[6] Those of my readers who are disposed to doubt the possibility of such sentiments proceeding from an American, must be informed that my cicerone, being the son of a government envoy of high rank, was born and educated in Europe.
[7] Against this practice, Dr. Spurzheim, the lecturer on phrenology, strongly remonstrated while in Boston, pointing to the pernicious consequences on the health and vigour of the rising generation.
[8] Daniel Webster’s second speech on the Sub-treasury System proposed by the present administration.
CHAPTER IV.
A party of English Gentlemen at Dinner—their Patriotism.—Character of John Bull in America.—The Englishman’s Speech.—The American Answer.—Modesty of British Commercial Agents in the United States.—Anecdote characteristic of the Second Society.
“Peace, I say! hear mine host of the Garter! Am I politic? Am I subtile? Am I a Machiavel? Shall I lose my doctor? No; he gives me the potions, and the motions. Shall I lose my parson? My priest? My Sir Hugh? No; he gives me the proverbs and the no-verbs.”
Merry Wives of Windsor, Act iii. Scene 1.
To-day I dined with an English gentleman, who had been settled a great number of years in the country, and was married to an American lady of very good family.
The company was composed principally of merchants and manufacturers, with an admixture of a few travelling; agents of British commercial houses, whom it was not difficult to recognise as the lions of the party. They were not, properly speaking, members of the first society, because foreigners who are once married and settled in the country seldom belong to it, unless they are immensely rich; but they thought themselves nevertheless considerably above the second, not one of them having accepted an invitation to the latter for the last six months,—preferring infinitely no society at all to the degradation of mixing with inferior persons. Besides, one of them, having of late moved into “a more respectable neighbourhood,” was preparing to entertain his new fashionable acquaintance with a large, sumptuous party, which he hoped would at once open to his sons and daughters—“the old man and woman” are not so easily promoted—the road to the highest circles.