Journal of a Residence in America

by Fanny Kemble

FOOTNOTES:

[1] I do not know how it is to be accounted for, but in spite of much lighter duties, every article of dress, particularly silks, embroideries, and all French manufactures, are more expensive here than in England. The extravagance of the American women in this part of their expenditure is, considering the average fortunes of this country, quite extraordinary. They never walk in the streets but in the most showy and extreme toilet, and I have known twenty, forty, and sixty dollars paid for a bonnet to wear in a morning saunter up Broadway.

[2] These are the titles of three omnibuses which run up and down Broadway all the day long.

[3] The New Yorkers have begun to see the evil of their ways, as far as regards their carriage-road in Broadway,—which is now partly Macadamised. It is devoutly to be hoped, that the worthy authorities will soon have as much compassion on the feet of their fellow-citizens, as they have begun to have for their brutes.

[4] The roughness and want of refinement, which is legitimately complained of in this country is often however mitigated by instances of civility, which would not be found commonly elsewhere. As I have noticed above, the demeanour of men towards women in the streets is infinitely more courteous here than with us; women can walk, too, with perfect safety, by themselves, either in New York, Philadelphia, or Boston: on board the steam-boats no person sits down to table until the ladies are accommodated with seats; and I have myself in church benefited by the civility of men who have left their pew, and stood, during the whole service, in order to afford me room.

[5] Saw a woman riding to-day; but she has gotten a black velvet beret upon her head.—Only think of a beret on horseback! The horses here are none of them properly broken: their usual pace being a wrong-legged half-canter, or a species of shambling trot, denominated, with infinite justice, a rack. They are all broken with snaffles instead of curbs, carry their noses out, and pull horribly; I have not yet seen a decent rider, either man or woman.

[6] The spirit of independence, which is the common atmospheric air of America, penetrates into the churches, as well as elsewhere. In Boston, I have heard the Apostles' Creed mutilated and altered; once by the omission of the passage "descended into hell," and another time, by the substitution of the words "descended into the place of departed spirits."

[7] Unfortunately this precaution does not fulfil its purpose; universal suffrage is a political fallacy: and will be one of the stumbling-blocks in the path of this country's greatness. I do not mean that it will lessen her wealth, or injure her commercial and financial resources; but it will be an insuperable bar to the progress of mental and intellectual cultivation—'tis a plain case of action and reaction. If the mass, i. e. the inferior portion, (for when was the mass not inferior?) elect their own governors, they will of course elect an inferior class of governors, and the government of such men will be an inferior government; that it may be just, honest, and rational, I do not dispute; but that it ever will be enlarged, liberal, and highly enlightened, I do not, and cannot, believe.

[8] I do not know whether his honour the Recorder's information applied only to the state of New York, or included all the others; 'tis not one of the least strange features which this strange political process, the American government, presents, that each state is governed by its own laws; thus forming a most involved and complicated whole, where each part has its own individual machinery; or, to use a more celestial phraseology, its own particular system.

[9] Whoever pretends to write any account of "Men and Manners" in America must expect to find his own work give him the lie in less than six months; for both men and manners are in so rapid a state of progress that no record of their ways of being and doing would be found correct at the expiration of that term, however much so at the period of its writing. Broadway is not only partly Macadamised since first we arrived here, but there are actually to be seen in it now two or three carriages of decent build, with hammercloths, foot-boards, and even once or twice lately I have seen footmen standing on those foot-boards!!!

[10] Perhaps one reason for the perfect coolness with which a fire is endured in New York is the dexterity and courage of the firemen: they are, for the most part, respectable tradesmen's sons, who enlist in this service, rather than the militia; and the vigilance and activity with which their duty is discharged deserves the highest praise.

[11] I have lately read Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. In that wonderful analysis of the first work of our master-mind by his German peer, all has been said upon this subject that the most philosophical reason, or poetical imagination, can suggest; and who that has read it can forget that most appropriate and beautiful simile, wherein Hamlet's mind is likened to an acorn planted in a porcelain vase—the seed becomes living—the roots expand—and the fragile vessel bursts into a thousand shivers!

[12] The fish of these waters may be excellent in the water; but owing to the want of care and niceness with which they are kept after being caught, they are very seldom worth eating when brought to table. They have no turbot or soles, a great national misfortune: their best fish are rock-fish, bass, shad (an excellent herring, as big as a small salmon), and sheep's-head. Cod and salmon I have eaten; but from the above cause they were never comparable to the same fish at an English table. The lobsters, crabs, and oysters are all gigantic, frightful to behold, and not particularly well-flavoured: their size makes them tough and coarse.

[13] My friend was entertaining himself, at the expense of my credulity, in making this assertion. The rattle-snakes and red Indians have fled together before the approach of civilisation; and it would be as difficult to find the one as the other in the vicinity of any of the large cities of the northern states.

[14] It is two years since I visited Hoboken for the first time; it is now more beautiful than ever. The good taste of the proprietor has made it one of the most picturesque and delightful places imaginable; it wants but a good carriage-road along the water's edge (for which the ground lies very favourably) to make it as perfect a public promenade as any European city can boast, with the advantage of such a river, for its principal object, as none of them possess.

I think the European traveller, in order to form a just estimate both of the evils and advantages deriving from the institutions of this country, should spend one day in the streets of New York, and the next in the walks of Hoboken. If in the one, the toil, the care, the labour of mind and body, the outward and visible signs of the debasing pursuit of wealth, are marked in melancholy characters upon every man he meets, and bear witness to the great curse of the country; in the other, the crowds of happy, cheerful, enjoying beings of that order, which, in the old world, are condemned to ceaseless and ill-requited labour, will testify to the blessings which counterbalance that curse. I never was so forcibly struck with the prosperity and happiness of the lower orders of society in this country as yesterday returning from Hoboken. The walks along the river and through the woods, the steamers crossing from the city, were absolutely thronged with a cheerful well-dressed population abroad, merely for the purpose of pleasure and exercise. Journeymen, labourers, handicraftsmen, tradespeople, with their families, bearing all in their dress and looks evident signs of well-being and contentment, were all flocking from their confined avocations, into the pure air, the bright sunshine, and beautiful shade of this lovely place. I do not know any spectacle which could give a foreigner, especially an Englishman, a better illustration of that peculiar excellence of the American government—the freedom and happiness of the lower classes. Neither is it to be said that this was a holiday, or an occasion of peculiar festivity—it was a common week-day—such as our miserable manufacturing population spends from sun-rise to sun-down, in confined, incessant, unhealthy toil—to earn, at its conclusion, the inadequate reward of health and happiness so wasted. The contrast struck me forcibly—it rejoiced my heart; it surely was an object of contemplation, that any one who had a heart must have rejoiced in. Presently, however, came the following reflections:—These people are happy—their wants are satisfied, their desires fulfilled—their capacities of enjoyment meet with full employment—they are well fed—well clothed—well housed—moderate labour insures them all this, and leaves them leisure for such recreations as they are capable of enjoying; but how is it with me?—and I mean not me myself alone, but all who, like myself, have received a higher degree of mental cultivation, whose estimate of happiness is, therefore, so much higher, whose capacity for enjoyment is so much more expanded and cultivated;—can I be satisfied with a race in a circular railroad car, or a swing between the lime-trees? where are my peculiar objects of pleasure and recreation? where are the picture-galleries—the sculptures—the works of art and science—the countless wonders of human ingenuity and skill—the cultivated and refined society—the intercourse with men of genius, literature, scientific knowledge—where are all the sources from which I am to draw my recreations? They are not. The heart of a philanthropist may indeed be satisfied, but the intellectual man feels a dearth that is inexpressibly painful; and in spite of the real and great pleasure which I derived from the sight of so much enjoyment, I could not help desiring that enjoyment of another order were combined with it. Perhaps the two are incompatible; if so, I would not alter the present state of things if I could.

The losers here are decidedly in the minority. Indeed, so much so, as hardly to form a class; they are a few individuals, scattered over the country, and of course their happiness ought not to come into competition with that of the mass of the people; but the Americans, at the same time that they make no provision whatever for the happiness of such a portion of their inhabitants, would be very angry if one were to say it was a very inconsiderable one, and yet that is the truth.

[15] The climate of this country is the scape-goat upon which all the ill looks and ill health of the ladies is laid; but while they are brought up as effeminately as they are, take as little exercise, live in rooms like ovens during the winter, and marry as early as they do, it will appear evident that many causes combine, with an extremely variable climate, to sallow their complexions, and destroy their constitutions.

[16] The hackney coaches in this country are very different from those perilous receptacles of dust and dirty straw, which disgrace the London stands. They are comfortable within, and clean without; and the horses harnessed to them never exhibit those shocking specimens of cruelty and ill usage which the poor hack horses in London present. Indeed (and it is a circumstance which deserves notice, for it bespeaks general character,) I have not seen, during a two years' residence in this country, a single instance of brutality towards animals, such as one is compelled to witness hourly in the streets of any English town.

[17] There is a striking difference in this respect between the tradespeople of New York and those of Boston and Philadelphia; and in my opinion the latter preserve quite self-respect enough to acquit their courtesy and civility from any charge of servility. The only way in which I can account for the difference, is the greater impulse which trade receives in New York, the proportionate rapidity with which fortunes are made, the ever-shifting materials of which its society is composed, and the facility with which the man who has served you behind his counter, having amassed an independence, assumes a station in the first circle, where his influence becomes commensurate with his wealth. This is not the case either in Boston or Philadelphia, at least not to the same degree.

[18] The universal hour of dining, in New York, when first we arrived, was three o'clock; after which hour the cooks took their departure, and nothing was to be obtained fit to eat, either for love or money: this intolerable nuisance is gradually passing away; but even now, though we can get our dinner served at six o'clock, it is always dressed at three; its excellence may be imagined from that. To say the truth, I think the system upon which all houses of public entertainment are conducted in this country is a sample of the patience and long-suffering with which dirt, discomfort, and exorbitant charges may be borne by a whole community, without resistance, or even remonstrance. The best exceptions I could name to these various inconveniences are, first, Mr. Cozzen's establishment at West Point; next, the Tremont at Boston, and, lastly, the Mansion House at Philadelphia. In each of these, wayfarers may obtain some portion of decent comfort: but they have their drawbacks; in the first, there are no private sitting-rooms; and in the last, the number of servants is inadequate to the work. The Tremont is by far the best establishment of the sort existing at present. Mr. A——, the millionnaire of New York, is about to remedy this deficiency, by the erection of a magnificent hotel in Broadway. One thing, however, is certain; neither he nor any one else will ever succeed in having a decent house, if the servants are not a little superior to the Irish savages who officiate in that capacity in most houses, public and private, in the northern states of America.

[19] It is fortunate for the managers of the Park Theatre, and very unfortunate for the citizens of New York, that the audiences who frequent that place of entertainment are chiefly composed of the strangers who are constantly passing in vast numbers through this city. It is not worth the while of the management to pay a good company, when an indifferent one answers their purpose quite as well: the system upon which theatrical speculations are conducted in this country is, having one or two "stars" for the principal characters, and nine or ten sticks for all the rest. The consequence is, that a play is never decently acted, and at such times as stars are scarce, the houses are very deservedly empty. The terrestrial audiences suffer much by this mode of getting up plays; but the celestial performers, the stars propped upon sticks, infinitely more.

[20] Stewart—Bonfanti. The name of shopkeepers in Broadway: the former's is the best shop in New York.

[21] Were the morality that I constantly hear uttered a little more consistent, not only with right reason, but with itself, I think it might be more deserving of attention and respect. But the mock delicacy, which exists to so great a degree with regard to theatrical exhibitions, can command neither the one nor the other. To those who forbid all dramatic representations, as exhibitions of an unhealthy tendency upon our intellectual and moral nature, I have no objections, at present, to make. Unqualified condemnation, particularly when adopted on such grounds, may be a sincere, a respectable, perhaps a right, opinion. I have but one reply to offer to it: the human mind requires recreation; is not a theatre (always supposing it to be, not what theatres too often are, but what they ought to be), is not a theatre a better, a higher, a more noble, and useful place of recreation than a billiard-room, or the bar of a tavern? Perhaps in the course of the moral and intellectual improvement of mankind, all these will give way to yet purer and more refined sources of recreation; but in the mean time, I confess, with its manifold abuses, a play-house appears to me worthy of toleration, if not of approbation, as holding forth (when directed as it should be) a highly intellectual, rational, and refined amusement.

