Having made it a point to faithfully report all that is said of our country by foreign travellers or journalists, we deem it a duty to lay before our readers not only the more agreeable accounts given by those who have impartially examined our institutions and manners, but also the more prejudiced relations of those who, urged by interest or ill-nature, have sketched simply the darker and more irregular outlines. And we are the more induced to follow this course since we are fully convinced that it is productive of equal good with the former. We have—particularly to English eyes—appeared as a people who eagerly devour all that is said to our discredit, and at the same time fiercely repudiate the slightest insinuation that we in any thing fall short of perfection. As regards the latter, we shall content ourselves with remarking, that even the disposition to deny the existence of imperfection among us, redounds far more to our credit, than the complacent exaltation of our weaker points to virtues; while as to the former, we are certain that a higher feeling than mere nervous, sensitive vanity, induces in us the desire
"To see ourselves as others see us,"
since there is no nation which more readily avails itself of the remarks of others, even when by far too bitter or unjust to improve. True to our national character of youthfulness, we are ever ready to act on every hint. We are, par excellence, a learning nation. Send even the young Englishman on his continental tour, and the chances are ten to one that he returns with every prejudice strengthened, and his vanity increased. But the American—ductile as wax, evinces himself even at an advanced period of life, susceptible of improvement, yet firm in its retention. That we earnestly strive in every respect to improve is evident from many "little things" which foreigners ridicule. For instance, the habitual use of "fine language," and the attempt to clothe even our ordinary trains of thought in an elegant garb, which has been time and again cruelly ridiculed by Yankee goaders, is to a reflecting mind suggestive of commendation, from the very fact, that an attempt at least is made to improve. Better a thousand times the impulse to progress, even through the whirlwinds of hyperbole and inflated expression, than the heavy miasma of a patois, the lightest breath of which at once proclaims the cockney or provincial.
For the entertainment of those who are willing to live, laugh, and learn, we are induced to give our readers a few extracts from a recently published work, by a German, entitled, Skizzen aus den Vereinigten Staaten von Nord Amerika: Von Dr. A. Kirsten, (or, Sketches of the United States of North America, by Dr. A. Kirsten,) a work in which the author, after exhausting all the three-penny thunder of ignorant abuse, coolly informs his readers, that he has by no means represented things in their worst light. The American public at large are not aware that among the rulers of Germany, emigration to America is sternly yet anxiously discouraged. Rejoiced as they are to behold our country a receptacle for the sweepings of their prisons and Fuchthaüser, or houses of correction, they still gaze with an alarmed glance at the almost incredible "forth-wandering" which has at times depopulated entire villages, and borne with it an amount of wealth, which, trifling as it may appear to us, is in a land of economy and poverty of immense importance. The reader who judges of Germany by Great Britain and Ireland, is mistaken. That emigration which is to the government of the latter countries health and safety, brings to the former death and destruction. As a proof of this, we need only point to the tone of all the German papers which are in any manner connected with the interests of their respective courts. In all we find the old song: Depreciation of America, as far as applicable to the prevention of emigration. To accomplish this end, writers are hired and poets feed; remedies against emigration are proposed by political economists, and where possible, even clergymen are induced to persuade their flocks to nibble still in the ancient stubble, or among the same old barren rocks.
Dr. Kirsten, it would appear, is either a natural and habitual grumbler, or a paid hireling. If the former, we can only pity—if the latter, despise him. Could our voice be heard by his patrons, we would, however, advise them to employ a better grumbler—one who can wield lance and sword against his foes, instead of mops and muddy water. A weaker lancer, or more impotent and impudent abuser, has rarely appeared, even among our earlier English decriers.
Like many other weak-minded individuals, the Herr Doctor appears to have started under the fullest conviction that our country was, if not a true "Schlaraffen Land," or Pays de Cocagne, or Mahomet's Paradise, in which pigeons ready roasted fly to the mouth, at least a realized Icarie, or perfected Fourier-dom. All the books which he had read, relative to America, described it in glowing colors, and inclined his mind favorably toward it. Such was his faith in these books, or also so great his fear, that these glorious dreams might be dissipated, that he did not even ascertain or confirm their truth by the personal experience of those who had been there, and we are informed naively enough in the preface, that previous to his departure he had but once had an opportunity of conversing with an educated German, who had resided for a long time in America. Such weak heedlessness as this does not, to our ears at least, savor of the characteristic prudence and deliberation of the German, and strongly confirms us in the belief, that the doctor wandered forth well knowing what he was about—in other words, that he went his way with his opinions already cut and dried.
"After an eight weeks' voyage I arrived in New-York. It was at the end of August. Even in the vicinity of the Gulf Stream a terrible heat oppressed us, which increased as we approached land; but it was in that city that I became aware of what the heat in America really was. Many visits which I was obliged to make, caused during the day a cruel exhaustion, while at night I found no refreshment in slumber, partly because the heat was hardly diminished, and partly from the musquitoes, and to me unaccustomed alarms of fire, which were nightly repeated, from which I found that life in America was by no means so agreeable as I had been led to infer from books and popular report."
From the single, mysterious, educated German with whom the doctor had conferred previous to his departure, he had learned that, in the United States, any thing like marked distinction of class, rank, or caste, did not exist; and that this was particularly the case among Germans living there. "The educated and refined knew how to draw into their society the less gifted, and it was really singular to observe in how short a time the latter rose to a higher degree of culture. People actually destitute of knowledge and manners, in fact could not be found. Moreover, I there anticipated a southern climate, for which I had some years longed."
How miserably the poor doctor was disappointed in these moderate and reasonable anticipations, appears from the following lamentable account:
"Ere long I, indeed, became acquainted with many Germans, who received me in the kindest manner, and of whom recollections will ever be dear to me. But this was not the case with the Americans, as I had been led to anticipate, nor indeed with the Germans, generally. Among these I found neither connection nor unity, and they mostly led a life such as I had in Germany never met with, while nothing like social cultivation, in a higher sense, was to be found. Led into the society of those who by day were devoted to business, but in the evening scattered themselves, here and there, without a point of union, I found myself in the noisy, but pleasure-wanting city, forlorn and unwell. Many, to whom I complained of what I missed in New-York, thought that it might be found in Philadelphia."