“This Pythagorean attitude and silence, which were admirably becoming a thinking Englishman, excited the mirth of all the passengers, and especially of the Germans, who ironically remarked ‘that the English had a very philosophical way of travelling, always reasoning and reflecting when other people are satisfied with the mere looks of things.’
“After the lapse of I should think an hour, the supposed Englishman, whose back must have ached considerably, drew himself up to his full height, enabling me to recognise in him a young gentleman of my acquaintance, who had gone to Europe for his health, and was at the same time carefully improving his manners. ‘How long is it since you left ***?’ demanded I, rushing up to him in order to shake him by the hand. ‘Hush!’ whispered he; ‘I have been coming down all the way from Strasbourg with these Englishmen here, and none of them has recognised me as an American.’
“The fact is,” continued my cicerone, “our higher classes, in spite of their continual croaking, have no other standard to go by but the English. They pique themselves on dressing like the English, talking like the English, thinking like the English, and behaving like the English, and on having English sentiments with regard to politics and religion. Some of ‘the aristocracy’ are even more orthodox than the English themselves; especially with regard to the Irish, who, since their emancipation, are much more unpopular with certain classes of Americans than O’Connell can possibly be in a British assembly of Tories.
“For the same reason have our aristocracy taken the House of Lords under their protection; ‘because the English nobility is such a glorious institution!’ ‘it contributes so much to the national splendour!’ and there are so many high families in America connected with the first people in England! They probably think that, as long as aristocracy finds a stronghold in the old institutions of Britain, there remains at least a hope of introducing something similar to them in the United States; but they forget that, from the historical aristocracy of England, to the nameless money-dealers of America, there is a greater transition than from the substance to the shadow of a thing. Incorporated companies and banks are as yet the only armories that furnish weapons to the chivalrous knights composing the nobility of the New World; and there is scarcely an American squire that would not be willing to sell horse and lance provided a proper price be offered him.
“Another generic feature which marks our wealthy parvenus, while, at the same time, it furnishes a curious index to the human heart, is the little sympathy felt or expressed with regard to the enterprising Western settlers, and the contemptuous language held by our ‘respectable editors’ when speaking of those unfortunate exiles from the refinement of ‘the Old States.’ Mrs. Trollope’s caricatures of the ‘half-horse and half-alligator race make the reader laugh; those drawn in our own papers are calculated to make one despise them. They use precisely the same language formerly employed by British writers with regard to the early settlers of the American colonies:—‘lawless adventurers,’ ‘fugitives from justice,’ ‘outcasts from society,’ ‘dregs of humanity,’ ‘candidates for the state’s prison or the gallows.’
“By these gentle appellations do the mushroom aristocracy of a few trading places stigmatise the steady, laborious, enterprising race of men that fertilize the Western wilderness, and create new markets for manufactures and commerce. Scarcely a couple of generations removed from the original settlers, they already play the old families, without having in their ephemeral existence done one thing deserving to be recorded in history; for we cannot disguise the fact, that all we have thus far accomplished, all that distinguishes our people from the idle and vicious population of Europe, all that has contributed to our boundless national prosperity, is owing to the virtue, enterprise, and perseverance of the labouring classes, and in no small proportion to those very ‘adventurers’ whom our Atlantic satraps affect to despise.
“Our higher classes,” added my cicerone, “seldom get angry at foreigners for abusing their government in the abstract; but let any one attempt to prove that there are no elements for a different administration to be found amongst them, and they will raise a hue and cry against the audacious slanderer. Tell them that they are ‘no republicans,’ and they will feel themselves flattered, though they may pout like some affected prude with whom a man takes some pleasing liberty. But attack their aristocracy; say that it is a noisy, shapeless monster, with many tails and no head,—or, what is worse, say that you discover no aristocracy in the country,—and you will set them raving.
“I remember a poor, little, innocent woman who nearly fainted at a duke’s telling her that he had understood there was no noblesse in America; but merely an educated (?) wealthy bourgeoisie. Poor thing! she little expected such a mortification; and from such a quarter too! And yet she was a great stickler for human rights; just like some fashionable reformer, who can see no reason for the extraordinary prerogatives of the nobility, but is wide awake to the chasm which separates him from the multitude.
“We may safely call ourselves the vainest people on earth,” concluded my cicerone, “and yet we dare not have an opinion which is not sanctioned abroad. We constantly refer each other’s manners, doctrines, and principles to those which are current in Europe; but, when an European ventures to imitate our example, we cannot contain our wrath at his impertinence. We do not object to the standard of comparison, but to the comparison itself; because we claim for ourselves the exclusive faculty of arriving at just conclusions. Our best society is but a sorry caricature of that of Europe, and yet we get angry when an European attempts to depict it. Our fate is indeed the most singular. No one can understand us; and yet we are constantly talking about ourselves, and throwing out hints as to where observers may look for an explanation of our manners. The good people of England especially seem, in reference to us, to be in precisely the same predicament as Dr. Johnson was with regard to the Scotch,—the more we talk, the less they know about us.”