However, as I before said, my quarrel is not with those who condemn indiscriminately all theatrical exhibitions; they may be right: at all events, so sweeping a sentence betrays no inconsistency. But what are we to say to individuals, or audiences, who turn with affected disgust from the sallies of Bizarre and Beatrice, and who applaud and laugh, and are delighted, at the gross immorality of such plays as the Wonder, and Rule a Wife and have a Wife; the latter particularly, in which the immorality and indecency are not those of expression only, but of conception, and mingle in the whole construction of the piece, in which not one character appears whose motives of action are not most unworthy, and whose language is not as full of coarseness, as devoid of every generous, elevated, or refined sentiment. (The tirades of Leon are no exception; for in the mouth of a man who marries such a woman as Marguerita, by such means, and for such an end, they are mere mockeries.) I confess that my surprise was excited when I was told that an American audience would not endure that portion of Beatrice's wit which the London censors have spared, and that Othello was all but a proscribed play; but it was infinitely more so, when I found that the same audience tolerated, or rather encouraged with their presence and applause, the coarse productions of Mrs. Centlivre and Beaumont and Fletcher. With regard to the Inconstant, it is by far the most moral of Farquhar's plays; that, perhaps, is little praise, for the Recruiting Officer, and the Beaux' Stratagem, are decidedly the reverse. But in spite of the licentiousness of the writing, in many parts, the construction, the motive, the action of the play is not licentious; the characters are far from being utterly debased in their conception, or depraved in the sentiments they utter (excepting, of course, the companions of poor Mirable's last revel); the women, those surest criterions, by whose principles and conduct may be formed the truest opinion of the purity of the social atmosphere, the women, though free in their manners and language (it was the fashion of their times, and of the times before them, when words did not pass for deeds, either good or bad), are essentially honest women; and Bizarre, coarse as her expressions may appear, has yet more real delicacy than poor Oriana, whose womanly love causes her too far to forget her womanly pride. Of the catastrophe of this play, and its frightfully-pointed moral, little need be said to prove that its effect is likely to be far more wholesome, because far more homely, than that of most theatrical inventions; invention, indeed, it is not, and its greatest interest, as perhaps its chief utility, is drawn from the circumstance of its being a faithful representation of a situation of unequalled horror, in which the author himself was placed, and from which he was rescued precisely as he extricates his hero. Of the truth and satirical power of the dialogue, none who understand it can dispute; and if, instead of attaching themselves to the farcical romping of Bizarre and her ungallant lover, the modest critics of this play had devoted some attention to the dialogues between young and old Mirable, their nice sense of decency would have been less shocked, and they might have found themselves repaid by some of the most pointed, witty, and pithy writing in English dramatic literature. I am much obliged to such of my friends as lamented that I had to personate Farquhar's impertinent heroine; for my own good part, I would as lief be such a one, as either Jane Shore, Mrs. Haller, Lady Macbeth, or the wild woman Bianca. I know that great crimes have a species of evil grandeur in them; they spring only from a powerful soil, they are in their very magnitude respectable. I know that mighty passions have in their very excess a frightful majesty, that asserts the vigour of the natures from which they rise; and there is as little similarity between them, and the base, degraded, selfish, cowardly tribe of petty larceny vices with which human societies abound, as there is between the caterpillar blight, that crawls over a fertile district, gnawing it away inch-meal, and the thunderbolt that scathes, or the earthquake that swallows the same region, in its awful mission of destruction. But I maintain that freedom of expression and manner is by no means an indication of laxity of morals, and again repeat that Bizarre is free in her words, but not in her principles. The authoress of the most graceful and true analysis of Shakspeare's female characters has offered a better vindication of their manners than I could write; I can only say, I pity sincerely all those who, passing over the exquisite purity, delicacy, and loveliness of their conception, dwell only upon modes of expression which belong to the times in which their great creator lived. With respect to the manner in which audiences are affected by what they hear on the stage, I cannot but think that gentlemen, who wish their wives and daughters to hear no language of an exceptionable nature, had better make themselves acquainted with what they take them to see, or, at all events, avoid, when in the theatre, attracting their attention to expressions which their disapprobation serves only to bring into notice, and which had much better escape unheard, or at least unheeded. Voluminous as this note has become, I cannot but add one word with respect to the members of the profession to which I have belonged. Many actresses that I have known, in the performance of unvirtuous or unlovely characters (I cannot, however, help remembering that they were also secondary parts), have thought fit to impress the audience with the wide difference between their assumed and real disposition, by acting as ill, and looking as cross as they possibly could, which could not but be a great satisfaction to any moral audience. I have seen this done by that fine part in Milman's Fazio, Aldabella, repeatedly, and not unfrequently by the Queen in Hamlet, Margarita in Rule a Wife and have a Wife (I scarcely wonder at that, though), and even by poor Shakspeare's Lady Falconbridge. I think this is a mistake: the audience, I believe, never forget that the actress is not indeed the wicked woman she seems. In one instance that might have been the case, perhaps. I speak of a great artist, whose efforts I never witnessed, but whose private excellence I have a near right to rejoice in, and who was as true in her performance of the wretch Millwood, as in her personifications of Shakspeare's grandest creations.

[22] The Russians and Danes are rich in the possession of an original and most touching national music; Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, are alike favoured with the most exquisite native melodies, probably, in the world. France, though more barren in the wealth of sweet sounds, has a few fine old airs, that redeem her from the charge of utter sterility. Austria, Bohemia, and Switzerland, each claim a thousand beautiful and characteristic mountain songs; Italy is the very palace of music, Germany its temple; Spain resounds with wild and martial strains, and the thick groves of Portugal with native music, of a softer and sadder kind. All the nations of Europe, I presume all those of all the world, possess some kind of national music, and are blessed by Heaven with some measure of perception as to the loveliness of harmonious sounds. England alone, England and her descendant America, seems to have been denied a sense, to want a capacity, to have been stinted of a faculty, to the possession of which she vainly aspires. The rich spirit of Italian music, the solemn soul of German melody, the wild free Euterpe of the Cantons, have in vain been summoned by turns to teach her how to listen; 'tis all in vain—she does listen painfully; she has learnt by dint of time, and much endurance, the technicalities of musical science; she pays regally her instructors in the divine pleasure, but all in vain: the spirit of melody is not in her; and in spite of hosts of foreign musicians, in spite of the King's Theatre, in spite of Pasta, in spite of music-masters paid like ministers of state, in spite of singing and playing young ladies, and criticising young gentlemen, England, to the last day of her life, will be a dunce in music, for she hath it not in her; neither, if I am not much mistaken, hath her daughter.

[23] It is but justice to state, that this house has passed into other hands, and is much improved in every respect. Strangers, particularly Englishmen, will find a great convenience in the five o'clock ordinary, now established there, which is, I am told, excellently conducted and appointed.

[24] The whole of this passage is in fact a succession of small bays, forming a continuation to the grand bay of New York, and dividing Staten Island from the mainland of New Jersey; the Raritan river does not properly begin till Amboy, where it empties itself into a bay of its own name.

[25] I had always heard that the face of nature was gigantic in America; and truly we found the wrinkles such for so young a country. The ruts were absolute abysses.

[26] The southern, western, and eastern states of North America have each their strong peculiarities of enunciation, which render them easy of recognition. The Virginian and New England accents appear to me the most striking; Pennsylvania and New York have much less brogue; but through all their various tones and pronunciations a very strong nasal inflection preserves their universal brotherhood. They all speak through their noses, and at the top of their voices. Of dialects, properly so called, there are none; though a few expressions, peculiar to particular states, which generally serve to identify their citizens; but these are not numerous, and a jargon approaching in obscurity that of many of our counties is not to be met with. The language used in society generally is unrefined, inelegant, and often ungrammatically vulgar; but it is more vulgar than unintelligible by far.

[27] This appears to me to be a most frequent ailment among the American ladies: they must have particularly bilious constitutions. I never remember travelling in a steam-boat, on the smoothest water, without seeing sundry "afflicted fair ones," who complained bitterly of sea-sickness in the river.

[28] In spite of its beauty, or rather on that very account, an American autumn is to me particularly sad. It presents a union of beauty and decay, that for ever reminds me of that loveliest disguise death puts on, when the cheek is covered with roses, and the eyes are like stars, and the life is perishing away; even so appear the gorgeous colours of the withering American woods. 'Tis a whole forest dying of consumption.

[29] The magnolia and azalia are two of these; and earlier in the summer, the whole country looks like fairy-land, with the profuse and lovely blossoms of the wild laurel, an evergreen shrub unequalled for its beauty, and which absolutely overruns every patch of uncultivated ground. I wonder none of our parks have yet been adorned with it: it is a hardy plant, and I should think would thrive admirably in England.

[30] In the opening chapter of that popular work, Eugene Aram, are the following words:—"It has been observed, and there is a world of homely, ay, and of legislative knowledge in the observation, that wherever you see a flower in a cottage garden, or a bird-cage at the window, you may feel sure that the cottagers are better and wiser than their neighbours." The truth of this observation is indisputable. But for such "humble tokens of attention to something beyond the sterile labour of life" you look in vain during a progress through this country. In New England alone, neatness and a certain endeavour at rustic elegance and adornment, in the cottages and country residences, recall those of their fatherland; and the pleasure of the traveller is immeasurably heightened by this circumstance. If the wild beauties of uncultivated nature lead our contemplations to our great Maker, these lowly witnesses of the industry and natural refinement of the laborious cultivator of the soil warm our heart with sympathy for our kind, and the cheering conviction that, however improved by cultivation, the sense of beauty, and the love of what is lovely, have been alike bestowed upon all our race; 'tis a wholesome conviction, which the artificial divisions of society too often cause us to lose sight of. The labourer, who, after "sweating in the eye of Phœbus" all the day, at evening trains the fragrant jasmine round his lowly door, is the very same man who, in other circumstances, would have been the refined and liberal patron of those arts which reflect the beauty of nature.

[31] In all my progress I looked in vain for the refreshing sight of a hedge—no such thing was to be seen; and their extreme rarity throughout the country renders the more cultivated parts of it arid looking and comparatively dreary. These crooked fences in the south, and stone walls to the north, form the divisions of the fields, instead of those delicious "hedge-rows green," where the old elms delight to grow, where the early violets and primroses first peep sheltered forth, where the hawthorn blossoms sweeten the summer, the honeysuckle hangs its yellow garlands in the autumn, and the red "hips and haws" shine like bushes of earthly coral in the winter.

But the Americans are in too great a hurry to plant hedges: they have abundance of native material; but a wooden fence is put up in a few weeks, a hedge takes as many years to grow; and, as I said before, an American has not time to be a year about anything. When first the country was settled, the wood was an encumbrance, and it was cut down accordingly: that is by no means the case now; and the only recommendation of these fences is, therefore, the comparative rapidity with which they can be constructed. One of the most amiable and distinguished men of this country once remarked to me, that the Americans were in too great a hurry about every thing they undertook to bring any thing to perfection. And certainly, as far as my observation goes, I should calculate that an American is born, lives, and dies twice as fast as any other human creature. I believe one of the great inducements to this national hurry is, that "time is money," which is true; but it is also true, sometimes, that "most haste makes worst speed."

[32] These are two very pretty villages, of Quaker origin, situated in the midst of a fertile and lovely country, and much resorted to during the summer season by the Philadelphians.

[33] It has happened to me after a few hours' travelling in a steam-boat to find the white dress, put on fresh in the morning, covered with yellow tobacco stains; nor is this very offensive habit confined to the lower orders alone. I have seen gentlemen spit upon the carpet of the room where they were sitting, in the company of women, without the slightest remorse; and I remember once seeing a gentleman, who was travelling with us, very deliberately void his tobacco-juice into the bottom of the coach, instead of through the windows, to my inexpressible disgust.

[34] I wish that somebody would be so obliging as to impress people in general with the extreme excellence of a perception of the fitness of things. Besides the intrinsic beauty of works of art, they have a beauty derived from their appropriateness to the situations in which they are placed, and their harmony with the objects which surround them: this minor species of beauty is yet a very great one. If it were more studied, and better understood, public buildings would no longer appear as if they had fallen out of the clouds by chance; parks and plantations would no more have the appearance of nurseries, where the trees were classed by kind, instead of being massed according to their various forms and colours; and Gothic and classic edifices would not so often seem as if they had forsaken their appropriate situations, to rear themselves in climates, and among scenery, with which they in no way harmonise.

