This morning I went over to Darien upon the very female errands of returning visits and shopping.  In one respect (assuredly in none other) our life here resembles existence in Venice; we can never leave home for any purpose or in any direction but by boat—­not, indeed, by gondola, but the sharp cut, well made, light craft in which we take our walks on the water is a very agreeable species of conveyance.  One of my visits this morning was to a certain Miss ——­, whose rather grandiloquent name and very striking style of beauty exceedingly well became the daughter of an ex-governor of Georgia.  As for the residence of this princess, it was like all the planters’ residences that I have seen, and such as a well-to-do English farmer would certainly not inhabit.  Occasional marks of former elegance or splendour survive sometimes in the size of the rooms, sometimes in a little carved wood-work about the mantelpieces or wainscoatings of these mansions; but all things have a Castle Rackrent air of neglect, and dreary careless untidiness, with which the dirty bare-footed negro servants are in excellent keeping.  Occasionally a huge pair of dazzling shirt gills, out of which a black visage grins as out of some vast white paper cornet, adorns the sable footman of the establishment, but unfortunately without at all necessarily indicating any downward prolongation of the garment; and the perfect tulip bed of a head handkerchief with which the female attendants of these ‘great families’ love to bedizen themselves, frequently stands them instead of every other most indispensable article of female attire.

As for my shopping, the goods or rather ‘bads,’ at which I used to grumble, in your village emporium at Lenox, are what may be termed ’first rate,’ both in excellence and elegance, compared with the vile products of every sort which we wretched southerners are expected to accept as the conveniences of life in exchange for current coin of the realm.  I regret to say, moreover, that all these infamous articles are Yankee made—­expressly for this market, where every species of thing (to use the most general term I can think of), from list shoes to pianofortes, is procured from the North—­almost always New England, utterly worthless of its kind, and dearer than the most perfect specimens of the same articles would be anywhere else.  The incredible variety and ludicrous combinations of goods to be met with in one of these southern shops beats the stock of your village omnium-gatherum hollow to be sure, one class of articles, and that probably the most in demand here, is not sold over any counter in Massachussetts—­cow-hides, and man-traps, of which a large assortment enters necessarily into the furniture of every southern shop.