel at home, to discover the new pleasures at his command, and to fall into the way and spirit of the life around him, he will feel that the wants of one social condition and climate may not be the wants of another and very opposite one; that on the Southern plantations the people ‘live out of doors;’ that their very houses, ever wide open, are themselves ‘out of doors,’ and consequently but little more cared for than are the self-caring lawns and woods around them.

“When the few cold days come, and the stormy days, this provision for summer and sunshine only may prove for the moment inadequate. But then books, though not showily exposed, are forthcoming for in-door entertainment, and the best of pianos may be opened to good purpose, while your hosts, old and young, are at leisure and command to talk with you intelligently and heartily upon any theme, from the state of the Union to the state of the crops, or to fight over again bold encounters with bear and alligator, or with the quiet adversaries of the chess and the backgammon-boards. To revive the flagging interest in these and other resources there is, as at all times, the cordial relief of the well-supplied side-board, and the very model of generous and hospitable tables.”

This writer also proceeds further, in the following very truthful and pertinent remarks:

“It would seem, and so indeed it is, as a rule, that the Southern Gentleman, even the most assiduous in business, labors only for occupation, or pour passer le temps, his daily toil being his daily pleasure; and not, as in busier and mere money-getting communities, a painful drudgery, submitted to but for the sake of a scarcely understood good beyond. He never buries the man in the business, but makes of his business itself his social enjoyment and his true life. Thus, whatever may be his engagements, he seems never to have any thing to do but to amuse himself and his family and the stranger within his gates. It is to these habits of life, in a great measure, that may be traced the certain air of gentlemanly and chivalrous character and manner which is so characteristic even of the humbler, of the most rude and unlettered—the rough diamonds of the race. Some of this result may possibly be laid also to the circumstance of the distinction between their class and that of the blacks by whom they are surrounded, and which makes them all of a certain necessity brothers and peers, and also to the habits of command, with the consciousness of noblesse and its incident obligations.

“Loving and accustomed to equestrian exercise, the ladies have enough of pleasant and profitable out-door life, while their large households furnish ample employment, even without the generally great cares of hospitality. It is much the custom, at least on the smaller plantations, for the mistress to charge herself with the labors and responsibility of supplying the wants of the blacks as well as the whites of the family, providing them with their rations of food and their stock of clothing, and ministering to them in hours of sickness.”

“Immense stores of material have every season to be cut up for coats, and gowns, and trowsers, and shirts. Little quarrels have to be arbitrated at one moment, and little chastisements inflicted at another. Now Hannibal has broken his head, and vinegar and brown paper must be hunted up; or Lucy is going to be married, and white dresses and white cakes must, according to custom, be prepared; so that, on the whole, one way or another, black and white together, a Southern matron has no necessity, and but little opportunity, to be an idle woman. The gentlemen are equally well provided with occupation in the care of their plantations, the entertainment of their guests, and with studies in the library and sports in the field. The swamps are full of deer, which beguile them to the chase, and the peopled waters tempt them to wander forth with hook and line. Sometimes a bear has to be looked for, and now and then the alligators require some setting down. These last uncouth gentry are by means pleasant folk to encounter unexpectedly, though they are more apt to avoid than to seek you. Still they are given to the offensive when they dare, and often do they make short work of the unlucky hounds who stray within their precincts.”

Thus far a discriminating Northerner.