[35] Politics of all sorts, I confess, are far beyond my limited powers of comprehension. Those of this country, as far as I have been able to observe, resolve themselves into two great motives,—the aristocratic desire of elevation and separation, and the democratic desire of demolishing and levelling. Whatever may be the immediate cause of excitement or discussion, these are the two master-springs to which they are referable. Every man in America is a politician; and political events, of importance only because they betray the spirit which would be called into play by more stirring occasions, are occurring incessantly, and keeping alive the interest which high and low alike take in the evolutions of their political machine. Elections of state officers, elections of civil authorities, all manner of elections (for America is one perpetual contest for votes), are going on all the year round; and whereas the politics of men of private stations in other countries are kept quietly by them, and exhibited only on occasions of general excitement, those of an American are as inseparable from him as his clothes, and mix up with his daily discharge of his commonest daily avocations. I was extremely amused at seeing over a hat-shop in New York one day, "Anti-Bank Hat-Store," written in most attractive characters, as an inducement for all good democrats to go in and purchase their beavers of so republican a hatter. The universal-suffrage system is of course the cause of this general political mania; and during an election of mayor or aldermen, the good shopkeepers of New York are in as fierce a state of excitement as if the choice of a perpetual dictator were the question in point. Politics is the main subject of conversation among American men in society; but, as I said before, the immediate object of discussion being most frequently some petty local interest or other, strangers cannot derive much pleasure from, or feel much sympathy in, the debate.

[36] I have often thought that the constant demand for small theatres, which I have heard made by persons of the higher classes of society in England, was a great proof of the decline of the more imaginative faculties among them; and the proportionate increase of that fastidious and critical spirit, which is so far removed from every thing which constitutes the essence of poetry. The idea of illusion in a dramatic exhibition is confined to the Christmas spectators of old tragedies and new pantomimes; the more refined portions of our English audiences yawn through Shakspeare's historical plays, and quiz through those which are histories of human nature and its awful passions. They have forgotten what human nature really is, and cannot even imagine it. They require absolute reality on the stage, because their incapable spirits scoff at poetical truth; and that absolute reality, in our days, consists in such representations as the Rent Day; or (crossing the water, for we dearly love what is foreign) the homely improbabilities of Victorine, Henriette, and a pack of equally worthless subjects of exhibition. Indeed, theatres have had an end; for the refined, the highly educated, the first classes of society, they have had an end; it will be long, however, before the mass is sufficiently refined to lose all power of imagination; and while our aristocracy patronise French melodramas, and seek their excitement in the most trashy sentimentalities of the modern école romantique, I have some hopes that our plebeian pits and galleries may still retain their sympathy for the loves of Juliet and the sorrows of Ophelia. I would rather a thousand times act either of those parts to a set of Manchester mechanics, than to the most select of our aristocracy, for they are "nothing, if not critical."

[37] Kean is gone—and with him are gone Othello, Shylock, and Richard. I have lived among those whose theatrical creed would not permit them to acknowledge him as a great actor; but they must be bigoted, indeed, who would deny that he was a great genius, a man of most original and striking powers, careless of art, perhaps because he did not need it; but possessing those rare gifts of nature, without which art alone is as a dead body. Who that ever heard will ever forget the beauty, the unutterable tenderness, of his reply to Desdemona's entreaties for Cassio, "Let him come when he will, I can deny thee nothing;" the deep despondency of his "Oh, now farewell;" the miserable anguish of his "Oh, Desdemona, away, away!" Who that ever saw will ever forget the fascination of his dying eyes in Richard, when, deprived of his sword, the wondrous power of his look seemed yet to avert the uplifted arm of Richmond. If he was irregular and unartistlike in his performances, so is Niagara, compared with the water-works of Versailles.

[38] I have acted Ophelia three times with my father, and each time, in that beautiful scene where his madness and his love gush forth together like a torrent swollen with storms, that bears a thousand blossoms on its troubled waters, I have experienced such deep emotion as hardly to be able to speak. The exquisite tenderness of his voice, the wild compassion and forlorn pity of his looks bestowing that on others which, above all others, he most needed; the melancholy restlessness, the bitter self-scorning; every shadow of expression and intonation was so full of all the mingled anguish that the human heart is capable of enduring, that my eyes scarce fixed on his ere they filled with tears; and long before the scene was over, the letters and jewel-cases I was tendering to him were wet with them. The hardness of professed actors and actresses is something amazing: after acting this part, I could not but recall the various Ophelias I have seen, and commend them for the astonishing absence of every thing like feeling which they exhibited. Oh, it made my heart sore to act it.

[39] I am speaking now only of the common saddle-horses that one sees about the streets and roads. The southern breed of race-horses is a subject of great interest and care to all sporting men here: they are very beautiful animals, of a remarkably slight and delicate make. But the perfection of horses in this country are those trained for trotting: their speed is almost incredible. I have been whirled along in a light-built carriage by a pair of famous professed trotters, who certainly got over the ground at the rate of a moderate-going steam-engine, and this without ever for a moment breaking into a gallop. The fondness of the Americans for this sort of horses, however, is one reason why one can so rarely obtain a well-mouthed riding-horse. These trotters are absolutely carried on the bit, and require only a snaffle, and an arm of iron to hold them up. A horse well set upon his haunches is not to be met with; and owing to this mode of breaking, their action is entirely from the head and shoulders; and they both look and feel as if they would tumble down on their noses.

[40] Except where they have been made political tools, newspaper writers and editors have never, I believe, been admitted into good society in England. It is otherwise here: newspapers are the main literature of America; and I have frequently heard it quoted, as a proof of a man's abilities, that he writes in such and such a newspaper. Besides the popularity to be obtained by it, it is often attended with no small literary consideration; and young men here, with talents of a really high order, and who might achieve far better things, too often are content to accept this very mediocre mode of displaying their abilities, at very little expense of thought or study, and neglect far worthier objects of ambition, and the rewards held out by a distant and permanent fame. I know that half my young gentlemen acquaintance here would reply, that they must live in the mean time: and it is a real and deep evil, arising from the institutions of this country, that every man must toil from day to day for his daily bread; and in this degrading and spirit-loading care, all other nobler desires are smothered. It is a great national misfortune.

[41] This delightful virtue of neatness is carried almost to an inconvenient pitch by the worthy Philadelphians: the town, every now and then, appears to be in a perfect frenzy of cleanliness; and of a Saturday morning, early, the streets are really impassable, except to a good swimmer. "Cleanliness," says the old saw, "is near to godliness." Philadelphia must be very near heaven.

[42] The final result of our very unfortunate dealings with this gentleman is, that our earnings (and they are not lightly come by), to the amount of near three thousand dollars, are at this moment in the hands of a trustee, and Heaven and a New England court of justice will decide whether they are ever to come into ours.

[43] When we arrived in America, we brought letters of introduction to several persons in New York: many were civil enough to call upon us: we were invited out to sundry parties, and were introduced into what is there called the first society. I do not wish to enter into any description of it, but will only say that I was most disagreeably astonished; and had it been my fate to have passed through the country as rapidly as most travellers do, I should have carried away a very unfavourable impression of the best society of New York. Fortunately, however, for me, my visits were repeated, and my stay prolonged; and, in the course of time, I became acquainted with many individuals whose manners and acquirements were of a high order, and from whose intercourse I derived the greatest gratification. But they generally did me the favour to visit me; and I still could not imagine how it happened that I never met them at the parties to which I was invited, and in the circles where I visited. I soon discovered that they formed a society among themselves, where all those qualities which I had looked for among the self-styled best were to be found. When I name Miss Sedgwick, Halleck, Irving, Bryant, Paulding, and some of less fame, but whose acquirements rendered their companionship delightful indeed, amongst whom I felt proud and happy to find several of my own name, it will no longer appear singular that they should feel too well satisfied with the resources of their own society, either to mingle in that of the vulgar fashionables, or seek with avidity the acquaintance of every stranger that arrives in New York. It is not to be wondered at that foreigners have spoken as they have of what is termed fashionable society here, or have condemned, with unqualified censure, the manners and tone prevailing in it. Their condemnations are true and just as regards what they see; nor, perhaps, would they be much inclined to moderate them when they found that persons possessing every quality that can render intercourse between rational creatures desirable were held in light esteem, and neglected, as either bores, blues, or dowdies, by those so infinitely their inferiors in every worthy accomplishment. The same separation, or, if any thing, a still stronger one, subsists in Philadelphia between the self-styled fashionables and the really good society. The distinction there is really of a nature perfectly ludicrous. A friend of mine was describing to me a family whose manners were unexceptionable and whose mental accomplishments were of a high order: upon my expressing some surprise that I had never met with them, my informant replied, "Oh, no, they are not received by the Chestnut Street set." If I were called upon to define that society in New York and Philadelphia which ranks (by right of self-arrogation) as first and best, I should say it is a purely dancing society, where a fiddle is indispensable to keep its members awake; and where their brains and tongues seem, by common consent, to feel that they had much better give up the care of mutual entertainment to the feet of the parties assembled; and they judge well. Now, I beg leave clearly to be understood, there is another, and a far more desirable circle; but it is not the one into which strangers find their way generally. To an Englishman, this fashionable society presents, indeed, a pitiful sample of lofty pretensions without adequate foundation. Here is a constant endeavour to imitate those states of European society which have for their basis the feudal spirit of the early ages, and which are rendered venerable by their rank, powerful by their wealth, and refined, and in some degree respectable, by great and general mental cultivation. Of Boston, I have not spoken. The society there is of an infinitely superior order. A very general degree of information, and a much greater simplicity of manners, render it infinitely more agreeable. But of that hereafter.

[44] The beautiful villas on the banks of the Schuylkill are all either utterly deserted and half ruinous, or let out by the proprietors to tavern-keepers. The reason assigned for this is, that during that season of the year when it would be most desirable to reside there, the fever and ague takes possession of the place, and effectually banishes all other occupants. This very extraordinary and capricious malady is as uncertain in its residence, as unwelcome where it does fix its abode. The courses of some of the rivers, and even whole tracts of country away from the vicinity of the water, have been desolated by it: from these it has passed away entirely, and removed itself to other districts, before remarkably healthy. Sometimes it visits particular places at intervals of one or two seasons; sometimes it attaches itself to one side of a river, and leaves the inhabitants of the other in the enjoyment of perfect health; in short, it is quite as unaccountable in its proceedings as a fine lady. Many causes have been assigned as its origin; which, however, have varied in credibility at almost every new appearance of the malady. The enormous quantity of decaying vegetation with which the autumn woods are strewn, year after year, till it absolutely forms a second soil; the dam lately erected by the water-works, and which, intercepting the tide, causes occasional stagnation; the unwholesome action of water lodging in hollows in the rocks; are all reasons which have been given to me when I have enquired about this terrible nuisance along the banks of the Schuylkill: but there is another, and one which appeared so obvious to me, that when first I saw it, I felt much inclined to attribute the fever and ague to that, and to that alone. I allude to a foul and stagnant ditch, lying between the tow-path and the grounds of these country houses, of nearly a mile in length, and of considerable width. When I saw the sun pouring its intense light down into this muddy pool, covered with thick and unwholesome incrustations, I could not help remarking that this alone was quite sufficient to breed a malaria in the whole neighbourhood; and that if the gentlemen proprietors of the lands along this part of the river would drain this very poisonous-looking repository for bull-frogs, their dwellings would, in all probability, be free from fever and ague.

[45] This beautiful younger world appears to me to have received the portion of the beloved younger son—the "coat of many colours."

[46] This country is in one respect blessed above all others, and above all others deserving of blessing. There are no poor—I say there are none, there need be none; none here need lift up the despairing voice of hopeless and helpless want towards that Heaven which hears when men will not. No father here need work away his body's health, and his spirit's strength, in unavailing labour, from day to day, and from year to year, bowed down by the cruel curse his fellows lay upon him. No mother need wish, in the bitterness of her heart, that the children of her breast had died before they exhausted that nourishment which was the only one her misery could feel assured would not fail them. None need be born to vice, for none are condemned to abject poverty. Oh, it makes the heart sick to think of all the horrible anguish that has been suffered by thousands and thousands of those wretched creatures, whose want begets a host of moral evils fearful to contemplate; whose existence begins in poverty, struggles on through care and toil, and heart-grinding burdens, and ends in destitution, in sickness,—alas! too often in crime and infamy. Thrice blessed is this country, for no such crying evil exists in its bosom; no such moral reproach, no such political rottenness. Not only is the eye never offended with those piteous sights of human suffering, which make one's heart bleed, and whose number appals one's imagination in the thronged thoroughfares of the European cities; but the mind reposes with delight in the certainty that not one human creature is here doomed to suffer and to weep through life; not one immortal soul is thrown into jeopardy by the combined temptations of its own misery, and the heartless selfishness of those who pass it by without holding out so much as a finger to save it. If we have any faith in the excellence of mercy and benevolence, we must believe that this alone will secure the blessing of Providence on this country.

