[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.