Vernon, who was a servant, or maid of honor, to the queen. Unfortunately Miss Wilson was not a maid of honor or honesty; for she, although a favorite of the honorable Miss Vernon's, and an intelligent young lady herself, coveted the diamonds, and other finery, which glittered in her eyes; and having an accidental opportunity, when on an errand to her majesty, opened a casket and stole the queen's picture, richly set in diamonds, with several other jewels, which she secreted about her person, and carried off."

"This poor young woman, although accomplished as it is called, had been badly taught, and had bad examples before her. The jewels were after a time missed, but no suspicion fell upon Miss Wilson. In such cases suspicion often falls upon the innocent, and they perhaps suffer. After a time one of the jewels was offered by a jeweller for sale; it was known to have been the queen's. Inquiry was made after the person who sold it to the dealer, and although Miss Wilson had been very cunning, as she thought, the fact of selling the jewel was traced to her. The very circumstance of her being disguised when she sold the artiele was a proof of her guilt, and served to convict her. She was taken up, tried, and condemned, according to the laws of England, to suffer death.”

"But, although her parents had caused her to be poor, by giving all their property to her brother that he might do honor to the family name, as is customary in Europe, they now sought to save themselves from the disgrace of having a child publicly executed as a felon; and Miss Vernon, whose attendant she had been, (and who had been attached to her,) likewise exerted herself to prevent the sad catastrophe. In short, she was reprieved; that is, the execution was put off-and after a time she was sentenced to be transported to the colonies, and sold as a servant, or slave, for life."

"But she persisted in declaring herself innocent, and had such consummate art as to conceal and carry away with her the picture and the remainder of the stolen property. This can only be accounted for from the favor shown her by her former lady, Miss Vernon; for if she had been searched with the rigor used in the cases of common criminals, the jewels must have been found."

"With other convicts she was transported to Maryland, and purchased by Mr. Duval, of Bush creek. It is to be supposed that she was not treated as a common servant, perhaps her employment was that of a nurse, or if she could make her master and mistress believe that she had been unjustly condemned, she might have been intrusted as a teacher to the children of the family. Be that as it may, she had now become an adept in deceit, and she formed a bold plan to obtain liberty, and make use of the property she had concealed. We must imagine that by the favor shown her, she had been suffered to bring with her the clothing in which she had officiated as Miss Vernon's attendant. By what means she escaped from Mr. Duval's is not recorded; and we are left to suppose that, having gained the confidence of the family, she might have been left in charge of the house when the master and mistress made some distant visit. Certain it is that she escaped to Virginia, and there appeared in a fictitious character; and that she was received and treated as the princess Susannah Carolina Matilda, and sister to the queen of England.”

"To make my story probable, I must introduce another character; a most finished rogue, well known in his time by the name of Tom Bell. This vagabond had been likewise sent from an English prison to add to the value of his majesty's plantations, for so the people of England used to call all this country.” "You may imagine that it would be difficult for this woman, however artful. to pass off for a princess, and impose on the people of Virginia, as is recorded, if she had not been assisted by some cunning confederate. Such a one was Tom Bell. This accomplished scoundrel had been sold to a trader or shopkeeper, in Burlington, New Jersey, and gained the good-will of his master so far that he was intrusted to carry goods about the country as a pedlar. You may suppose he cheated the confiding owner, and by degrees accumulated some money from the gains of his pack. He then decamped, pack and all, and by various artifices got off to Virginia. You must remember that at that time the country was thinly inhabited, the roads bad, newspapers scarcely known in comparison to our days, and although Tom was advertised, he eluded detection. He fell in with Sarah Wilson, and recognised, in her, one who had been tried at the same assizes with himself, although they had been shipped for America by separate vessels and to different colonies. As they were known to each other, they were obliged

to trust each other; and Tom communicated to her a bold plan of imposture, after inducing her to confess that she had possession of some money, as well as himself, and (what suggested the scheme to him) a good wardrobe, rich jewels, and the queen's picture.'