[47] Throughout all the northern states, and particularly those of New England, the Unitarian form of faith prevails very extensively. It appears to me admirably suited to the spiritual necessities of this portion of the Americans. They are a reasoning, not an imaginative, race; moreover, they are a hard-working, not an idle, one. It therefore suits their necessities, as well as their character, to have a religious creed divested at once of mysteries at which the rational mind excepts; and of long and laborious ceremonies, which too often engross the time without the attention of the worshipper. They are poor, too, comparatively speaking; and, were they so inclined, could little afford, either the splendid pageantry which the Romish priesthood require, or the less glaring but not less expensive revenues which the Episcopalian clergy enjoy. Their form of religion is a simple one, a short one, and a cheap one. Without attempting to discuss its excellence in the abstract, it certainly appears to me to be as much fitted for this people, as the marvellous legends and magnificent shows of the Romish church were to the early European nations. The church in America is not, as with us, made a mere means of living: there are no rich benefices, or over-swelled bishoprics, to be hoped for, by the man who devotes himself to the service of God's altar: the pecuniary remuneration of the clergy depends upon the generosity of their congregations; and, for the most part, a sincere love of his vocation must be the American minister's reward, as it was his original instigation to the work.

[48] Whatever progress phrenology may have made in the convictions of people in general, it is much to be hoped that the physiological principles to which, in the development of their system, its professors constantly advert, may find favour even with those who are not prepared to admit the truth of the new philosophy of the human intellect. While we have bodies as well as souls, we must take care of the health of our bodies, if we wish our souls to be healthy. I have heard many people mention the intimate union of spirit and matter, displayed in the existence of a human being, as highly degrading to the former; however that may be, it is certain that we by no means show our value for the one, by neglecting and maltreating the other: and that if, instead of lamenting over the unworthiness of the soul's fleshy partner, we were to improve and correct and endeavour to ennoble it, we should do the wiser thing. Upon a well-regulated digestion and circulation, and a healthful nervous system, many of our virtues depend, much of our happiness; and it is almost as impossible to possess a healthy and vigorous mind in a diseased and debilitated body, as it is unusual to see a strong and healthful body allied to an intemperate and ill-governed spirit. We have some value for the casket which contains our jewel: then should we not have some for that casket to which the jewel absolutely adheres, and which cannot suffer injury itself without communicating it to that which it contains? Exercise, regularity, and moderation in diet and sleep, well-proportioned and varied studies and recreations,—these are none of them subjects of trivial importance to the wise. Much of our ease and contentedness depends upon them; much of our well-being, much of our well-doing.

[49] I think it has not been my good fortune, in more than six instances, during my residence in this country, to find ladies "at home" in the morning. The first reason for this is, the total impossibility of having a housekeeper; the American servants steadfastly refusing to obey two mistresses; the being subservient to any appears, indeed, a dreadful hardship to them. Of course this compels the lady of the house to enter into all those minute daily details, which with us devolve upon the superintendent servant, and she is thus condemned, at least for some part of the morning, to the store-room or the kitchen. In consequence of this, her toilet is seldom completed until about to take her morning promenade; and I have been a good deal surprised, more than once, at being told, when I called, that "the ladies were dressing, but would be down immediately." This is French; the disorderly slouching about half the morning in a careless undress being, unluckily, quite compatible with that exquisite niceness of appearance with which the Parisian ladies edify their streets so much, and their homes so little. Another very disagreeable result of this arrangement is, that when you are admitted into a house in the morning, the rooms appear as if they never were used: there are no books lying about, no work-tables covered with evidences of constant use, and if there is a piano, it is generally closed; the whole giving one an uninhabited feel that is extremely uncomfortable. As to a morning lounge in a lady's boudoir, or a gentleman's library, the thing's unheard of; to be sure there are no loungers, where every man is tied to a counting-house from morning till night; and therefore no occasion for those very pleasant sanctums devoted to gossiping, political, literary, and scandalous.

[50] I am sure there is no town in Europe where my father could fix his residence for a week, without being immediately found out by most of the residents of any literary acquirements, or knowledge of matters relating to art; I am sure that neither in France, Italy, or Germany, could he take up his abode in any city, without immediately being sought by those best worth knowing in it. I confess it surprised me, therefore, when I found that, during a month's residence in Philadelphia, scarcely a creature came near us, and but one house was hospitably opened to us; as regards myself, I have no inclination whatever to speak upon the subject but it gave me something like a feeling of contempt, not only for the charities, but for the good taste of the Philadelphians, when I found them careless and indifferent towards one whose name alone is a passport into every refined and cultivated society in Europe. Every where else, in America, our reception was very different; and I can only attribute the want of courtesy we met with in Philadelphia to the greater prevalence of that very small spirit of dignity which is always afraid of committing itself.

[51] The familiar appellation by which the democracy designate their favourite, General Jackson. The hickory wood is the tallest and the toughest possible, and by no means a bad type of some of the President's physical and moral attributes. Hickory poles, as they are called, are erected before most of the taverns frequented by the thorough-going Jacksonites; and they are sometimes surmounted by the glorious "Cap of Liberty," that much abused symbol, which has presided over so many scenes of political frenzy.

[52] In beholding this fine young giant of a world, with all its magnificent capabilities for greatness, I think every Englishman must feel unmingled regret at the unjust and unwise course of policy which alienated such a child from the parent government. But, at the same time, it is impossible to avoid seeing that some other course must, ere long, have led to the same result, even if England had pursued a more maternal course of conduct towards America. No one, beholding this enormous country, stretching from ocean to ocean, watered with ten thousand glorious rivers, combining every variety of climate and soil, therefore, every variety of produce and population; possessing within itself every resource that other nations are forced either to buy abroad, or to create substitutes for at home; no one, seeing the internal wealth of America, the abundant fertility of the earth's surface, the riches heaped below it, the unparalleled facilities for the intercourse of men, and the interchange of their possessions throughout its vast extent, can for an instant indulge the thought that such a country was ever destined to be an appendage to any other in the world, or that any chain of circumstances whatever could have long maintained in dependence a people furnished with every means of freedom and greatness. But far from regretting that America has thrown off her allegiance, and regarding her as a rebellious subject and irreverent child, England will surely, ere long, learn to look upon this country as the inheritor of her glory; the younger England, destined to perpetuate the language, the memory, the virtues, of the noble land from which she is descended. Loving and honouring my country as I do, I cannot look upon America with any feeling of hostility. I not only hear the voice of England in the language of this people, but I recognise in all their best qualities, their industry, their honesty, their sturdy independence of spirit, the very witnesses of their origin—they are English; no other people in the world would have licked us as they did; nor any other people in the world built up, upon the ground they won, so sound, and strong, and fair an edifice.

With regard to what I have said in the beginning of this note, of the many reasons which combined to render this country independent of all others, I think they in some measure tell against the probability of its long remaining at unity with itself. Such numerous and clashing interests; such strong and opposite individuality of character between the northern and southern states; above all, such enormous extent of country; seem rationally to present many points of insecurity, many probabilities of separations and breakings asunder; but all this lies far on, and I leave it to those who have good eyes for a distance.

[53] I think the pretension to pre-eminence, in the various societies of North America, is founded on these grounds. In Boston, a greater degree of mental cultivation; in New York, the possession of wealth; and a lady, of whom I enquired the other day what constituted the superiority of the aristocracy in Philadelphia, replied,—"Why, birth, to be sure." Virginia and Carolina, indeed, long prided themselves upon their old family names, which were once backed by large possessions; and for many years the southern gentlemen might not improperly be termed the aristocracy of America; but the estates of those who embraced the king's cause during the rebellion were confiscated; and the annulling the laws of entail and primogeniture, and the parcelling out of property under the republican form of government, have gradually destroyed the fortunes of most of the old southern families. Still, they hold fast to the spirit of their former superiority, and from this circumstance, and the possession of slaves, which exempts them from the drudgery of earning their livelihood, they are a much less mercantile race of men than those of the northern states; generally better informed, and infinitely more polished in their manners. The few southerners with whom I have become acquainted resemble Europeans both in their accomplishments, and the quiet and reserve of their manners. On my remarking, one day, to a Philadelphia gentleman, whose general cultivation keeps pace with his political and financial talents, how singular the contrast was between the levelling spirit of this government, and the separating and dividing spirit of American society, he replied, that, if his many vocations allowed him time, he should like to write a novel, illustrating the curious struggle which exists throughout this country between its political and its social institutions. The anomaly is, indeed, striking. Democracy governs the land; whilst, throughout society, a contrary tendency shows itself, wherever it can obtain the very smallest opportunity. It is unfortunate for America that its aristocracy must, of necessity, be always one of wealth.

[54] Of course the captain is undisputed master of the boat, and any disorders, quarrels, etc., which may arise, are settled by his authority. Any passenger, guilty of misbehaviour, is either confined or sent immediately on shore, no matter how far from his intended destination. I once saw very summary justice performed on a troublesome fellow who was disturbing the whole society on board one of the North River steamers. He was put into the small boat with the captain and a stout-looking sailor, and very comfortably deposited on some rafts which were floating along shore, about twenty miles below West Point, whither he was bound.

[55] The quantity of one's companions in these conveyances is not more objectionable than their quality sometimes. As they are the only vehicles, and the fares charged are extremely low, it follows, necessarily, that all classes and sorts of people congregate in them, from the ragged Irish emigrant and the boorish back-countryman, to the gentleman of the senate, the supreme court, and the president himself.

[56] The manners of the young girls of America appear singularly free to foreigners; and until they become better acquainted with the causes which produce so unrestrained a deportment, they are liable to take disadvantageous and mistaken impressions with regard to them. The term which I should say applied best to the tone and carriage of American girls from ten to eighteen, is hoydenish; laughing, giggling, romping, flirting, screaming at the top of their voices, running in and out of shops, and spending a very considerable portion of their time in lounging about in the streets. In Philadelphia and Boston, almost all the young ladies attend classes or day schools; and in the latter place I never went out, morning, noon, or evening, that I did not meet, in some of the streets round the Tremont House, a whole bevy of young school girls, who were my very particular friends, but who, under pretext of going to, or returning from, school, appeared to me to be always laughing, and talking, and running about in the public thoroughfares; a system of education which we should think by no means desirable. The entire liberty which the majority of young ladies are allowed to assume, at an age when in England they would be under strict nursery discipline, appears very extraordinary; they not only walk alone in the streets, but go out into society, where they take a determined and leading part, without either mother, aunt, or chaperon of any sort; custom, which renders such an appendage necessary with us, entirely dispenses with it here; and though the reason of this is obvious enough in the narrow circles of these small towns, where every body knows every body, the manners of the young ladies do not derive any additional charm from the perfect self-possession which they thus acquire. Shyness appears to me to be a quality utterly unknown to either man, woman, or child in America. The girls, from the reasons above stated, and the boys, from being absolutely thrown into the world, and made men of business before they are sixteen, are alike deficient in any thing like diffidence; and I really have been all but disconcerted at the perfect assurance with which I have been addressed, upon any and every subject, by little men and women just half way through their teens. That very common character amongst us, a shy man, is not to be met with in these latitudes. An American conversing on board one of their steam-boats is immediately surrounded, particularly if his conversation, though strictly directed to one individual, is of a political nature; in an instant a ring of spectators is formed round him, and whereas an Englishman would become silent at the very first appearance of a listener, an American, far from seeming abashed at this "audience," continues his discourse, which thus assumes the nature of an harangue, with perfect equanimity, and feels no annoyance whatever at having unfolded his private opinions of men and matters to a circle of forty or fifty people whom they could in no possible way concern. Speechifying is a very favourite species of exhibition with the men here, by the by; and, besides being self possessed, they are all remarkably fluent. Really eloquent men are just as rare in this country as in any other, but the "gift of the gab" appears to me more widely disseminated amongst Americans than any other people in the world. Many things go to make good speakers of them: great acuteness, and sound common sense, sufficient general knowledge, and great knowledge of the world, an intense interest in every political measure, no matter how trivial in itself, no sense of bashfulness, and a great readiness of expression. But to return to the manners of the young American girls:—It is Rousseau, I think, who says, "Dans un pays où les mœurs sont pures, les filles seront faciles, et les femmes sévères." This applies particularly well to the carriage of the American women. When remarking to a gentleman once the difference between the manners of my own young countrywomen and his, I expressed my disapprobation of the education which led to such a result, he replied, "You forget the comparatively pure state of morals in our country, which admits of this degree of freedom in our young women, without its rendering them liable to insult or misconstruction." This is true, and it is also most true, for I have seen repeated instances of it, that those very girls, whose manners have been most displeasing to my European ways of feeling, whom I should have pointed out as romps and flirts pre-eminent, not only make excellent wives, but from the very moment of their marriage seem to forsake society, and devote themselves exclusively to household duties and retirement. But that I have seen and known of repeated instances of this, I could scarcely have believed it, but it is the case; and a young American lady, speaking upon this subject, said to me, "We enjoy ourselves before marriage; but in your country, girls marry to obtain a greater degree of freedom, and indulge in the pleasures and dissipations of society." She was not, I think, greatly mistaken.

