I may here mention a regulation of the Foreign-office, which, however necessary it may be considered, every one must admit presses very hardly on British employés in the Slave States. I allude to the regulation by which officials are prevented from employing other people's slaves as their servants. White men soon earn enough money to be enabled to set up in some trade, business, or farm, and, as service is looked down upon, they seize the first opportunity of quitting it, even although their comforts may be diminished by the change. Free negroes won't serve, and the official must not employ a slave; thus, a gentleman sent out to look after the interest of his country, and in his own person to uphold its dignity, must either submit to the dictation and extortion of his white servant—if even then he can keep him—or he may be called upon suddenly, some fine morning, to do all the work of housemaid, John, cook, and knife and button boy, to the neglect of those duties he was appointed by his country to perform, unless he be a married man with a large family, in which case he may perhaps delegate to them the honourable occupations, above named. Surely there is something a little puritanical in the prohibition. To hold a slave is one thing, but to employ the labour of one who is a slave, and over whose hopes of freedom you have no control, is quite another thing; and I hold that, under the actual circumstances, the employment of another's slave could never he so distorted in argument as to bring home a charge of connivance in a system we so thoroughly repudiate.

Go to the East, follow in imagination your ambassadors, ministers, and consular authorities. Behold them on the most friendly terms—or striving to be so—with people in high places, who are but too often revelling in crimes, with the very name of which they would scorn even to pollute their lips; and I would ask, did such a monstrous absurdity ever enter into any one's head as to doubt from these amicable relations whether the Government of this country or its agents repudiated such abomination of abominations? If for political purposes you submit to this latter, while for commercial purposes you refuse to tolerate the former, surely you are straining at a black gnat while swallowing a beastly camel. Such, good people of the Foreign-office, is my decided view of the case; and if you profit by the hint, you will do what I believe no public body ever did yet. Perhaps, therefore, the idea of setting the fashion may possibly induce you to reconsider and rectify an absurdity, which, while no inconvenience to you, is often a very great one to those you employ. It is wonderful, the difference in the view taken of affairs by actors on the spot and spectators at a distance. A man who sees a fellow-creature half crushed to death and crippled for life by some horrible accident, is too often satisfied with little more than a passing "Good gracious!" but if, on his returning homeward, some gigantic waggon-wheel scrunch the mere tip of his toes, or annihilate a bare inch of his nose, his ideas of the reality of an accident become immensely enlarged.

Let the Foreign Secretary try for a couple of days some such régime as the following:—

5 A.M. Light fires, fetch water, and put kettle on.
6 " Dust room and make beds.
7 " Clean shoes, polish knives, and sand kitchen.
7:30 " Market for dinner.
8:30 " Breakfast.
9 " To Downing-street, light fires, and dust office.
10 " Sit down comfortably(?) to work.
1:30 P.M. Off to coal-hole for more coals.
4 " Sweep up, and go home.
5 " Off coat, up sleeves, and cook.
6:30 " Eat dinner.
7 " Wash up.
8 " Light your pipe, walk to window, and see your
colleague over the way, with a couple of Patagonian
footmen flying about amid a dozen guests, while, to
give additional zest to your feelings of enjoyment,
a couple of buxom lassies are peeping out of the
attics, and singing like crickets.
9 " Make your own reflections upon the Government
that dooms you to personal servitude, while your
colleague is allowed purchaseable service. Sleep
over the same, and repeat the foregoing régime on
the second day; and, filled with the happy influences
so much cause for gratitude must inspire, give
reflection her full tether, and sleep over her again.
On the third morning, let your heart and brain
dictate a despatch upon the subject of your reflections
to all public servants in slave-holding communities,
and, while repudiating slavery, you will
find no difficulty in employing the services of the
slave, under peculiar circumstances, and with proper
restrictions.

I embarked from Norfolk per steamer for Baltimore, and thence by rail through Philadelphia to New York. I took a day's hospitality among my kind friends at Baltimore. At Philadelphia I was in such a hurry to pass on, that I exhibited what I fear many will consider a symptom of inveterate bachelorship; but truth bids me not attempt to cloak my delinquency. Hear my confession:—