"The story they agreed upon was probably this. That she should declare herself to be the princess Susannah Carolina Matilda, sister to the queen of England, and he was to personate her betrothed lover, Mr. Edward Sothway, a private gentleman of fortune; for the love of whom she had been induced to fly to America, as her royal relations forbade their union. That she had lately received letters which rendered further incognito unnecessary; despatches by which they had certainty of being recalled, and the marriage permitted; he being first elevated to the rank of an earl, by his gracious majesty, at the intercession of his royal consort. As proofs of her high rank she was to produce the jewels, and, above all, the picture of her august sister."

"It is recorded, and it is undoubted, that this Sarah Wilson, now become familiar with deceit and crime, (for it is the nature of guilt, my children, to strengthen by practice, one crime leading to another,) it is certain that this woman was received and entertained in Virginia, and in both the Carolinas, as a princess; that she imitated the manners she had seen at court, and although she received presents and borrowed money from the gentlemen she imposed upon, she affected the state of royalty, and graciously extended her hand to be kissed by her visiters. In the colonies at that time, you must remember that the people received their rulers from England; those who desired offices of trust and profit looked to England for them; they called England home, as if America was only a place of exile; they had the prejudices in favor of hereditary monarchy and nobility belonging to the country their fathers came from; they were told by every act of the mother country that they were dependant and inferior; and scme, at this time, seemed to believe that they were debased by their situation. It is hardly yet believed by some among us, that a plain honest democrat without title can be equal to a titulary European."

"Sarah Wilson and Tom Bell, having digested their plan of operations, separated for a time to put it in execution. It was necessary that he should appear as a gentleman, and at that time the apparel of a gentleman was very costly. He must have a wig, which must be dressed every day; he must have several suits of apparel, of cloth, silk, or velvet, trimmed with gold or silver lace; silk stockings; gold or paste knee and shoe buckles; a gold laced hat, and a sword with a richly ornamented hilt. All this Tom was obliged to purchase, and, moreover, several negroes to attend him and the pretended princess. She made her appearance at the head inn of one of the principal towns of Virginia, in the dress and character of a great English lady, who was to be joined in a few days by a gentleman of distinction; he arrived, the honorable Mr. Sothway; curiosity was excited, and the story of the princess and her betrothed lover was buzzed abroad. She was waited upon; confided her pretended history to those who were eager to hear it. She told her visiters that she had assurances from home, that all the indiscretion of her flight was forgiven; a ship of war was to be sent for her; and on her return to St. James's, her marriage would take place as scon as the honorable Mr. Edward Sothway had been elevated to the peerage. Hints, however, were given that funds ran low; but great remittances were expected. Those who kissed the royal hand of the princess were promised governments, and other high offices, if civilians; if military men, promotion in the army; if in the navy, ships. Any sums her royal highness' required were forthcoming; all was in train, and the capital laid out in clothes, equipage, and attendants was likely to be returned with usurious interest. She was received, says a printed account, as 'a sprig of royalty' from house to house, and condescendingly per mitted the masters to kiss her hand. They entertained her with honors, and she repaid the honors with compliments and the cash with promises. So stood affairs when, one day, the princess's betrothed, with the usual ceremony, requested a private interview, (for Tom was kept at most respectful distance;) and the request being granted, he exhibited a newspaper to her royal highness with the following advertisement:

"Bush Creek, Frederick County, Maryland, October 11th, 1771. Run away from the subscriber, a convict servant-maid, named Sarah Wilson, but has changed her name to lady Susannah Carolina Matilda, which made the publick believe that she was his majesty's sister. She has a blemish over the right eye,

dark rolled hair, stoops in the shoulders, makes a common practice of writing and marking her clothes with a crown and a B. Whoever secures the said servant woman, or takes her home, shall receive five pistoles, besides all costs and charges. WM. DOVAL. I entitle Michael Dalton to search the city of Philadelphia, and from thence to Charlestown, for the said woman. WM. DUVAL.'"

"Tom Bell secured the only paper that had found its way into that part of Virginia. But the confederates thought it was time to move farther from Philadelphia, where the advertisement was published. They pretended a journey to the north, and took leave as for a few days of their dupes; but soon separated; and by concert met again in South Carolina, where they played over the same game with equal success. She, however, changing her title to the 'Princess Augusta de Waldegrave.' Dalton, however, pursued them; and Tom, hearing of his arrival at Charlestown, robbed the princess, and left her to be claimed as a runaway convict, and conveyed ignominiously back to Maryland."