[57] For the origin of this curious name, see that interesting and veracious work, the history of Knickerbocker.

[58] Famous as the scene of Ichabod Crane's exploits.

[59] If the results answer to the means employed, the pupils of West Point ought to turn out accomplished scholars in every branch of human learning, as well as ripe soldiers and skilful engineers. Their course of education consists of almost every study within the range of man's capacity; and as the school discipline is unusually strict, their hours of labour many, and of recreation very few, they should he able to boast of many "wise men" among their number. However it is here, I imagine, as elsewhere; where studies are pursued laboriously for a length of time, variety becomes a necessary relief to the mental powers, and so far the multiplicity of objects of acquirement may be excused; but surely, to combine in the education of one youth the elements of half a dozen sciences, each one of which would wear out a man's life in the full understanding of it, is not the best system of instruction. However, it is the one now universally adopted, and tends to give more smatterers in science than scientific men to the world. The military part of their education is, however, what the pupils of West Point are most exercised in, and, so far as one so ignorant of such matters as myself can judge, I should imagine the system adopted calculated to make expert artillerymen and engineers of them. Their deportment, and the way they went through their evolutions on the parade, did not appear to me very steady—there was a want of correctness of carriage, generally, and of absolute precision of movement, which one accustomed to the manœuvring of regular troops detects immediately. There are several large pieces of ordnance kept in the gun-room, some of which were taken from the English; and I remarked a pretty little brass cannon, which almost looked plaything, which bore the broad arrow and the name of Saratoga.

[60] It might be a curious and interesting matter of research to determine under what combination of external circumstances the spirit of poetry flourishes most vigorously, and good poets have most abounded. The extremes of poverty and luxury seem alike inimical to its well-being; yet the latter far more so than the former, for most poets have been poor; some so poor, as to enrich the world, while they themselves received so little return from its favour as miserably to perish of want. Again, the level tenor of a life alike removed from want and superfluity should seem too devoid of interest or excitement to make a good poet. Long-lived competency is more favourable to the even temper of philosophy than the fiery nature of one who must know the storms of passion, and all the fiercer elements of which the acting and suffering soul of man is made. Again, it would be curious to know, if it might be ascertained, whether those men whose inspirations have been aided alone by the contemplation of the inanimate beauties of nature, and the phenomena of their own minds and the minds and lives of their fellows, have been as great poets as those who, besides these sources of inspiration, fed the power within them with the knowledge of great writers and poets of other countries and times. Another question, which it would be interesting to determine, would be, under what species of government poets have been most numerous, and most honoured. As our modern exploders of old fallacies have not yet made up their minds whether such a person as Homer ever lived, it is rather a vain labour of imagination to determine whether this great king of all poets flourished under a monarchy or in a republic; certain it is, he sang of kings and princes in right lordly style: be that as it may, we have rather better authority for believing that the Greek dramatists, those masters, and sometime models, of their peculiar branch of the art, flourished under republican governments; but with them, I think, ends the list of republican poets of great and universal fame. Rome had no poets till she had emperors. Italy was, it is true, divided into so called republics dining the golden age of her literature; but they were so in name alone; the spirit of equality had long departed from the soil, and they were merely prouder and more arbitrary aristocracies than have ever existed under any monarchy in the world. If ever France can be said to have had a poetical age, it was during the magnificent reign of Louis the Fourteenth, that pageant that prepared the bloodiest tragedy in the pages of history. England offers the only exception that I have advanced, namely, that the republican form of government is inimical to poetry. For it was during the short and shameful period of fanatical republicanism, which blots her annals, that the glory and the might of Milton rose upon the world; he is the only great poet who ever flourished under a republic; and he was rather the poet of heaven and hell, than of earth: his subjects are either biblical or mythological; and however his stern and just spirit might advocate the cause of equality and universal freedom in the more arid regions of political and theological controversies, in his noblest and greatest capacity he has sung of angels and archangels, the starry hierarchy of heaven, where some of the blessed wore a brighter glory than their fellows, where some were inferior to other celestial powers, and where God was King supreme over all. In heaven, Milton dreamt of no republics, nor in hell either.

[61] It is quite curious to observe how utterly unknown a thing a really well-broken horse is in this country. I have just bought one who was highly approved and recommended by several gentlemen considered here as learned in all these matters; and of my own knowledge, I might hunt the Union over and not find a better. As far as the make, and beauty, and disposition of the animal goes, there is no fault to find; but this lady's horse never had a woman on its back, had never been ridden but with a snaffle bit, and, until she came into my possession, did not know how to canter with her right foot. When the Americans say a horse is well broken, they mean it is not wild.

[62] The various censures which English travellers have bestowed upon various things in this country are constantly, both in private conversation and the public prints, attributed to English jealousy. I confess I have been amused at the charge, and can only sincerely hope I may not draw down so awful an accusation on myself, when I declare, that, during a three years' residence in America, almost every article, of every description, which I have had made, has been ill made, and obliged to undergo manifold alterations. I don't pretend to account for the fact, for fear the obvious reasons might appear to find their source in that very small jealousy of which England is guilty towards this country, in the person of her journal-scribbling travellers; but to the fact there is and can be no denial.

[63] When you carry your complaint of careless work, or want of punctuality, to the tradespeople whom you employ here, the unfortunate principals really excite your sympathy by their helpless situation with regard to the free republicans whom they employ, and who, with the utter contempt of subordination which the cheapness of living, and the spirit of license (not liberty) produce among the lower classes here, come when they please, depart when they like, work when they choose, and, if you remonstrate, take themselves off to new masters, secure of employment in your neighbour's house, if your mode of employing them displeases them. Manifold are the lamentations I have heard, of "Oh, ma'am, this is not like the old country; we can't get journeymen to work here, ma'am; we're obliged to do just as our workmen please, ma'am." One poor French dress-maker appeared to me on the verge of distraction, from the utter impossibility of keeping in any order a tribe of sewing girls, whom she seemed to pay on purpose that they might drive her crazy; and my shoemaker assured me the other day, with a most woful face, that it was election week, and that if I was as suffering for shoes as a lady could be, I could not have mine till the political cobblers in his employ had settled the "business of the nation" to their satisfaction. Patience is the only remedy. Whoever lives here, that has ever lived elsewhere, should come provided with it.

[64] This description may amaze sundry narrow-minded and prejudiced dwellers in those unhappy countries where standing armies are among the standing abuses, and the miserable stipendiaries of hoary tyrannies go about wearing the livery of their trade with a slavish unanimity becoming alone to hirelings and salaried butchers base. But whoever should imagine that the members of an enlightened and free republic must, because they condescend to become soldiers, for the pure love of their country, behave as soldiers also, would draw foolish conclusions. Discipline, order, a peculiar carriage, a particular dress, obedience to superiors, and observance of rules, these, indeed, may all be the attributes of such miserable creatures as are content to receive wages for their blood. But for free Americans! why should they not walk crooked, in the defence of their country, if they don't like to walk straight? why should they not carry their guns on their shoulders instead of upright, if they please? and why, since they chose to defend their lives and liberties by becoming volunteers, should they not stick any feathers, of any colours that they like in their caps—black, white, or green? Is the noble occupation of war incompatible with the still nobler possession of freedom? Heaven forbid! and long live the American militia, to prove their entire compatibility.

[65] The militia has fallen into disrepute of late in New York and Philadelphia. Trainings and parades take too much of the precious time, whose minutes are cents, and hours dollars. The only instance of humour, national or individual, which I have witnessed since my abode in this country, was a sham parade got up in mimicry of the real one here described. In this grotesque procession, every man was dressed in the most absurd costume he could devise: banners with the most ludicrous inscriptions, wooden swords of gigantic dimensions, and children's twopenny guns, were some of their paraphernalia; and, in the absurd and monstrous objects the men had made of themselves, with false whiskers, beards, and noses, I recognised some of the broad, coarse, powerful humour of the lower orders in the old country. But it is the only symptom of such a spirit which I have met with. The absolute absence of imagination, of course, is also the absolute absence of humour. An American can no more understand a fanciful jest than a poetical idea; and in society and conversation the strictest matter of fact prevails: for any thing departing from it, though but an inch, either towards the sublime or the ridiculous, becomes immediately incomprehensible to your auditors, who will stare at your enthusiasm, and sincerely ask you the meaning of your jest.

[66] A place devoted to political meetings, chiefly, however, I believe, those termed here "democratic."

[67] It is the property of perfection alone to rivet the admiration of absolute ignorance; whence I conclude that the river craft, hovering from morning till night along the waters that surround New York, must be the most beautiful in the world. Their lightness, grace, swiftness, and strength, appear to me unequalled. Such beautiful vessels I never saw; more beautiful ones I cannot imagine.

[68] In Canova's group of Cupid and Psyche, the young god is smiling like a god; but the eager parted lips with which Psyche is seeking his, wear no such expression—you might fancy they trembled, but they certainly do not smile.

[69] The ladies of New York, and all lady-like people there, have agreed to call this eddy Hurl-gate. The superior propriety of this name is not to be questioned; for hell is a shocking bad word, no doubt: but, being infinitely more appropriate to the place and its qualities, I have ventured to mention it.

[70] The ladies here have an extreme aversion to being called women, I don't exactly understand why. Their idea is, that that term designates only the lower or less-refined classes of female human-kind. This is a mistake which I wonder they should fall into; for in all countries in the world, queens, duchesses, and countesses, are called women; but in this one alone, washerwomen, sempstresses, and housemaids are entitled ladies; so that, in fact, here woman is by far the more desirable appellation of the two.

[71] The established succession of figures which form the one French quadrille, in executing which the ball-rooms of Paris and London have spent so many satisfactory hours ever since it was invented, by no means satisfies the Americans. At the close of almost every quadrille, a fancy figure is danced, which, depending entirely upon the directions of the leader of the band, is a very curious medley of all the rest. The company not being gifted with second sight, and of course not knowing at every step what next they may be called upon to do, go fearfully sliding along, looking at each other, asking, "how does it go on?" some en avant deux-ing, while others are starting off en promenade, the whole being a complete confusion of purpose and execution. The common French figure, the Trénis, is very seldom danced at all,—they do not appear to know it.

[72] This terrible nuisance has often made me wish for that "still small voice," which has become the universal tone of good society in England, and which, however inconvenient sometimes from its utter inaudibility, at least did not send one to bed with one's ears ringing and one's head splitting. I was in a society of about twelve ladies, the other evening, and the uproar was so excessive that I felt my eyebrows contracting from a sense of perfect bewilderment, occasioned by the noise all round me, and more than once was obliged to request the person with whom I was conversing to stop till the noise had subsided a little, that I might be able to distinguish what he was saying to me. Were the women here large and masculine in their appearance, this defect would appear less strange, though not less disagreeable; but they are singularly delicate and feminine in their style of beauty; and the noise they make strikes one with surprise as something monstrous and unnatural—like mice roaring. They frequently talk four or five at a time, and directly across each other; neither of which proceedings is exactly according to my ideas of good breeding.

[73] Unromantic as these birds are in their external appearance, there is something poetical in their love of sunny skies. Many attempts have been made to rear them in England; but I am told that they will not sing there, or indeed any where but where the sun shines as it does here.

[74] In speaking of the bad and disagreeable results of the political institutions of this country, as exhibited in the feelings and manners of the lower orders, I have every where dwelt upon those which, from my own disposition, and the opinions and sentiments in which I have been educated, have struck me most, and most unfavourably. But I should be sorry to be so blind, or so prejudiced, as not to perceive the great moral goods which arise from the very same source, and display themselves strongly in the same class of people: honesty and truth, excellences so great, that the most bigoted worshipper of the forms and divisions of societies in the old world would surely be ashamed to weigh them in the balance against the deference there paid to rank or riches, or even the real and very agreeable qualities of civility and courtesy. Americans (I speak now of the people, not the gentlemen and ladies, they are neither so honest and true, nor quite so rude,) are indeed independent. Every man that will work a little can live extremely well. No portion of the country is yet overstocked with followers of trades, not even the Atlantic cities. Living is cheap—labour is dear. To conclude, as the Irish woman said, "It is a darling country for poor folks; for if I work three days in the week, can't I lie in my bed the other three if I plase?" This being so, all dealings between handicraftsmen and those who employ them; tradesmen and those who buy of them; servants and those who are served by them; are conducted upon the most entire system of reciprocity of advantage; indeed, if any thing, the obligation appears always to lie on that party which, with us, is generally supposed to confer it. Thus,—my shoemaker, a person with whom I have now dealt largely for two years, said to me the other day, upon my remonstrating about being obliged regularly to come to his shop and unboot, whenever I order a new pair of walking-boots—"Well, ma'am, we can keep your measure certainly, to oblige you, but, as a rule, we don't do it for any of our customers, it's so very troublesome." These people are, then, as I said before, most truly independent; they are therefore never servile, and but seldom civil, but for the very same reason they do not rob you; they do not need to do so; neither do they lie to you, for your favour or displeasure in no way affects their interest. If you entrust to their care materials of any sort to make up, you are sure, no matter how long you may leave them in their hands, or how entirely you may have forgotten the quantity originally given, to have every inch of them returned to you: and you are also generally sure that any question you ask, with regard to the quality of what you purchase, will be answered without any endeavour to impose upon you, or palm upon your ignorance that which is worse for that which is better. Two circumstances, which have come under my own knowledge, will serve to illustrate the spirit of the people; and they are good illustrations to quote, for similar circumstances are of daily and hourly occurrence.

