"At times, particularly a little before their disappearance, they collect in clouds, rise high in the atmosphere, and take extensive flights, of which neither the cause nor the direction has hitherto been discovered. I was authentically informed in Shaftesbury, that some persons, employed in raising the steeple of the church in Williamstown, were, while standing near the vane, covered by them; and saw, at the same time, vast swarms of them flying far above their heads. The customary flight of grasshoppers rarely exceeds four or five yards, and their wings are apparently so weak, as to forbid excursions extended much beyond these limits. It is to be observed, however, that they customarily return, and perish on the very grounds which they have ravaged." [vol. ii. pp. 384, 385.]

Sunderland, a town in this state, was formerly the residence of Colonel Ethen Allen, who was taken prisoner by the British, on a mad attempt, which he made during the American war, at the head of but one hundred men, to get possession of Montreal. He was an avowed Deist, and author of the first work published on the other side of the Atlantic, against the Christian religion. The following affecting anecdote evinces, however, the little faith which he reposed in his own tenets in the hour of danger and of death.

"Dr. Elliot, who removed from Guildford in Connecticut, to Vermont, was well acquainted with Colonel Allen, and made him a visit at a time when his daughter was sick, and near to death. He was introduced to the library, where the Colonel read to him some of his writings with much self-complacency, and asked, Is not that well done? While they were thus employed, a messenger entered, and informed Colonel Allen, that his daughter was dying, and desired to speak with him. He immediately went to her chamber, accompanied by Dr. Elliot, who was desirous of witnessing the interview. The wife of Colonel Allen was a pious woman, and had instructed her daughter in the principles of Christianity. As soon as her father appeared at her bedside, she said to him, I am about to die; shall I believe in the principles you have taught me, or shall I believe in what my mother has taught me?" He became extremely agitated; his chin quivered; his whole frame shook; and, after waiting a few moments, he replied, 'Believe what your mother has taught you.'" [vol. ii. pp. 389, 390.]

Of the legislature of this state, at least of the legislature as it existed some twelve or fourteen years ago, the following passage in Dr. Dwight's description of Vergennes, gives us no very exalted idea. It is, however, the representation of an American and a New-Englander, and there

fore we may quote it at length, without any risk of subjecting ourselves to the charge of libelling our republican friends.

"It was, indeed, intended for the seat of government, and so are half a dozen other places. Whether any of them will ever become what they so ardently covet, whether there will be a seat of government in the state, or whether the legislature will continue to roll upon wheels from town to town, as they have hitherto done, no human foresight can determine. The legislature itself has been at least equally freakish with the projector of this city, and seems at present little more inclined to settle, than any other bird of passage." [vol. ii. p. 401, 402.]

Neither of the government of Vermont, however, nor its inhabitants, does the Doctor, himself a devout believer in the superiority of his own state of Connecticut over every existing government, entertain any favourable opinion, for through at least a dozen pages he expostulates practically on the vices of all new settlements, from their being composed of the very refuse of the older states, with so much severity, that although we could safely recommend the censure to our aristocratical readers, we would advise its being passed over by those, who expect from American writers, any thing like the sentiments termed radical and jacobinical on this side the Atlantic. His portrait of a genuine democrat, and would-be patriot, dissatisfied with every thing, and to whom nothing can give pleasure, is at least as highly coloured as it could have been by the most violent antijacobin in this country.

The constitution of the state of NEW-HAMPSHIRE is altogether one of the best in the Union, the two branches of the legislature, the house of assembly, and the senate, having each of them a negative on the bills passed by the other, and the judges holding their offices during their good behaviour; a provision very much needed in some of the larger states. In the limitation of seats in the senate to Protestants, we trace however a restrictive spirit, ill accordant with the general liberality of the American states, and irreconcileable, as it appears to us, with the declaration of its own constitution, that " every denomination of Christians, demeaning themselves as good subjects of the state, shall be equally under its protection, and entitled to equal privileges, and that no sect shall ever be legally subordinated to another." In the same just and equitable spirit, another article provides, that no person of any religious

denomination shall be compelled to pay towards the support of any minister, or place of worship, of a religious persuasion to which he himself does not belong.

Portsmouth, the principal town and seaport of the state of New-Hampshire, is, like most of the towns of New-England, built chiefly, if not entirely, of wood; we need not therefore be surprised to learn, that conflagrations have frequently destroyed large portions of this ill-constructed capital.

At Dover, a party of Indians once committed as gross an outrage as ever disgraced the most savage horde of any time or region of the globe. Being then professedly at peace with England, one of their sachems or chiefs, and two women, applied to Major Waldron, formerly governor of New-Hampshire, for a night's lodging; which was granted with equal readiness and good will. In reward, however, for this kindness, these fiends in human shape, whilst the family were asleep, admitted a body of their warriors into his house, and having knocked down their gallant and venerable host, who was then in his eightieth year, by striking him on the head from behind, whilst he was valiantly but ineffectually resisting his numerous and brutal assailants, they seated him in an elbow-chair upon the table, cut him across the breast and stomach whilst he was still alive, severed his nose and ears, and forced them into his mouth, and finally, by placing his sword under him as he fell, terminated his honourable and most useful life. To finish their work of destruction, they then killed or captured the remainder of the family, and set fire to their habitation.