The curious picture of society in New Jersey before the Revolution, presented elsewhere, reminds us of some scenes in Mississippi and Arkansas, described in that veritable history, "The Confessions of the Land Pirate Murrell."

Society in America; by Harriet Martineau. Saunders & Otley. In three vols. Vol. 1.

WE certainly enjoy great and peculiar privileges as a people; we do not mean in the sense that Fourth of July orators set them forth periodically to their patriotic hearers; for of that all of us are now fully aware. But our singular happiness as a nation lies in that custodian watchfulness which old mother Europe has ever for our morals and manners; a watchfulness which keeps her for ever pulling at the overgrown child, nudging, tucking, turning and twisting it to see that it never goes wrong in either dress or behaviour, soils its pinafore, or over-eats itself, until the poor thing is so pushed about, rumpled and mumbled over and over, that it is almost impossible to tell what the real Jonathan would have looked like if left wholly to himself. This is about the kindliest view that we can take of the manifold efforts of disinterested Europeans to improve us; but there is still another not quite so flattering to our self-love; and that is, that instead of looking upon us as a kind of pet people-a cosset nation, which they would fain tame into household ways, they do actually regard us as a sort of political excrescence, a wild offshoot from Christendom, a self-outlawed gang of Ishmaelites, whom it behoves all of the true faith to set upon and spoil, and hold up to the nations as a reproach and a bye-word. And verily if the latter be the case, we deserve it. We have always chosen to live upon the breath of European opinion, and so long as we are willing to have all our thinking done abroad, we must be thankful for whatever pittance of approval they may choose to send us, nor look the gift horse in the mouth. If the foreign tourist pats us on the back, and says we are a very decent, well-behaved people after all, and he has great hopes of us when we are a few centuries older, let us be grateful for the condescension arising from his benevolence; and when he tells us,

With the mild chiding of a father's tongue,"

that we must totally alter all our habits before we can fairly sit down among the family of nations, why let us lay the gentle reproof to heart, and toil on in patience, in hope that a seat of honor may in time be accorded to us with the

rest.

Among the many searching truths interspersed through the book before us, there is not one so wholly incontrovertible as that which alleges the total want of intellectual independence among our countrymen. The author, indeed, in making the charge, refers chiefly to the meanness, as existing between parties and individuals here, and she thus impliedly sustains De Tocqueville in referring it to the operation of democratic institutions and the benumbing tyranny of the majority: but if either had remarked how much greater is our subservience to the opinion of strangers, they must have allowed that the national trait was too deeply engrained in our society to be attributable to causes which lie only upon the surface. There are many combining causes to keep alive this weakness. The main ones exist in the two extremes of society. In our poorer classes, the continual intermingling of foreigners, who are admitted to equal rights of citizenship, prevents the growth of national feeling, and the consequent promotion of homogeneousness of character; while among our richer people, a sort of highlife-below-stairs love of European fashions and prejudices, keeps up a twaddling taste that is fatal to a wholesome and manly nationality of sentiment. Without pausing to detail other causes, let us take the operation of these as they daily exhibit themselves, whether in salons or committee rooms, at a meeting in the Park or a ball at Saratoga. We are writing in the city of New-York, and our remarks, though more particularly applicable here, will suit almost any part of the country. Now, is there ever a meeting of the people here without numbers of the assemblage being brought together by some foreign rallying cry, with which American citizens ought to have no more to do than with the catchwords of Mr. Locke's mooniacs? Is not the mere fact of the existence of an American party-for no party can exist without an opposition-a sufficient proof that in some way or another a large number of our citizens are still identified, in feeling and prejudice, with the subjects of other governments? and, though disowning those governments, have they not avowed political relations with those subjects? Do they not acknowledge a leader in another country who has sworn to make his influence felt here? Have they not, too, numerous and influential backers among those born in the land, who, in the spirit of partizanship or cosmopolitism, are more willing to identify themselves with this foreign influence than with the feelings and interests of their own countrymen? We speak not here of the political effect of this; we regard the fact only as it operates upon our national character, and keeps our people identified with Europeans. Nay, more; we do not choose to say whether the wealth and labor which the strong arms and stout hearts of these foreigners bring to our shores is not in our opinion a more valuable possession than the existence of an enlightened, democratic, and exclusive national character; a character that shall mark us as an independent and peculiar people. We only revert to the actual state of things, and we believe them to be as we have described them.

