In another chapter he informs his countrymen that the four hundred and thirty nobles in England speak and act for the nation; his knowledge of history, or his love of truth, ignoring that little community called the House of Commons. Bankers and wealthy men come under the ban of his condemnation, as having no time for "enlightened amusements;" he then, with that truthfulness which makes him so safe a guide to his readers, adds that "they were never known to manifest a friendship, except for the warehouse cat; they have no time to talk, and never write except on business; all hours are office-hours to them, except those they devote to dinner and sleep; they know nothing, they love nothing, and hope for nothing beyond the four walls of their counting-room; nobody knows them, nobody loves them; they are too mean to make friends, and too silent to make acquaintances," &c. What very interesting information this must be for Messrs. Baring and their co-fraternity!
In another part of this volume, the author becomes suddenly impressed with deep reverence for the holy localities of the East, and he falls foul of Dr. Clarke for his scepticism on these points, winding up his remarks in the following beautiful Kentucky vein:—"A monster so atrocious could only have been a Goth or an Englishman." How fortunate for his countryman, Dr. Robinson, that he had never heard of his three learned tomes on the same subject! though, perhaps, scepticism in an American, in his discriminating mind, would have been deep erudition correcting the upstart islanders. The great interest which he evinces for holy localities—accompanied as it is by an expression of horror at some English traveller, who, he asserts, thought that David picked up his pebbles in a brook between Jordan and the Dead Sea, whereas he knew it was in an opposite direction—doubtless earned for him the patronage of The Christian Advocate; and the pious indignation he expresses at an Englishman telling him he would get a good dinner at Mount Carmel, is a beautiful illustration of his religious feelings.
The curious part of this portion of Mr. Ward's book is, that having previously informed his countrymen, in every variety of American phraseology, that the English are composed of every abominable compound which can exist in human nature, he selects them as his companions, and courts their friendship to enjoy the pleasure of betraying it. Of course, if one is to judge by former statements made in the volume, which are so palpably and ridiculously false, one may reasonably conclude that truth is equally disregarded here; but it looks to me rather as if my countrymen had discovered his cloven hoof, as well as his overweening vanity and pretensions, and, when he got pompously classical, in his trip through Greece, they amused themselves at his expense by suggesting that the Acropolis "was a capital place for lunch;" Parnassus, "a regular sell;" Thermopylae, "great for water-cresses." Passing on from his companions—one of whom was a fellow of Oxford, and the other a captain in Her Majesty's service—he becomes grandly Byronic, and consequently quite frantic at the idea of Mr. A. Tennyson supplanting him! "Byron and Tennyson!--what an unholy alliance of names!--what sinful juxtaposition! He who could seriously compare the insipid effusions of Mr. Tennyson with the mighty genius of Byron, might commit the sacrilege of likening the tricks of Professor Anderson to the miracles of Our Saviour."
Having delivered himself of this pious burst, he proceeds to a castigation of the English for their observations on the nasal twang of his countrymen, and also for their criticism upon the sense in which sundry adjectives are used; and, to show the superior purity of the American language, he informs the reader that in England "the most elegant and refined talk constantly of "fried 'am" ... they seem very reluctant to hacknowledge this peculiarly hexceptionable 'abit, and hinsist that hit his confined to the low and hignorant of the country." He then gets indignant that we call "stone" "stun," and measure the gravity of flesh and blood thereby. "To unsophisticated ears, 21 stone 6 pounds sounds infinitely less than three hundred pounds, which weight is a fair average of the avoirdupois density of the Sir Tunbelly Clumsies of the middle and upper classes."
From this elegant sentence he passes on to the evils of idleness, in treating of which he supplies The Christian Advocate with the true cause of original sin. "Does any one imagine that the forbidden fruit would ever have been tasted if Adam had been daily occupied in tilling the earth, and Eve, like a good housewife, in darning fig-leaf aprons for herself and her husband? Never!" The observation would lead one to imagine that the Bible was a scarce article in Kentucky. He passes on from Adam to the banker and merchant of the present day, and informs the reader that they command a high respect in society, but it would be deemed a shocking misapplication of terms to speak of any of them as gentlemen. After which truthful statement, he enters into a long definition of a gentleman, as though he thought his countrymen totally ignorant on that point: he gets quite chivalrous in his description: "He ought to touch his hat to his opponent with whom he was about to engage in mortal combat."[[BM]] After which remark he communicates two pieces of information—the one as true as the other is modest: "Politeness is deemed lessening to the position of a gentleman in England; in America it is thought his proudest boast." Of course he only alludes to manner; his writings prove at every page that genuine American feeling dispenses with it in language. His politeness, I suppose, may be described in the words Junius applied to friendship:—"The insidious smile upon the cheek should warn you of the canker in the heart." By way of encouraging civility, he informs the reader that an Englishman "never appears so disgusting as when he attempts to be especially kind; ...in affecting to oblige, he becomes insulting." He confesses, however, "I have known others in America whom you would never suspect of being Englishmen—they were such good fellows; but they had been early transplanted from England. If the sound oranges be removed from a barrel in which decay has commenced, they may be saved; but if suffered to remain, they are all soon reduced to the same disgusting state."