A farmer who is in the habit of calling at our house on his way to market, with eggs, poultry, etc., being questioned as to whether the eggs were new-laid, replied, without an instant's hesitation, "No, not the very fresh ones, we eat all those ourselves."

On returning home late from the play one night, I could not find my slippers any where, and, after some useless searching, performed my toilet for bed without them. The next morning, on enquiring of my maid if she knew any thing of them, she replied with perfect equanimity, that having walked home through the snow, and got her feet extremely wet, she had put them on, and forgotten to restore them to their place before my return. Nobody, I think, will doubt that an English farmer, and an English servant, might sell stale eggs, and use their mistress's slippers; but I think it highly doubtful, that either fact would have been acknowledged with such perfect honesty any where but here. As to the servants here, except the blacks, and the poor Irish bread-hunters who come over, there are scarcely any to be found: the very name seems repugnant to an American; and however high their wages, and easy their situation, they seem hardly to be able to endure the bitterness of subserviency and subordination.

[75] The bridges here are all made of wood, and for the most part covered. Those which are so are by no means unpicturesque objects. The one-arched bridge at Fair Mount is particularly light and graceful in its appearance: at a little distance, it looks like a scarf, rounded by the wind, flung over the river.

[76] The time of locking of doors at gentlemen's dinner parties, and drinking till the company dropped one by one under the table, has, with the equally disgusting habit of spitting about the floors, long vanished in England before a more rational hospitality, and a better understanding of the very first rule of good breeding, not to do that which is to offend others. Spirituous liquors are the fashion alone among the numerous frequenters of the gin-palaces of Holborn, and St. Giles's; even the old-fashioned favourites of our country gentlemen, port, madeira, and sherry, are found too heavy and strongly-flavoured for the palate of our modern exquisites,—and the fragrant and delicate wines of Burgundy, Bordeaux, the Rhine, and its tributary streams, are the wines now preferred before all others, by persons of refined taste and moderate indulgence. This in itself is a great improvement. The gross desire of excitement by a quantity of powerful stimulants has given place to a temperate enjoyment of things, in themselves certainly the most excellent in the world. Wine-drinking in England is become altogether a species of dilettante taste, instead of the disgusting excess it used to be; it is indulged in with extreme moderation,—and so much have all coarse and thick-blooded drinks gone out of fashion, that even liqueurs are very seldom taken after coffee but by foreigners. Our gentlemen have learnt to consider hard and gross drinking ungentlemanly. I wish I could say the same of American gentlemen. The quantity and the quality of their potations are as destructive of every thing like refinement of palate, as detrimental to their health. Americans are, generally speaking, the very worst judges of wine in the world, always excepting madeira, which they have in great perfection, and is the only wine of which they are tolerable judges. One reason of their ignorance upon this subject is the extremely indifferent quality of the foreign wines imported here, and a still more powerful reason, is the total loss of all niceness of taste consequent upon their continual swallowing of mint julaps, gin slings, brandy cocktails, and a thousand strong messes which they take even before breakfast, and indifferently at all hours of the day,—a practice as gross in taste as injurious to health. Burgundy I have never seen at an American table: I believe it will not stand the sea voyage. Claret they have now in very great perfection, thanks to Mr. ——, who has introduced it among them, and deserves to be considered a public benefactor therefor. Hock is, generally speaking, utterly undrinkable, and champagne (the only foreign wine of which they seem generally fond), though some of a good quality is occasionally presented to you, is for the most part a very nauseous compound, in which sugar is the only perceptible flavour. Although the American gentlemen do not indeed lock the doors upon their guests, they have two habits equally fatal to their sobriety, of which I have heard several Englishmen complain bitterly. The one is mixing their wines in a most unorthodox manner, equally distressing to the palate and the stomach; i. e. giving you to drink by turns, after dinner, claret, madeira, sherry, hock, champagne, all and each of which you are pressed to take as specimens of excellence in their various ways, forming altogether a vinous hotch-potch, which confounds alike the taste and the brain. The second ordeal, to which the sobriety of Englishmen dining out here is exposed, is at the close of all these various libations,—which of course last some time,—an instantaneous removal from the dinner to the supper table, where strong whisky punch effectually finishes the wits of their guests, and sends them home to repent for two days the excess of a few hours. Perhaps, when the real meaning of the word society becomes better understood in this country, absurd display and disgusting intemperance will no more be resorted to as its necessary accompaniments; but of course the real material of which society should be formed must increase a little first. I have been told that the women in this country drink. I never saw but one circumstance which would lead me to believe the assertion. At the baths in New York, one day, I saw the girl who was waiting upon the rooms carry mint julaps (a preparation of mint, sugar, and brandy,) into three of them. I was much surprised, and asked her if this was a piece of service she often performed for the ladies who visited the baths? She said, "Yes, pretty often." Bar-rooms are annexed to every species of public building,—in the theatres, in the hotels, in the bath-houses, on board the steam-boats,—and there are even temporary buildings which serve this purpose erected at certain distances along the rail-roads. Though the gentlemen drink more than any other gentlemen, the lower orders here are more temperate than with us. The appearance of a drunken man in the streets is comparatively rare here; and certainly Sunday is not, as with us, the appointed day for this disgusting vice among the lower classes here. Fortunately, most fortunately, it is not with them as with us, the only day on which the poor have rest, or drunkenness the only substitute they can find for every other necessary or comfort of life. Our poor are indeed intemperate. Alas! that vice of theirs will surely be visited on others; for it is the offspring of their misery. The effects of habitual intemperance in this country are lamentably visible in many young men of respectable stations and easy circumstances; and it is by no means uncommon to hear of young gentlemen—persons who rank as such here—destroying their health, their faculties, and eventually their lives, at a most untimely age, by this debasing habit.

[77] There is a species of home religion, so to speak, which is kept alive by the gathering together of families at stated periods of joy and festivity, which has a far deeper moral than most people imagine. The merry-making at Christmas, the watching out the old year, and in the new, the royalty of Twelfth-night, the keeping of birth-days, and anniversaries of weddings, are things which, to the worldly-wise in these wise times, may savour of childishness or superstition; but they tend to promote and keep alive some of the sweetest charities and kindliest sympathies of our poor nature. While we are yet children, these days are set in golden letters in the calendar,—long looked forward to,—enjoyed with unmixed delight,—the peculiar seasons of new frocks, new books, new toys, drinking of healths, bestowing of blessings and wishes by kindred and parents, and being brought into the notice of our elders, and, as children used to think in the dark ages, therefore their betters. To the older portion of the community, such times were times of many mingled emotions, all, all of a softening if not of so exhilarating a nature. The cares, the toils, of the world had become their portion,—some little of its coldness, its selfishness, and sad guardedness had crept upon them,—distance and various interests, and the weary works of life had engrossed their thoughts, and turned their hearts and their feet from the dear household paths, and the early fellowship of home; but at these seasons the world was in its turn pushed aside for a moment,—the old thresholds were crossed by those who had ceased to dwell in the house of their birth,—kindred and friends met again, as in the early days of childhood and youth, under the same roof-tree,—the nursery revel, and the school-day jubilee, was recalled to their thoughts by the joyful voices and faces of a new generation,—the blessed and holy influences of home flowed back into their souls, at such a time, by a thousand channels,—the heart was warmed with the kind old love and fellowship,—face brightened to kindred face, and hand grasped the hand where the same blood was flowing, and all the evil deeds of time seemed for a while retrieved. These were holy and happy seasons. Oh, England! dear, dear England! this sweet sacred worship, next to that of God the highest and purest, was long cherished in your soil, where the word home was surely more hallowed than any other save heaven. Far, far off be the day when a cold and narrow spirit shall quench in you these dear and good human yearnings, and make the consecrated earth around our door-stones as barren as the wide wilderness of life in strange lands. In this country I have been mournfully struck with the absence of every thing like this home-clinging. Here are comparatively no observances of tides and times. Christmas-day is no religious day, and hardly a holiday with them. New-year's day is perhaps a little, but only a little, more so. For Twelfth-day, it is unknown; and the household private festivals of birth-days are almost universally passed by unsevered from the rest of the toilsome days devoted to the curse of labour. Indeed, the young American leaves so soon the shelter of his home, the world so early becomes to him a home, that the happy and powerful influences and associations of that word to him are hardly known. Sent forth to earn his existence at the very opening time of mind and heart, like a young green-house plant just budding that should be thrust out into the colder air, the blight of worldliness, of coldness, and of care, drive in the coming blossoms; and if the tree lives, half its loveliness and half its usefulness are shorn from it. These are some of the consequences of the universal doom of Americans, to labour for their bread: there are others and better ones.

[78] This happened on board a western steam-boat, I beg to observe, if it happened at all.

[79] The evanescent nature of his triumph, however an actor may deplore it, is in fact but an instance of the broad moral justice by which all things are so evenly balanced. If he can hope for no fame beyond mere mention, when once his own generation passes away, at least his power, and his glory, and his reign is in his own person, and during his own life. There is scarcely to be conceived a popularity for the moment more intoxicating than that of a great actor in his day, so much of it becomes mixed up with the individual himself. The poet, the painter, and the sculptor, enchant us through their works; and, with very very few exceptions, their works, and not their very persons, are the objects of admiration and applause: it is to their minds we are beholden; and though a certain degree of curiosity and popularity necessarily wait even upon their bodily presence, it is faint compared with that which is bestowed upon the actor; and for good reasons—he is himself his work. His voice, his eyes, his gesture, are his art, and admiration of it cannot be separated from admiration for him. This renders the ephemeral glory which he earns so vivid, and in some measure may be supposed to compensate for its short duration. The great of the earth, whose fame has arisen like the shining of the sun, have often toiled through their whole lives in comparative obscurity, through the narrow and dark paths of existence. Their reward was never given to their hands here,—it is but just glory should be lasting.

[80] Another house has been opened at Baltimore within the last year, which, though unfinished at the time of our lodging there, promised to be extremely comfortable. The building adjoined, and indeed formed, part of the Exchange; the vestibule of which is the only very beautiful piece of architecture I have seen here. It is very beautiful.

[81] This very romantic piece of gallantry (serenading) is very common in this country. How it comes to be so I can't quite make out; for it is not at all of a piece with the national manners or tone of feeling. It's very agreeable, though, and is an anomaly worth cultivating.

[82] I have heard it several times asserted, that Catholicism was gaining ground extremely in this country. Surely the Preacher sayeth well, "The thing which has been, it is that which shall be, and there is nothing new beneath the sun." Is it not a marvellous thing to think of, that that mighty tree which has overshadowed the whole of the Christian world, under whose branches all the European empires were cradled, and which we have with our own eyes beheld droop, and fade, and totter, as it does at this moment in the old soils,—is it not strange to think of the seed being carried, and the roots taking hold in this new earth, perhaps to send up another such giant shadow over this hemisphere? Its growth here appears to me almost impossible; for if ever there were two things more opposite in their nature than all other things, they are the spirit of the Roman Catholic religion and the spirit of the American people. It's true, that of the thousands who take refuge from poverty upon this plenteous land, the greater number bring with them that creed, but the very air they inhale here presently gives them a political faith, so utterly incompatible with the spirit of subjection, that I shall think the Catholic priesthood here workers of miracles, to retain any thing like the influence over their minds which they possessed in those countries, where all creeds, political and polemical, have but one watch-word—faith and submission.

