are lost in the snow-capped peaks of the mountains.  It is not surprising that such men as Southey, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and others, resorted to this region for inspiration.  After a coach ride of five miles (passing on our journey the “Dove’s Nest,” home of the late Mrs. Hemans), we were put down at the door of the Salutation Hotel, Ambleside, and a few minutes after found ourselves under the roof of the authoress of “Society in America.”  I know not how it is with others, but for my own part, I always form an opinion of the appearance of an author whose writings I am at all familiar with, or a statesman whose speeches I have read.  I had pictured in my own mind a tall, stately-looking lady of about sixty years, as the authoress of “Travels in the East,” and for once I was right, with the single exception that I had added on too many years by twelve.  The evening was spent in talking about the United States; and William Craft had to go through the narrative of his escape from slavery.  When I retired for the night, I found it almost impossible to sleep.  The idea that I was under the roof of the authoress of “The Hour and the Man,” and that I was on the banks of the sweetest lake in Great Britain, within half a mile of the residence of the late poet Wordsworth, drove sleep from my pillow.  But I must leave an account of my visit to the Lakes for a future letter.

When I look around and see the happiness here, even among the poorer classes, and that too in a country where the soil is not at all to be compared with our own, I mourn for our down-trodden countrymen, who are plundered, oppressed, and made chattels of, to enable an ostentatious aristocracy to vie with each other in splendid extravagance.

LETTER XVI.

Miss Martineau—­“The Knoll”—­“Ridal Mount”—­“The Dove’s Nest”—­Grave of William Wordsworth, Esq.—­The English Peasant.

May 30, 1851.

A series of public meetings, one pressing close upon the heel of another, must be an apology for my six or eight weeks’ silence.  But I hope that no temporary suspense on my part will be construed into a want of interest in our cause, or a wish to desist from giving occasionally a scrap (such as it is) to the North Star.

My last letter left me under the hospitable roof of Harriet Martineau.  I had long had an invitation to visit this distinguished friend of our race, and as the invitation was renewed during my tour through the North, I did not feel disposed to decline it, and thereby lose so favourable an opportunity of meeting with one who had written so much in behalf of the oppressed of our land.  About a mile from the head of Lake Windermere, and immediately under Wonsfell, and encircled by mountains on all sides, except the south-west, lies the picturesque little town of Ambleside, and the brightest spot in the place is “The Knoll,” the residence of Miss Martineau.