His discriminating powers next penetrate some of the deep mysteries of animal nature: he discovers that the peculiarities of the bullock and the sheep have been gradually absorbed into the national character, as far as conversation is concerned. "They have not become woolly, nor do they wear horns, but the nobility are eternally bellowing forth the astounding deeds of their ancestors, whilst the muttonish middle classes bleat a timorous approval.... Such subjects constitute their fund of amusing small talk," &c. From the foregoing elegant description of conversation, he passes onwards to the subject of gentility, and describes a young honourable, on board a steamer, who refused to shut a window when asked by a sick and suffering lady, telling the husband, "he could not consent to be suffocated though his wife was sick." And having cooked up the story, he gives the following charming reason for his conduct: "He dreaded the possibility of compromising his own position and that of his noble family at home by obliging an ordinary person." He afterwards touches upon English visitors to America, who, he says, "generally come among us in the undisguised nakedness of their vulgarity. Wholly freed from the restraints imposed upon them at home by the different grades in society, they indolently luxuriate in the inherent brutality of their nature. They constantly violate not only all rules of decorum, but the laws of decency itself.... They abuse our hospitality, insult our peculiar institutions, set at defiance all the refinements of life, and return home, lamenting the social anarchy of America, and retailing their own indecent conduct as the ordinary customs of the country.... The pranks which, in a backwoods American, would be stigmatized as shocking obscenity, become, when perpetrated by a rich Englishman, charming evidence of sportive humour," &c.
A considerable portion of the volume is dedicated to Church matters; for which subject the meek and lowly style which characterizes his writing pre-eminently qualifies him, and to which, doubtless, he is indebted for the patronage of The Christian Advocate. I shall only indulge the reader with the following beautiful description of the Established Church:—"It is a bloated, unsightly mass of formalities, hypocrisy, bigotry, and selfishness, without a single charitable impulse or pious aspiration." After this touching display of genuine American feeling, he draws the picture of a clergyman in language so opposite, that one is reminded of a certain mysterious personage, usually represented with cloven feet, and who is said to be very apt at quoting Scripture.
Heraldry and ancestry succeed the Church in gaining a notice from his pen; and his researches have gone so deep, that one is led to imagine—despite his declarations of contempt—that he looks forward to becoming some day The Most Noble the Duke of Arkansas and Mississippi, with a second title of Viscount de' Tucky and Ohio;[[BN]] the "de" suggestive of his descent from The Three Continents. One of the most remarkable discoveries he has made, is, that "the soap-makers and the brewers are the compounders of the great staple commodities of consumption in Great Britain, and therefore surpass even Charles himself in the number of their additions to the Peerage." This valuable hint should not be lost upon those employed in these useful occupations, as hope is calculated to stimulate zeal and ambition.
The last quotations I propose making from this vigorous volume are taken from the seventh chapter, headed, "English Devotion to Dinner." On this subject the author seems to have had his keen discriminating powers peculiarly sharpened; and the observations made are in most lively and racy style, and—according to the Press—perfectly courteous. The Englishman "is never free till armed with a knife and fork; indeed, he is never completely himself without them[[BO]] ... which may he as properly considered integral portions of an Englishman, as claws are of a cat; ... they are not original even in their gluttony; ... they owe to a foreign nation the mean privilege of bestial indulgence; ... they make a run into Scotland for the sake of oatmeal cakes, and sojourn amongst the wild beauties of Switzerland in order to be convenient to goat's milk.... Like other carnivorous animals, an Englishman is always surly over his meals. Morose at all times, he becomes unbearably so at that interesting period of the day, when his soul appears to cower among plates and dishes; ... though he gorges his food with the silent deliberation of the anaconda, yet, in descanting upon the delicacies of the last capital dinner, he makes an approach to animation altogether unusual to him; ... when, upon such auspicious occasions, he does go off into something like gaiety, there is such fearful quivering of vast jelly mounds of flesh, something so supernaturally tremendous in his efforts, that, like the recoil of an overloaded musket, he never fails to astound those who happen to be near him." But his keen observation has discovered a practice before dinner, which, being introduced into the centre of various censures, may also be fairly supposed to be considered by him and his friends of the Press as most objectionable, and as forming one of the aggregate Items which constitute the English beast. "For dinner, he bathes, rubs, and dresses." How filthy! Yet be not too hard upon him, reader, for this observation; I have travelled in his neighbourhood, on the Mississippi steamers, and I can, therefore, well understand how the novelty of the operation must have struck him with astonishment, and how repugnant the practice must have been to his habits.
Among other important facts connected with this great question, his discriminating mind has ascertained that an Englishman "makes it a rule to enjoy a dinner at his own expense as little as possible." Armed with this important discovery, he lets drive the following American shell, thus shivering to atoms the whole framework of our society. The nation may tremble as it reads these withering words of Kentucky eloquence:—"When it is remembered that of all the vices, avarice is most apt to corrupt the heart, and gluttony has the greatest tendency to brutalize the mind, it no longer continues surprising that an Englishman has become a proverb of meanness from Paris to Jerusalem. The hatred and contempt of all classes of society as necessarily attend him in his wanderings as his own shadow.... Equally repulsive to every grade of society, he stands isolated and alone, a solitary monument of the degradation of which human nature is capable."