slaves to work his northern farms; he was, however, a man of humane
feelings--one who "had his doubts." [Footnote: In his Voyage dans la
Haute Pensylvanie (sic) et dans l'Etat de New York (Paris, 1801)
slavery is severely attacked by Crevecoeur. His descendant, Robert
de Crevecoeur, refers to him as "a friend of Wilberforce."] And his
narrative description of life in the American colonies in the years
immediately preceding the Revolution is one that social historians
cannot ignore.

Though our Farmer emphasises his plainness, and promises the readers
of his Letters only a matter-of-fact account of his pursuits, he has
his full share of eighteenth-century "sensibility." Since he is,
however, at many removes from the sophistications of London and
Paris, he is moved, not by the fond behaviour of a lap-dog, or the
"little arrangements" carters make with the bridles of their
faithful asses (that they have driven to death, belike), but by such
matters as he finds at home. "When I contemplate my wife, by my
fire-side, while she either spins, knits, darns, or suckles our
child, I cannot describe the various emotions of love, of gratitude,
or conscious pride which thrill in my heart, and often overflow in
voluntary tears ..." He is like that old classmate's of
Fitzgerald's, buried deep "in one of the most out-of-the-way
villages in all England," for if he goes abroad, "it is always
involuntary. I never return home without feeling some pleasant
emotion, which I often suppress as useless and foolish." He has his
reveries; but they are pure and generous; their subject is the
future of his children. In midwinter, instead of trapping and
"murthering" the quail, "often in the angles of the fences where the
motion of the wind prevents the snow from settling, I carry them
both chaff and grain: the one to feed them, the other to prevent