Nor need you, philanthropic Madam, envy our Southerner because his eye may happen to sparkle with a natural pride, as he scans his broad acres stretching away many a rood in the shimmering sunshine; or because he gazes with delight upon his blooded horses prancing and pirouetting in their green pastures, and his countless herds of cattle lazily browsing the succulent twigs of sassafras growing here and there in the midst of the grassy meadows. Do not, we pray you, disturb that equanimity which has always been such a charming characteristic of your ladyship, by dwelling too intently upon supposititious pictures of the awful contrast between the sunshine that pervades the parlor, and the terrible gloom which always enshrouds the cabin. For, hark! do you not hear those sounds of revelry and mirth? The ceaseless tum tum of de ole banjo, and the merry twang of de fiddle and de bow? as well as the noisy shuffling of not very nimble feet, accompanied by that full-voiced chorus which bursts so merrily, ay, and musically too, upon the midnight air, telling of the free heart and the contented mind? Not even the lark, “singing at heaven's gate,” trills his matin song with more of unaffected joyousness, than do these simple Africans shout their evening choruses, until the very rafters of their humble cabins vibrate with the sound! And tell us, honestly; have you ever witnessed in the miserable tenant-houses of your own toiling poor, after the day's weary labors are done, such evidences of unaffected light-heartedness and physical comfort? And do you suppose, O noble champion of Equal Rights; you, sir, who turn aside with a curse from the ragged starveling on your own doorsteps to clamor that the poor slave shall be freed, but afterwards refuse to sit with the freedman in the house of God, or in the theatres, or in public conveyances, or any where else, indeed, save at Dawson's; do you suppose that your love for the sooty African equals that of his vilified master? If you do so delude yourself, the more's the pity; for, despite what you or any other person may think to the contrary, the Southern Gentleman entertains more real love for his “human chattels,” than all the hair-brained abolitionists the world ever saw. His love is not theoretical but practical. He has tried theory and found it would not do. Formerly he was theoretically an abolitionist, but he has long since got rid of such puerile sentimentality.

He remembers that, when the negroes were first sold to his ancestors by the Puritans of both New and Old England, they were nothing but naked, gibbering savages, heathenish and beastly; being but a single remove above the brutes that perish. He sees now, that a century and a half of slavery has changed them into intelligent human beings, compared with what they originally were, being elevated as high above their kindred, who still remain in Africa, as he is above themselves. He sees, moreover, that wherever the wholesome restraint and intelligent guidance of the master have been taken away, as in Jamaica and elsewhere, the poor blacks have invariably lapsed into a state of semi-barbarism, dragging with them also the white races with whom they have been permitted to associate on equal terms. With such undeniable facts before him, he would be the most jolter-headed fool alive, did he allow himself to be seduced by any spirit of a maudlin sentimentality or pseudo-philanthropy, to destroy by a misdirected benevolence all the good results which it has taken nearly two centuries to accomplish. Hence, the ceaseless clamor of the so-called civilized world—of those peoples whose bread comes through the sweat of the African's brow, and whose commercial prosperity is mainly due to the products of slave-labor—passes by the Southern Gentleman as the idle wind which he heeds not. Yea, let them clamor, let them denounce, let them misrepresent and vilify to their heart's content, although they may succeed in putting to the rack many good republican souls in the Free States, who are so ridiculously sensitive to the opinions entertained of America by the hoary old European tyrants, still never will one single Southern Gentleman be influenced by the very disinterested outcry. He knows that this is not the first time a successful burglar has joined in the general shout, “Stop thief!” “Stop thief!” bawling louder than all the rest, indeed, the more self-interest prompts him to direct public attention to some other sinner, or at least to some other head than his own. Of a truth, there is nothing pleasanter in the world, than to live up to the popular standard of morality; and there is no avocation in life more easy to master than that of a trimmer—one who sails always with the current, whose rudder is public opinion, whose right bower is vox populi, and whose left bower is populi vox. The Southern Gentleman is as well aware of all this as you, sir, or we; but he chooses to have an honest opinion of his own, and would rather stand in the shoes of the meanest slave on his plantation, of the laziest and most ignorant gumbo whose back was ever made to bleed under the overseer's lash, than to become that thing—that most emasculate and miserable mockery of a man—the SLAVE OF PUBLIC OPINION. For the negro, although he may, as the Scriptures enjoin, serve faithfully his “master according to the flesh with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as unto Christ,” can still maintain his own self-respect, and be accounted by the Master of us all, a MAN; but the poor slave of public opinion—the shifting human weathercock, who is “every thing by starts and nothing long”—must in the very nature of things always loathe and abhor himself, and when he gets his deserts in the future life, will, if such things be, officiate as lick-spittle and boot-black to the devil himself, being accounted unworthy to receive even respectable torment.

Do not wonder, therefore, that the Southern Gentleman has never been, and is not now, influenced by the popular and world-wide denunciation of the “peculiar institution.” For he is a man every inch, bold, self-reliant, conscientious; knowing his own convictions of duty, and daring to heed them. What that duty is, the Divine Teacher has inculcated in the well-known precept: “Masters, give unto your servants