I expect to take my family North this summer, and if so may pass through Washington on my way to Saratoga and the lakes. If nothing happens, I may call to see you about the commencement of the dog-days, if you have not left Washington before that. I believe I will also go to see Van Buren, and console him for the split in the Democratic party of New York, and the political death of Wright, etc. I always liked the stoic indifference with which Van Buren took everything, and the easy way in which he lolled in an armchair. He looked like he would make a good fisherman. The truth is, he was a very firm and sagacious man, but made very poor selections for office. If he had changed his cabinet, and selected young, talented, and ambitious men he never would have been turned out, but he had old men about him who loved ease as well as himself.

I have written you a rambling letter, as I had nothing else to write. If you had been a planter, I would have written you about cotton and our crops. You know I am engaged entirely on my estates at present, and solely occupied, thank God! in the finest and noblest pursuit, the cultivation of the soil. And I hope, if they reduce the tariff, as they ought to do, if there is any honesty at Washington, that I may be able next year to sell my cotton at nine cents to some Pennsylvania manufacturer, and get my iron from your iron-masters cheap enough to use more ploughs and axes for next crop.

Very truly your friend,

F. W. Pickens.[[105]]

The following lively letters were written by an English lady, who was a good while in this country, and who soon afterwards published a little book called “The Statesmen of America in 1846”:

[FROM MRS. MAURY.]

Cincinnati, April 14, 1846.

My Dear Mr. Buchanan:—

Your letter reached me shortly after my arrival in New Orleans, and at once made Mrs. Maury a great lady at the St. Charles. I have been anxiously waiting some information from various quarters, which might decide my plans for the next few weeks, but as yet I have received none. The Unicorn can hardly have sailed at the time we have supposed. I do not wish to remove further from the seaports until I shall be assured that my husband and his anxious charge do not yet require my presence. I have, of course, no news of Dr. Hughes, and therefore have no idea when and where he will wish me to meet him. Mr. Clay is still at St. Louis, and his return to Lexington very uncertain. I have been suffering from a slight indisposition for the last few days, and am not yet ready for travelling. This is a tolerable list of perplexities for a lady. In addition, I cannot avoid feeling great interest and some degree of alarm at the scenes which have lately transpired in Congress.[[106]] ... Winthrop is a gallant advocate, but neither his noble spirit nor his truthful nature should be wasted thus. For Mr. Ingersoll, to whom, as you know, my personal attachment is very strong, I have felt most keenly; his temperature is warm, and his susceptibilities as exquisite and acute as those of a woman; and I, who admire his mind, and enjoy his wit, and love his worth, cannot endure to think of the abusive epithets which Mr. Webster has heaped upon him. Nevertheless, I always considered his first allusion to the affair of McLeod an indiscretion, and felt certain from the first that evil would arise from it. I can only attribute his turning back to that period, to the historical habits of his mind, which led him to take a new view of affairs subsequent to that event, from the information he had received from Governor Seward. The Governor is intrepid, and will give the unvarnished truth, nothing adding thereto, nor diminishing aught therefrom. I cannot for one moment conceive that Ingersoll has been instigated by personal resentment, because he was in the habit of expressing to me his private opinions of every public man in Washington, and I have never heard from his lips one vindictive word against Mr. Webster....

To proceed, however, to a less painful theme. I like Cincinnati much better than New Orleans, feeling myself here once more in America instead of in some shabby old town of Brittany, listening to patois French (vulgarly called gumbo French in New Orleans). This city presents all the interest which a growing community ever possesses, and Cincinnati is an infant Hercules. We receive from Judge McLean every attention and hospitality, and I find the Judge as attractive and estimable in private life as he is gracious and dignified on the bench. The society here, as elsewhere in America, is excellent, and confirms my preconceived opinions that good society is the same in Europe and in America. At the hands of the excellent Dr. Purcell, the Catholic bishop, I receive every indulgence; he has conducted us in person through his various institutions, which are all prospering, and intends also to accompany us to visit his Ursulines. From him I learned the striking fact that there were present in the cathedral at high mass on Easter Sunday, 600 persons who are converts to the Catholic faith. Here, as elsewhere, the Sisters of Mercy, by their devotion and virtue, afford us proof that even on earth there exist angelic natures. The cotton factories flourish in Cincinnati, and even at Madison, a small town we passed on the Ohio, I saw the black tall chimneys, indicative of the successful progress of the labor going on at its base. It seems to me, from all I have seen, that notwithstanding all the expected (may I say hoped for?) approaches to free trade, that the manufactures of this country are now too firmly established to suffer. I think you know me well enough to be assured that my zeal for the welfare of America is second only to that I feel for the prosperity of that fair and distant Isle to which I owe my birth, which has been the cradle of my children, and the happy home in which for eighteen years I have been the cherished wife of a husband to whom time has made me more dear. How ardently I wish that every feeling of affection which I shall ever preserve for the people of America were shared by my countrymen.