and morals, have been less available. They are, perhaps, somewhat too indignant at the national deficiency of polish and refinement, to be considered altogether impartial in their reports. They cannot bring themselves to pardon the transatlantic innovation of picking teeth with a pocket-knife instead of a table-fork, according to ancient and recognised precedent in the hostelries of Leeds and Birmingham. Then English commercial gentlemen" excrete in spit-boxes; those of America discharge their saliva on the carpet, or their neighbour's boot, or, in short, wherever it may happen to suit their convenience. Then in an American hotel, a Bagman of the most imposing aspect, with a voice like Mars to threaten and command," may ac tually bellow for Boots and Chambermaid for an hour on end, without creating the smallest sensation in any one individual from the garret to the cellar. Should he at length lose patience, and go in search of the delinquents, ten to one he will find Boots lolling in a rocking chair, and coolly smoking a cigar, with his legs on the kitchen dresser; while the coffee-coloured chambermaid, taking advantage of the twilight, is in the back-yard arranging matters of importance with black Cæsar, jack-of-all-trades to Lycurgus F. Tompkins, storekeeper on t'other side of the street. Such differences of habit are no doubt quite sufficient to divert the whole current of human sympathies, and annihilate all charities, national and particular.

Next come the Radicals, whose associations with the memory of their own country are those of jails and gibbets, and who, comparing the realities of the United States with their former anticipations of Botany Bay, are naturally well satisfied with their change of prospect. Believe these political philosophers, and America is a heaven upon earth, a region of flowers and fruits, and of sweet airs, where corruption is unknown, and man lives in a state of primeval innocence and unbroken happiness. The rulers of this delightful country are, of course, all virtue, wisdom, and d strength, and the people by whose free voices they are elected, distinguished above all experience in degraded Europe, by honour, high prin

ciple, sagacity, and talent. Your Tory travellers, on the other hand, who consider nothing good that is not founded on British precedent, deny altogether the justice of these praises. They tell you, and are ready to swear to it, that the United States are a mere Pandemonium of brutal manners and bad government; that the soil is barren and unfruitful, the climate sickly and detestable, the rulers time-serving and corrupt; and the people, made up of the sweepings and refuse of Europe, are fickle and turbulent in politics, mean and fraudulent in their dealings, ignorant, yet puffed up with the conceit of knowledge; and, in short, the most unfit possible depositaries of political power.

While by the successive and opposite impulses of these contradictory statements, our wavering opinions are driven from pillar to post, to be reimpelled with equal vehemence and velocity from post to pillar, we are glad to call in the weight of female testimony, to give permanence to our convictions, and decide, if possible, whether the Americans are nation of angels or of demons, something more than men, or less than brutes. Women, thank Heaven, are no politicians, or life would be unbearable. They are gifted, too, with a finer observation, and more delicate discrimination of character, than nature has thought proper to bestow on the coarser sex; and therefore their evidence, as to every thing connected with manners or domestic morals, is not only more likely to be unbiassed, but is intrinsically more valuable. It was with pleasing anticipation, therefore, that we directed our attention to the volume of Miss Frances Wright, a lady whose fame is already so widely spread on both sides of the Atlantic, as to be incapable of receiving additional extension, even from emblazonment in the pages of this Magazine. Some dozen years ago, we believe, Miss Wright, having directed her talents to the stage, produced a tragedy, which the London managers had the bad taste to reject. This insult determined the offended damsel at once to repudiate her country; and she accordingly lost no time in crossing the Atlantic, to enrol her name among those of the fairest citizens of

this nobler, younger, freer, and more discriminating community. Miss Wright came prepared to be pleased, and she naturally finds the people all that youthful poets fancy, when they visit a foreign country with a play in their pocket. Nor are the Americans on their part ungrateful. They act her tragedy, and, as in duty bound, admire its captivating author. Every thing goes on smoothly. The New York porters refuse to take money for carrying her portman⋅ teaus, and we are consequently assured that these high-souled opera- tives toil in their laborious vocation, : uninfluenced by vile thirst of lucre, and animated by the sole and disinterested object of conferring obligation on their wealthier neighbours.* Being a lady of considerable fortune, » Miss Wright finds suitors in every city, and even receives offers in steamboats and stagecoaches; but ■ having, as Leigh Hunt says, "stout notions on the marrying score," and being in principle somewhat of a polygamist, and adverse to monopolies of all kinds, she consistently declines the unjust appropriation of a whole free-born American, for her own exclusive use and behoof. Like a timid speculator in the lottery, she has no objections to a sixteenth, but cannot be induced to venture the whole hog." It becomes us not to say, whether, in spite of all the insinua ting gallantries of her numerous and gifted admirers, this fair republi