[83] In most European countries, the seat of government and residence of the ruling powers and foreign ambassadors is the capital, and generally the largest, most populous, most wealthy, and most influential city of the kingdom—the place of all others to which travellers would resort to become acquainted with its political, literary, and social spirit. In this, however, as in most other respects, this country differs from all others; and the spirit of independence, which renders every state a republic within itself, gives to each its own capital, the superior merits of which are advocated with no little pride and jealousy by the natives of the state to which it belongs. Thus, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, and New Orleans, are all capitals; each of them fulfilling in a much higher degree than Washington the foreigner's idea of that word. Indeed I cannot conceive any thing that would more amaze an European than to be transported into Washington, and told he was in the metropolis of the United States; nor, indeed, could any thing give him a less just idea of the curious political construction, and widely-scattered resources, of the country. Washington, in fact, is to America what Downing and Parliament Streets are to London—a congregation of government offices; where political characters, secretaries, clerks, place-holders, and place-seekers, most do congregate.

[84] As the winter resort of all the leading political men of the Union, Washington presents many attractions in point of society. Their wives and daughters, frequently the reigning beauties of their respective states and towns, generally accompany them thither during the session; and this congregating of people from all parts of the country, together with the foreign ministers residing there, and the travellers drawn thither from mere curiosity, combine to give more variety to the gaieties of Washington than those of any of the other cities in the Union can boast. The Capitol is a favourite lounge in the morning; and the American lady-politicians are just as zealous in their respective parties as our own. I don't know, however, that they would much relish listening to a long debate from that dismal hole, the lantern of the House of Commons, where one may listen, indeed and even just manage to see, but where to be seen is an utter impossibility; neither do I think that many of them would stand for four long hours, as Miss —— and poor Lady —— did, during Brougham's famous reform bill speech.

[85] The love of the sublime and beautiful, those aspirations after something more refined, more exalted and perfect, than this world affords, in short, that spiritual propensity classed in its many and various manifestations by the phrenologists under the title of ideality, will have some vent, and, under circumstances most adverse to its existence, will creep out at some channel or another, and vindicate human nature by flourishing in some shape over the narrowest, homeliest, lowliest, and least favourable guise it may put on. Certainly America is nothe country of large idealities,—it is the very reverse; if I may create a bump, it is the country of large realities, i. e. large acquisitiveness, large causality, large caution, and small veneration and wonder. Nathless some ideality must needs be, and is, and it creeps out in Christian names. I have heard sempstresses called Amanda and Emmeline, and we had a housemaid in New England called Cynthia. Our village carpenter is named Rudolph; and if the spirit of the people appears to me unimaginative and unpoetical, I take great comfort in their fine names.

[86] I am neither sufficiently interested nor sufficiently well informed in the politics of this country to have conceived any opinion of General Jackson, beyond that which the floating discussions of the day might suggest. Of his merits as a statesman I am totally incapable of judging, or of the effect which his peculiar policy is calculated to have upon the country. When first I came here I heard and saw that he was the man of the people. In the dispute with South Carolina, his firmness and decision of character struck me a good deal; and when, in consequence of the temporary distress occasioned by his alteration of the currency, a universal howl was for a short time raised against him, which he withstood without a moment's flinching, I honoured him greatly. Of his measures I know nothing; but firmness, determination, decision, I respect above all things: and if the old General is, as they say, very obstinate, why obstinacy is so far more estimable than weakness, especially in a ruler, that I think he sins on the right side of the question.

[87] The national vanity of the French, and pride and prejudice of the English are proverbial: it is, however, fortunate for both that they carry these qualities to such an excess, that it is a matter of extreme difficulty to shake the good opinion which they entertain of themselves. Thus, foreigners may visit England, as Frenchmen have done, and swear that the sun never shines there, and that the only ripe fruit the country affords is roasted apples. John Bull, nothing wroth, wraps himself still closer in his own dear self-approval, and, in the plenitude of self-content, drinks his brown stout, and basks by gas-light. On his part, he goes over to Paris, votes the whole beau pays de France horrible, because he can't get port wine to drink, or boiled potatoes to eat; in spite of which, Monsieur does not attempt to turn him out of his country, but eats his ragouts, and drinks his chablis, and shrugs his shoulders at the savage islander, from the seventh heaven of self-satisfaction. It were much to be desired that Americans had a little more national vanity, or national pride. Such an unhappily sensitive community surely never existed in this world; and the vengeance with which they visit people for saying they don't admire or like them, would be really terrible if the said people were but as mortally afraid of abuse as they seem to be. I would not advise either Mrs. Trollope, Basil Hall, or Captain Hamilton, ever to set their feet upon this ground again, unless they are ambitious of being stoned to death. I live myself in daily expectation of martyrdom; and as for any body attempting to earn a livelihood here who has but as much as said he prefers the country where he was born to this, he would stand a much better chance of thriving if he were to begin business after confinement in the penitentiary. This unhappy species of irritability is carried to such a degree here, that if you express an unfavourable opinion of any thing, the people are absolutely astonished at your temerity. I remember, to my no little amusement, a lady saying to me once, "I hear you are going to abuse us dreadfully; of course, you'll wait till you go back to England, and then shower it down upon us finely." I assured her I was not in the least afraid of staying where I was, and saying what I thought at the same time.

[88] I have been assured, I know not how truly, that the whole of this affair originated with an Englishman. This piece of information was given me by a person who said he knew such to be the fact, and also knew the man.

[89] It may not be amiss here to say one word with regard to the gratitude which audiences in some parts of the world claim from actors, and about which I have lately heard a most alarming outcry. Do actors generally exercise their profession to please themselves and gratify their own especial delight in self-exhibition? Is that profession in its highest walks one of small physical exertion and fatigue (I say nothing of mental exertion), and in its lower paths is it one of much gain, glory, or ease? Do audiences, on the other hand, use to come in crowds to play-houses to see indifferent performers? and when there, do they, out of pure charity and good-will, bestow their applause as well as their money upon tiresome performances? I will answer these points as far as regards myself, and therein express the gratitude which I feel towards the frequenters of theatres. I individually disliked my profession, and had neither pride nor pleasure in the exercise of it. I exercised it as a matter of necessity, to earn my bread,—and verily it was in the sweat of my brow. The parts which fell to my lot were of a most laborious nature, and occasioned sometimes violent mental excitement, always immense physical exertion, and sometimes both. In those humbler walks of my profession, from whose wearisomeness I was exempted by my sudden favour with the public, I have seen, though not known, the most painful drudgery,—the most constant fatigue,—the most sad contrast between real cares and feigned merriments,—the most anxious, penurious, and laborious existence imaginable. For the part of my questions which regarded the audiences, I have only to say, that I never knew, saw, heard, or read of any set of people who went to a play-house to see what they did not like; this being the case, it never occurred to me that our houses were full but as a necessary consequence of our own attraction, or that we were applauded but as the result of our own exertions. I was glad the houses were full, because I was earning my livelihood, and wanted the money; and I was glad the people applauded us, because it is pleasant to please, and human vanity will find some sweetness in praise, even when reason weighs its worth most justly. Thus I cannot say that in general I had any great gratitude towards my audiences. Once or twice, however, that feeling was excited between me and my witnesses, and the circumstance of which I have spoken in my journal was one of the instances. But this was a different matter altogether. I was no longer before an audience labouring for their approbation as an actress. I was dragged before so many judges in my own person, to answer for words spoken in private conversation. The same clapping of hands, with which they rewarded my exertions in my profession, was the only method by which they could intimate the "not guilty," which was their judgment upon the appeal that had been made to them against me; but with this difference, that I never felt obliged to them, or grateful for their applause before, and did feel obliged and grateful for their verdict then. Now, as regards the benefit-nights of actors, I do not observe that even on these occasions much gratitude is owing to the people who attend them; for I know, and so does every member of the profession, that the oldest and best actor on any stage,—the one who for a series of years has appeared before audiences to whom his private respectability and worth were well known,—the longest-established favourite of the public (as they are termed), will assuredly have empty houses on his benefit-nights, if, trusting to the feeling of that public, to whom he owes so much gratitude, he failed to secure the assistance of whatever star (tragedian, pantomimist, or dancing dog, it matters not which), happens to be the newest object of attraction. I speak all this more particularly as regards this country, for it is here that I have heard most of this species of cant. Gratitude is a good word and an excellent thing, and neither in speaking or acting should it be misapplied. In the aristocratical lands over the water, this nonsense about patronage might surprise one less; but in America it seems strange there should be any mistake about a simple matter of traffic—'tis nothing in life else. We give our health, our strength, our leisure, and our pleasure, for your money and your applause, neither of which do we beg or borrow from you. This being the case, where lies the obligation, and where the gratitude? As to the pretty speeches which actors make when called from behind the curtain, they always appeared to me very much of the same order as advertisements in newspapers—A. D. returns his grateful acknowledgments to the public for their liberal support, etc., etc. That calling performers on after a play is a foreign, not an English, custom, and, to my mind, one more honoured in the breach than in the observance. Extraordinary occasions might warrant extraordinary demonstrations; but it is a pity to make that a common ceremony, which, rarely granted, would be a gratifying testimony of feeling, and excite rational gratitude in those on whom it was conferred.

[90] I would recommend Retsch's etchings of Macbeth to the study of all representatives of the witches: there is great sublimity and fearfulness in their figures and attitudes. By the by, in looking over those unique etchings (I mean all those he has executed), the colossal genius of Shakspeare is brought more fully in its vastness to our conviction; for the genius of the artist,—which has fallen no whit behind the first work of one of the first men of this age,—sinks in utter impotence under the task of illustrating Shakspeare. The wonder, and the beauty, and the pity of Faust, are as strong and true in the outlines of Retsch, as in the words of Goethe—the drawings equal the poem; 'tis the highest praise they can receive: and it is only when we turn from these perfect works, to contemplate his outlines of Shakspeare, that we feel, by the force of comparison, how unutterably beyond all other conceptions are those of Shakspeare. Retsch's etchings, both of Hamlet and Macbeth, are, compared with his German illustrations, failures. Hamlet is the better of the two; but he seems to have quailed under the other in utter inability—Macbeth himself falls far short of all that he should be made to express; and as to Lady Macbeth, Retsch seems to have thought he had better not meddle with her.

[91] I wonder how long it will be before men begin to consider the rational education of the mothers of their children a matter of some little moment. How much longer are we to lead existences burdensome to ourselves and useless to others, under the influence of every species of ill training that can be imagined? How much longer are the physical evils under which our nature labours to be increased by effeminate, slothful, careless, unwholesome habits? How much longer are our minds, naturally weakened by the action of a highly sensitive nervous construction, to be abandoned, or rather devoted, to studies the least likely to strengthen and ennoble them, and render them independent, in some measure, of the infirmities of our bodies? How much longer are our imaginations and feelings to be the only portions of our spiritual nature on which culture is bestowed? Surely it were generous in those who are our earthly disposers to do something to raise us from the state of half-improvement in which we are suffered to linger. If our capacities are inferior to those of men,—which I believe, as much as I believe our bodies to be inferior to theirs in strength, swiftness, and endurance,—let us not be overwhelmed with all the additional shackles that foolish and vain bringing up can add; let us at least be made as strong in body and as wise in mind as we can, instead of being devoted to spiritual, mental, and physical weakness, far beyond that which we inherit from nature.

[92] Was it not Mme. de Sévigné who said, with such truth and bitter satire, "Mme de —— s'est jetée dans la dévotion, c'est-à-dire, elle a changé d'amant"?

[93] The cleanliness of the table furniture, and the neatness of the attendants, is one of the most essential comforts of these boats. The linen, and knives and forks, etc. at our meals, were remarkably clean and bright. On more than one occasion, too, being rather late for the public breakfast, we have been indulged with a small separate table in the quiet recess at the end of the great eating and sleeping cabin,—a favour only to be appreciated by people unaccustomed to any ordinaries, much less steam-boat dinner-tables with sometimes near two hundred guests. On board all the other boats, the only alternative is to have what you eat brought to you into the ladies' cabin. To those who have once breathed the atmosphere of a "ladies' cabin," it will be difficult to imagine how such an alternative should not be productive of an amazing saving of the boat's provisions.

[94] My astonishment was unfeigned, when, upon an after inspection, I found this very lofty gateway was constructed of painted wood. What! a cheat, a sham thing at the threshold of the grave!—surely, thereabouts pretences should have an end. Sham magnificence, too, is sad; an iron railing, or a wooden paling, would, to my mind, have been a thousand times better than this mock granite. Let us hope that this is merely a temporary entrance,—there is real granite enough to be had at Quincy; and if the living can't afford it, why the dead will never miss it,—and any thing would be better than an imitation gateway.