My friend Mr. Fisher, whose hospitality I had drawn most largely upon during my previous stay, invited me to come and pay him and his charming lady a visit, at a delightful country house of his a few miles out of town. Oh, no! that was impossible; my time was so limited; I had so much to see in the north and Canada. In vain he urged, with hearty warmth, that I should spend only one night: it was quite impossible—quite. That point being thoroughly settled, he said, "It is a great pity you are so pressed for time, because the trotting champion, 'Mac,' runs against a formidable antagonist, 'Tacony,' to-morrow." In half an hour I was in his waggon, and in an hour and a half I was enjoying the warm greeting of his amiable wife in their country-house, the blush of shame and a guilty conscience tinging my cheeks as each word of welcome passed from her lips or flashed from her speaking eyes. Why did I thus act? Could I say, in truth, "'Twas not that I love thee less, but that I love Tacony more?" Far from it. Was it that I was steeped in ingratitude? I trust not. Ladies, oh, ladies!--lovely creatures that you are—think not so harshly of a penitent bachelor. You have all read of one of your sex through whom Evil—which takes its name from, her—first came upon earth, and you know the motive power of that act was—curiosity. I plead guilty to that motive power on the present occasion; and, while throwing myself unreservedly on your clemency, I freely offer myself as a target for the censure of each one among you who, in the purity of truth can say, "I never felt such an influence in all my life." Reader, remember you cannot be one of these, for the simple fact of casting your eyes over this page affords sufficient presumptive evidence for any court of law to bring you in guilty of a curiosity to know what the writer has to say.—To resume.

The race-course at Philadelphia is a road on a perfect level, and a circle of one mile; every stone is carefully removed, and it looks as smooth and clean as a swept floor. The stand commands a perfect view of the course; but its neglected appearance shows clearly that trotting-matches here are not as fashionable as they used to be, though far better attended than at New York. Upon the present occasion the excitement was intense; you could detect it even in the increased vigour with which the smoking and spitting was carried on. An antagonist had been found bold enough to measure speed with "Mac"—the great Mac who, while "Whipping creation," was also said never to have let out his full speed. He was thorough-bred, about fifteen and a half hands, and lighter built than my raw-boned friend Tacony, and he had lately been sold for 1600l. So sure did people apparently feel of Mac's easy victory, that even betting was out of the question. Unlike the Long Island affair, the riders appeared in jockey attire, and the whole thing was far better got up. Ladies, however, had long ceased to grace such scenes.

Various false starts were made, all on the part of Mac, who, trusting to the bottom of blood, apparently endeavoured to ruffle Tacony's temper and weary him out a little. How futile were the efforts the sequel plainly showed. At length a start was effected, and away they went, Tacony with his hind legs as far apart as the centre arch of Westminster Bridge, and with strides that would almost clear the Bridgewater Canal. Mac's rider soon found that, in trying to ginger Tacony's temper, he had peppered his own horse's, for he broke-up into a gallop twice. Old Tacony and his rider had evidently got intimate since I had seen them at New York, and they now thoroughly understood each other. On he went, with giant strides; Mac fought bravely for the van, but could not get his nose beyond Tacony's saddle-girth at the winning-post—time, 2m. 25-1/2s.

Then, followed the usual race-course accompaniments of cheers, squabbles, growling, laughing, betting, drinking, &c. The public were not convinced. Mac was still the favourite; the champion chaplet was not thus hastily to be plucked from his hitherto victorious brows. Half an hour's rest brought them again to the starting-post, where Mac repeated his old tactics, and with similar bad success. Nothing could ruffle Tacony, or produce one false step: he flew round the course, every stride like the ricochet of a 32lb. shot; his adversary broke-up again and again, losing both his temper and his place, and barely saved his distance, as the gallant Tacony—his rider with a slack rein, and patting him on the neck—reached the winning-post—time, 2m. 25s. The shouts were long and loud; such time had never been made before by fair trotting, and Tacony evidently could have done it in two, if not three seconds less. The fastest pacing ever accomplished before was 2m. 13s., and the fastest trotting 2m. 26s. The triumph was complete; Tacony nobly won the victorious garland; and as long as he and his rider go together, it will take, if not a rum 'un to look at, at all events a d----l to go, ere he be forced to resign his championship.

The race over, waggons on two wheels and waggons on four wheels, with trotters in them capable of going the mile in from 2m. 40s. to 3m. 20s., began to shoot about in every direction, and your ears were assailed on all sides with "G'lang, g'lang!" and occasionally a frantic yell, to which some Jehu would give utterance by way of making some horse that was passing him "break-up." Thus ended the famous race between Mac and Tac, which, by the way, gave me an opportunity of having a little fun with some of my American friends, as I condoled with them on their champion being beaten by a British subject; for, strange to say, Tac is a Canadian horse. I therefore of course expressed the charitable wish that an American horse might be found some day equal to the task of wearing the champion trotting crown(!)—I beg pardon, not crown, but, I suppose, cap of liberty. I need scarce say that it is not so much the horse as the perfect teaming that produces the result; and all Tac's training is exclusively American, and received in a place not very far from Philadelphia, from which he gets his name. A friend gave me a lift into Philadelphia, whence the iron horse speedily bore me to the great republican Babylon, New York.