We ecome now to the other class; for without inferring a gradation of ranks, the two extremes of society may still be classified. Mental association produces the same effect here as early habits do in the other instance. These people are raised, as they say in Kentucky, upon the moral aliment that is supplied through the medium of novels and magazines. Their standards of taste and propriety are manufactured almost entirely abroad; and, like buckwheat-fed turkies, the whole fibre of their mental system is flavored by their nourishment. They have no test of what is proper or becoming, unless they can refer it to an imported standard. If the reader doubts this, let him ask the first man near him at a dinner party, why a new wine is introduced after a certain dish? why people rinse their mouths in finger bowls? (horribile dictu) or why any other tasteful or disgusting

YOL. X.

12

operation is enacted? and the answer will always be 'tis the custom abroad. Nay, let him apply to the mother of that fair girl who has just been initiated into the sultan step of the seraglioitz or any other new-fangled-dance-ask the matron how such a thing came to be introduced here, and mark her reply. She will not answer that the dance is graceful, well suited to the music, and one in which many, like her daughter, take great delight; but only, "It is all the fashion in England."

And as with the dinner and the dance, so is it with dress, and manners, and language; there is not the slightest reference to the merits, the taste, or the inherent propriety of the thing itself, but only to "the way they do things abroad.” All this has acted but negatively as yet in society; but manners are so intimately connected with morals, that we may yet copy too much from these over-refined Europeans, and something worse than the self-inflicted stigma of second-hand imitation may yet attach to us.

When will our travelling countrymen learn, that though principles of good breeding are the same in all countries, the mere conventionals of society are ever changing, and can hardly be copied without involving some incongruity or absurdity of manners? A Turkish noble is not less a gentleman because he dines differently from his British brother; nor was Sir Philip Sidney less well bred than the most finished elegant of our day, though he probably was wholly ignorant of the impropriety of taking Sherry before Champaigne, or drinking Port with his oysters. We must learn to have usages and customs of our own; borrowing, indeed, occasionally from our older brethren over the waters, but borrowing discreetly; not imitating by the wholesale. And when harmless peculiarities do spring up among us, and are commented upon by strangers, why, instead of trying to explain them away, answer only as the sturdy Englishman always does, "It is the custom of the country."

Miss Martineau's book will, we think, have a tendency to promote this indepenence of opinion among us. Her observations, whether sound or otherwise, are always couched in such spirited terms as to stir people up and give food for thinking, and will be copied and quoted everywhere. The work, judging by the only volume that has yet come into our possession, is just the one to take hold of the public mind of this country; but as it is impossible to pass upon such a production in the imperfect state in which we have received it, we prefer giving some specimens of her varied observations, and admirable powers of description, to protracting these desultory remarks, already perhaps too long.

THE REAL VULGARITY OF AMERICA.

"The manners of the wealthy classes depend, of course, upon the character of their objects and interests; but they are not, on the whole, so agreeable as those of their less opulent neighbors. The restless ostentation of such as live for grandeur and show is vulgar; as I have said, the only vulgarity to be seen in the country. Nothing can exceed the display of it at watering places. At Rockaway, on Long Island, I saw in one large room, while the company was waiting for dinner, a number of groups which would have made a good year's income for a clever caricaturist. If any lady, with an eye and a pencil adequate to the occasion, would sketch the phenomena of affectation that might be seen in one day in the piazza and drawing-room at Rockaway, she might be a useful censor of manners. But the task would be too full of sorrow and shame for any one with the true republican spirit. For my own part, I felt bewildered in such company. It was as if I had been set down on a kind of debatable land between the wholly imaginary society of the so-called fashionable novels of late years, and the broad sketches of citizen-life given by Madame D'Arblay. It was like nothing real. When I saw the young ladies trickled out in the most expensive finery, flirting over the backgammon-board, tripping affectedly across the room, languishing with a seventy-dollar cambric handkerchief, starting up in ecstacy at the entrance