252 THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 



illustrious General Washington. It stands about fifteen miles from 

 the capital, in a fine situation, over-looking the Potomac River, and 

 with noble woodland scenery upon every side. A negro boy con- 

 ducted our traveller to the tomb of the immortal Father of America, 

 whose remains lie in a small vault, covered with a plain marble slab, 

 and bearing the inscription, " Tomb of the Washington Family," 

 and underneath, " I am the Resurrection, and the Life, &c." The 

 house at Mount Vernon was also inspected by Mr. Fergusson, who 

 saw there a very extraordinary curiosity, the key of the Baslile, which 

 had been deposited by General La Fayette a judicious offering 

 in the very sanctuary of liberty. 



Mr. Fergusson now bent his steps again northward, and with the 

 thermometer ranging from 92 to 94 in the shade, he proceeded to 

 Baltimore, and from that city, by steam, to Philadelphia and New 

 York ; whence he again embarked, upon his return to Europe, in the 

 packet ship George Canning. After a pleasant passage of twenty- six 

 days, he again landed in his native country, having been absent only 

 five months, and his entire expenditure, he informs us, amounted to 

 no more than the sum of 145, of which about 70 were laid out in 

 apparel and books. In addition to the valuable agricultural informa- 

 tion with which his work abounds, it is impossible to take leave of 

 Mr. Fergusson without expressing our warmest admiration of the 

 temperate and gentleman-like spirit which pervades his observations 

 upon the people, manners, and political institutions of the United 

 States, contrasted with the mean and self-interested abuse put forth 

 in recent years by the Trollopes and Basil Halls, who pandered to 

 the aristocratical tax-devourers of this nation : it is a delightful change 

 to witness the progress of a gentleman of fortune, talent, and sta- 

 tion, passing through this insulted country, willing at least to be 

 satisfied. His work, we think, is calculated to atone to our 

 transatlantic brethren for the venomous malignity of some other 

 writers. 



A moral and political sketch of the United States of America has 

 been recently published by Colonel Achille Murat, son of the late 

 King of Naples and The Two Sicilies, a gentleman, whose fortune, 

 since the political wreck of his family, has been cast in the United 

 States. The work is in the form of Ten Letters, addressed to the 

 Count de Thibedeau, a French nobleman ; and the observations of 

 Colonel Murat are principally directed to points of the higher order 

 of politics and morals. The first numbers of the letters are dated 

 from the residence of the writer at Tallahassie, in East Florida, 

 where citizen Murat has become a landed proprietor, a lawyer, a 

 postmaster, an owner of negroes and an American wife. He has 

 now, however, abandoned the back settlements of Florida, obedient 

 to the sound of the trumpet, which, at the breaking out of the 

 French Revolution of July, summoned all the unquiet spirits to the 

 forthcoming scramble for crowns and powers. We do not find, 

 hiowever, that he has succeeded in his desires ; for a barren commis- 

 sion in the army of King Leopold, is the only portion of the loaves 

 and fishes which lias yet fallen to his lot, though we believe that he 