Early in the next year, the neighbouring town of Brunswick was attacked by a body of French, powerfully supported by these their fearful allies; but they were driven back, after they had killed about thirty and captured fifty of the inhabitants. The treatment received by the latter from their savage captors, though acting as the coadjutors of men professing to be Christians, was horrible beyond conception, and would scarcely be credible, were it detailed by a writer of less unquestionable veracity than he who thus affectingly relates it.

"One of the prisoners, named Robert Rogers, a corpulent man, being loaded with a heavy pack, found it impossible to keep pace with his captors. When he had fallen behind them, thinking himself out of their reach, he threw down his load, and attempted to make his escape. The savages pursued him to a hollow tree, in which he endeavoured to conceal himself, and, forcing him out,

stripped him, beat him, and pricked him forward on the journey, until the evening arrived. They then made a feast for themselves, and, tying the prisoner to a tree, (his hands being fastened behind is back,) sang, shouted, and danced around him. When they had sufficiently amused themselves in this manner, they made a great fire near the unfortunate man, bade him take leave of his friends, and allowed him a momentary respite to offer up his prayers to his God. After this, they moved the fire forward, and roasted him by degrees; and when they found him failing, withdrew the fire again to a greater distance. Then they danced around him; cut, at each turn, pieces of flesh from his perishing frame; laughed at his agonies, and added new pangs to this horrible death, by insults and mockeries. With a refinement in cruelty, not obvious to civilized man, they placed the rest of the prisoners just without the fire, that they might be witnesses of the catastrophe. With the same spirit, after his death, they seated his body, still bound to the tree, on the burning coals, that his friends might, at some future time, be racked by the sight.

"Such was one, among innumerable specimens of Indian cruelty. Such are the benefits of that state of savageness, which approximates nearest to the state of nature. Let modern philosophers look on, and learn here how romantically innocent, gentle, and amiable, man becomes in this, which they have been pleased to extol as the state of human perfection. In the next panegyric, which is pronounced on the state of nature by one of these gentlemen, it is to be hoped, that he will recite, as a proof of its beneficent and delightful influence, the story of Robert Rogers." [vol. i. pp. 387, 388.1

To such would-be philosophers, men who, in erecting their theories, overlook all fact, and contradict all experience, we very earnestly commend this wholesome advice, which has been our principal inducement to extract the passage containing it.

At Somersworth, the next stage in his journey, our traveller was entertained, much to his satisfaction, at an inn kept by a Captain R. a circumstance which induces him to enter into an explanation and justification of the inns of this state, and indeed of most others in New-England, and even throughout the Union, being kept by persons whose titles indicate them to be men of some consequence. This he does with much zeal; but although we are fully ready to admit with him, the propriety of houses of accommodation for travellers being kept by persons of respectable character, we are not convinced by any arguments which he has adduced, that there can be the least necessity for their being kept by landlords, whose education and feelings as gentlemen, would in most other countries be an insuperable

bar to their following such a pursuit. Colonel A. of the Bear and Billet, Captain B. of the Goose and Gridiron, and Mr. Justice C. of the Crown and Magpie, would, in any country in Europe, appear so absurd an anomaly, that our American friends must bear with our smiles at a combination of which, we doubt not, but that when their middling classes shall have attained to the respectability of that grade in old established communities, they will themselves be ashamed, however they may affect to glory in it now.

Near Hinsdale, a border town of this state, an irruption of the Indians, in 1775, issued, in the capture, amongst other persons, of a Mrs. Howe, whose subsequent sufferings and history are detailed in so interesting and affecting a manner, that we cannot but refer such of our readers to it as may wish to combine all the witching interest of a novel, with a faithful detail of some of those extraordinary transactions which occasionally form the romance of real life. They will find it in the second volume of the work, pages 70 to 76.

Dartmouth college, near Lebanon, originally founded in 1769, by the exertions of the Rev. Dr. Eleazar Wheelock, of Lebanon, in Connecticut, under the patronage of the good Earl of Dartmouth, for the purpose of educating Indians, and Missionaries to them, has failed of answering its purpose, two natives only having ever graduated here; and it being found difficult, and almost impossible, to get students from among them, whilst missionary education was necessarily interrupted by the breaking out of the American war, soon after the foundation of the college, the work has since been advantageously carried on by other societies, and through other channels. By the education of from fourteen to fifteen hundred young men, of whom a fourth devoted themselves to the ministry, the college has, nevertheless, in another way, conferred most important benefits upon the state in which it is erected, and the Union of which that state is a part.

In the neighbourhood of Bethlehem, a town not far distant from the White Mountains, Dr. Dwight found the roads in a very bad condition, which leads to some observations that cannot, we think, be uninteresting to our readers, pointing out, as they very forcibly do, some of the difficulties which their forefathers, by whose perseverance those vast trans-atlantic regions were peopled, cultivated, and civilized, encountered and overcame.

"A reflecting traveller, passing over these roads, is naturally