[95] The spirit of man of its own dignity ennobles whatever it devotes itself to. The most trivial actions may become almost heroical from the motive which prompts them, and the most absurd ceremonies of superstition, sincerely practised, may excite pity, but neither contempt nor ridicule. If such a thing as an enthusiastic shoemaker were to be met with, there is no doubt but his feeling of his craft would elevate it into something approximating an art, and his work would bear witness to his veneration for it. At the time when the stage was in its highest perfection, its members had all a great love and admiration for their profession; many of them were men of education and mental accomplishment, and brought to bear upon their labour all the intellectual stores which they possessed. They respected their own work, and it was respectable; they thought acting capable of elevation, of refinement, of utility, and their faith in it invested it with dignity. Of this class were all my father's family. One reason why the stage and every thing belonging to it has fallen to so low an ebb now, is because actors have ceased to care for their profession themselves,—they are no longer artists,—acting is no longer an art.

[96] Besides the advantage of possessing the very prettiest collection of actresses I ever saw, the theatre at Boston has decidedly the best company I have played with any where out of London. Some of the old leaven alluded to in the last note exists amongst the ladies and gentlemen of the Tremont theatre: they do not seem to despise their work, and it is, generally speaking, well done therefore. Our pieces were all remarkably well got up there; and the green-room is both respectable and agreeable.

[97] To the English traveller, around whose heart the love of country and the influences of early association may yet cling, New England appears to me, of all the portions of the United States which I have visited, most likely to afford gratification; and the Yankees,—properly so called,—the Americans with whom he will find, and towards whom he will feel, most sympathy. They do us the honour to call themselves purely English in their origin; they alone, of the whole population of the United States, undoubtedly were so; and in the abundant witness which their whole character, country, and institutions bear to that fact, I feel an additional reason to be proud of England,—of Old England, for these are her children,—this race of men, as a race incomparably superior to the other inhabitants of this country. In conversing with New Englandmen, in spite of any passing temporary bitterness, any political difference, or painful reference to past times of enmity, I have always been struck with the admiring and, in some measure, tender feeling with which England, as the mother-country, was named. Nor is it possible to travel through the New England states, and not perceive, indeed, a spirit (however modified by different circumstances and institutions) yet most truly English in its origin. The exterior of the houses,—their extreme neatness and cleanliness,—the careful cultivation of the land,—the tasteful and ornamental arrangement of the ground immediately surrounding the dwellings, that most English of all manifestations,—above all, the church spires pointing towards heaven, from the bosom of every village,—recalled most forcibly to my mind my own England, and presented images of order, of industry, of taste, and religious feeling, nowhere so exhibited in any other part of the Union. I visited Boston several times, and mixed in society there, the tone of which appeared to me far higher than that of any I found elsewhere. A general degree of cultivation exists among its members, which renders their intercourse desirable and delightful. Nor is this superior degree of education confined to Boston: the zeal and the judgment with which it is being propagated throughout that part of the country is a noble national characteristic. A small circumstance is a good illustration of the advance which knowledge has made in these states. Travelling by land from New Haven to Boston, at one of the very smallest places where we stopped to change horses, I got out of the carriage to reconnoitre our surroundings. The town (if town it could be called) did not appear to contain much more than fifty houses: amongst the most prominent of these, however, was a bookseller's shop. The first volumes I took up on the counter were Spurzheim's volume on education, and Dr. Abercrombie's works on the intellectual and moral faculties, I saw more pictures, more sculptures, and more books in private houses in Boston than I have seen any where else. I could name more men of marked talent that I met with there than any where else. Its charitable and literary institutions are upon a liberal scale, and enlightened principles. Among the New Englanders I have seen more honour and reverence of parents, and more witnesses of a high religions faith, than among any other Americans with whom I have lived and conversed.

[98] There are, I believe, no primroses, no wild thyme, and no heather, that grow naturally in this country. I do not remember to have seen either wild honeysuckle or clematis, both of which are so abundant with us. The laurestinus, rosemary, southernwood, and monthly roses, all of which are so common in England, growing out of doors all the year round, are kept in hot-houses during the winter, even as far south as Philadelphia. The common garden flowers—roses, pinks—are far less abundant and less fragrant than with us. Sweet peas, and mignonette, are comparatively scarce; serynga, and laburnum, I have never seen at all: but so little care is bestowed upon ornamental gardening, that I do not know whether this dearth of flowers is the fault of the climate, or the consequence of the utter neglect in which flower-gardens are held here.

[99] Lacking the nightingale and the lark, I think they want the two perfect specimens of natural music.

[100] Among the many signs of the total decay of dramatic mind and spirit in this age, a frequent piece of criticism passed upon modern plays appears to me a very conclusive one—"Such a play is exceedingly full of dramatic effect, but there's no poetry in it." "Such a playwright understands situation and character, but really, reading his plays, you find no poetry in them." I have heard this bright comment passed repeatedly upon the best dramatic composition of modern times,—the Hunchback; a play whose immense popularity every where is the surest and truest warrant of its excellence,—a play containing the most dramatic situations, the most pathetic and comic effects, and by far the finest conception of a female character of any play since the old golden dramatic age. I do not hesitate to say that this is a most false piece of criticism, induced alone by a want of perception of what are the requisites in a dramatic poem, and a total absence of true dramatic feeling. First, in the ingredients of a fine play, comes the fiction,—the invention; to this belong those same much-sneered-at stage effects, and theatrical situations; next comes the skilful and powerful delineation of individual character; lastly comes the item of a poetical diction. One alone has united these in their utmost perfection; for such another the world may look in vain. But I think the play-goers of Shakspeare's time would have been tolerably satisfied with a most interesting fiction, and a true and vigorous delineation of character; and let me ask, is there no poetry besides that of words?—is there no poetry in the fable of a play—none in the faithful portraying of a human being's mind and passions? As for all pretty speeches, lengthy descriptions, abstract disquisitions,—unless things placed in the mouth of characters to whose identity such mental manifestations belong,—they are inadmissible in a right good play, and should by all means be confined to the pages of those anomalous modern growths, plays for the closet. In all our elder dramatists, Shakspeare alone excepted, the main quality of a play, the story, is often defective to an excess, not only in morality, but in probability and consistency; and the same defects exist in the delineation of character in many of their noblest plays.

[101] Of the mental process which the pupils at this highland school undergo, I can say nothing, being totally unacquainted with the system of education adopted there; but a more advantageous residence for the cultivation of health, strength (for physical education), or the development of all those pious and poetical tendings of the human soul and mind which are fostered and ripened by the sublime influence of natural beauty and grandeur, cannot be imagined. The gentlemen at the head of this establishment are New Englanders. The observations I made upon the superior intelligence and cultivation of the natives of that part of the United States have been borne out constantly by the fact, that there is hardly any establishment in the States I have visited, in any way connected with education, or the dissemination of information, which is not conducted partially or entirely by New Englanders.

[102] Troy! and that Troy has a Mount Ida! The names of places in this country are truly astonishing. Troy, Syracuse, and Rome are pretty well in this way; but the state of New York alone, I believe, boasts of a Manlius, a Homer, a Virgil, an Ovid, a Cicero, and a Socrates, whose second appearance in this world is in all the glories of flaming red bricks, new boards, and white paint. Did Pythagoras admit of men becoming towns as well as beasts? I forget.

[103] These beautiful little delicate wild flowers seem to love the dewy neighbourhood of waterfalls: it is only at Trenton, and the Chaudière in Canada, that I remember to have seen them at all in this country. Some poor Scotch peasants, about to emigrate to Canada, took away with them some roots of the "bonny blooming heather," in hopes of making this beloved adorner of their native mountains the cheerer of their exile in the wild lands to which they were going. The heather, however, refused to grow in the Canadian soil, and the poor emigrants had not the melancholy pleasure of seeing its sweet familiar bloom round their new dwellings. The person who told me this said that the circumstance had been related to him by Walter Scott, whose sympathy with the disappointment of these poor children of the romantic heatherland betrayed itself even in tears. When I visited the beautiful falls of the Chaudière, our party was enlivened, and the picturesque effect of the scene much heightened, by some of the Highland band belonging to the regiment quartered in Quebec. I could not help wondering, as I gathered the blue bells, which grew profusely round the cataract, whether these poor fellows looked upon the emblem of their distant country with any of the feelings which I lent them; and the whole brought back to my mind the heather that would not gladden the exile's eyes in a foreign soil, and the compassion of Scott for his countrymen's disappointment.

[104] I do not know that the sense of danger has ever been so vivid in my mind as while walking along this narrow edge of eternity. Nothing around Niagara appeared to me half so full of peril as the path along the Trenton Falls, although I have hung over the brink of the last rock that vibrates on the very verge of that great abyss, and explored, entirely alone, the path under the huge watery curtain that falls from Table Rock. I do not know whether the mention of the late accidents at Trenton affected my imagination, and caused me to exaggerate the danger; but it appeared to me almost miraculous that every body passing along those narrow, dripping, uneven ledges did not share the fate of the two unfortunate persons I have mentioned.

[105] Thank God! a firebrand, which shall throw all England into confusion and anarchy, is not, indeed, of easy make. Italy, crushed under the heel of her northern rulers; or France, blown about with every breath of opinion, may rush into revolutions for a ballad or an opera. The misery of the one, and the miserable excitability of the other nation, render it easy to rouse, in the former, the spirit of retribution; in the latter, the desire of change. But Englishmen, who are neither slaves nor weathercocks, are less easily stirred to wild excesses of political excitement. Let who will steer, the old ship is too well ballasted to sink. Whoever rules, whatever party may be at the head of her government, England is sound at heart: there is a broad foundation of moral good and intelligence in the nation, which will not be shaken or upturned, let factions erect or pull down what temporary trophies they please, to their own short-lived and selfish triumphs. The file of the mechanic may still gnaw angrily at the iron crown of the aristocracy; interests of classes may still jar, parties wrangle, and the eternal warfare between those who climb, and those who stand upon the topmost round of the ladder, may still be waged. And so be it: in none of these is there fear or danger; but rather a wholesome action of power against power; a checking, winnowing, purifying, and preserving influence. Moral evil, vice—and mental evil, ignorance—are the roots of decay: surely England is far from the day of her downfalling.

[106] I have had occasion to observe, in a former note, that foreigners travelling through this country see only the least desirable society of the various cities they visit. There is another class of Americans, whom they rarely, if ever, become acquainted with at all; by far the most interesting, in my opinion, which the country affords. I speak of those families thickly scattered through all the states, from whose original settlers many of them are immediately descended; who reside upon lands purchased by their grandfathers in the early days of the British colonies; and who, living remote from the Atlantic cities, and the more travelled routes between them, are free from all the peculiarities which displease a European in the societies of the towns, and possess traits of originality in their manners, minds, and mode of life, infinitely refreshing to the observer, wearied of the eternal sameness which pervades the human congregations of the Old World.

In mixing with the commercial fashionables and exclusives of the American cities, the European is at once amused and annoyed with the assumption of a social tone and spirit at variance with the whole make of the country. He is told that he is in the best society of the place, and with perfect justice condemns this best society as, probably, the worst he ever saw: a society assuming the airs of separate rank where no rank at all exists, attempting to copy the luxury and splendour of the residents of European capitals, without possessing one tithe of their wealth to excuse the extravagance, or enable them to succeed in the endeavour, and presenting the most incongruous and displeasing mixture possible of pretension, ignorance, affectation, and vulgarity. I have before said, that even in the cities there are circles of a very different order; but yet freer from all these drawbacks is the society formed by the class of people of whom I have spoken above, and whom I should designate as the gentry of this country; using that term in the best sense in which it was once used in England.

Among this large but widely-scattered portion of the community, should the European traveller's good fortune lead him, he will find hospitality without ostentation, purity of morals independent of the dread of opinion, intellectual cultivation unmixed with the desire of display, great simplicity of life and ignorance of the world, originality of mind naturally arising from independence and solitude, and the best, because the most natural, manners. Of such, I know, from the lower shores of the Chesapeake, to the half savage territory around Michilimakinack.

[107] This spot is famous as the scene of the last exploit of a singular individual, known by the name of Sam Patch. An Irishman by birth, I believe, he came over to this country to earn his bread, and hit upon a very ingenious method of doing so, i. e. jumping for large wagers down cataracts; which daring feat he performed successfully more than once. But, like the Sicilian diver of old, poor Sam Patch took one plunge too many; and, after leaping with impunity from the rocks immediately below the Falls of Niagara, he found his death in the Genesee—attempting the leap, it is said, while in a state of intoxication.

[108] Although nobody, I believe, ever travelled a hundred miles by land in this country without being overturned, the drivers deserve infinite credit for the rare occurrence of accidents. How they can carry a coach at all over some of their roads is miraculous; and high praise is due to them both for care and skill, that any body, in any part of this country, ever arrives at the end of a land journey at all. I do not ever remember to have seen six-in-hand driving except in New England, where it is common, and where the stage-drivers are great adepts in their mystery.

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Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.