can

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“ votaress pass'd on, In maiden meditation, fancy free." We only know that her virgin appellation remained unchanged, and that however individually cruel, her collective gratitude was assuredly very great. The men of the United States, she assures us, are noble, manly, generous, and intelligent; the women tender, elegant, beautiful, and accomplished. Of course, such a population require little government; but what they have, realizes all her ideas of perfection. Indeed, the only fault she can discover in the whole coun

try, is, that the people are somewhat too religious, a failing which, by delivering public courses of lectures against Christianity in most of the cities, it is only justice to confess,

she did her utmost to abate.

Thus far, then, the influence of female testimony was decidedly in favour of the angelic character of the Americans; and notwithstanding the weight of Captain Hall, who jumped very boldly into the opposite scale, there was every prospect of its kicking the beam, when out pops Mrs Trollope with her two very entertaining volumes, and produces as great and sudden a change on the aspect of events, as the appearance of old Blucher and his troops did on the field of Waterloo. We now learn that Mrs Trollope's own personal friends constitute the only portion of the population who can advance the smallest claim to the character of gentlemen. The rest are a mere set of brutal barbarians, filthy, immoral, and disgusting, and carrying the most sordid selfishness into all the relations of life. The United States, she informs us, is a country yet ignorant of the blessings of civilized society; and the European who would live there, must cast off the memory of all the delicacies, and even decencies, which he may previously have considered as forming part of the very condition of exist

ence.

Such is a short, though tolerably accurate précis, of the inconsistent and conflicting statements of British travellers, in regard to the condition, moral, social, and political, of the Americans. But the Americans themselves have not been backward in urging their own claims to admiration and respect. In turning to their works, we can no longer complain of irreconcilable discrepancies of fact and opinion, which puzzle and distract the judgment. The unanimity of these gentlemen is really quite wonderful, and reading their pages is like listening to a concert of musical snuff-boxes of the same precise mechanism, an hundred of

which being wound up, start off with the same cuckoo tune, pitched in the same key, to the utter exhaustion of ear and patience. They are all loud in their praises of themselves, and their institutions,-of their prowess by sea and land,-of their achievements in science, literature, and philosophy, of the intelligence, high principle, and sagacity of their population, of the beauty and salubrity of their climate, and the unrivalled fertility of their soil. It is the fashion with these writers to speak of Europeans as men of pigmy stature and besotted minds; and, as a proof of their own incontestable superiority, they appeal to the magnitude of their lakes and rivers, and find cause of triumph in their exuberance of timber and fresh water. In short, whatever virtues may attach to the American character, it is abundantly clear that modesty is not of the number; and it is scarcely possible, we fear, to form a very high estimate of the good sense of a people, whose judgment of themselves and others is so egregiously at fault.

But be the merits of American writers what they may, their works on politics and legislation have had little circulation in this country, and certainly have not at all contributed to direct the current of opinion with regard to the United States. It is not probable that English readers, who would assuredly be set asleep by any long-winded panegyric on their own institutions, could discover much attractive matter in a dull and dogmatical eulogium on those of a distant republic. Mr Cooper and Mr Walsh, therefore we mention these as the Coryphæi of the band-had the mortification of beholding their works drop still-born from the press, and John Bull had still the good fortune to escape from the unpleasant conviction, that another country was in any respect more happily situated than his own. From the tone of bluster and bravado, however, in which the American champions considered it becoming to indulge, it was abundantly evident that they had no overweening confidence in their own pretensions. The great and distinguishing mark of strength is tranquillity; its other attributes may be counterfeited, this cannot. Meaner animals may put on

the skin of

the lion, roar, to the great ter, and imitate his of the forest, but the deception is soon found out. The impostors will inevitably make inordinate display of tusk and claw; there will be too much bristling of the mane, and brandishing of the tail; in short, an utter absence of that repose which can alone result from the security of conscious strength. This we doubt not is trite enough, but still we wish the Americans would remember it. They may rest assured, that should the day ever come, (and we are far from sneering at those who consider it to be approaching,) when the United States shall assume the leading station among the great powers of the world, her pretensions will be urged in a tone very different, from any which her advocates have yet felt strong enough to adopt. In exact proportion to the strength of her claims, will be their calmness in supporting them; and we venture to prophesy, that as their own conviction of superiority becomes more confident and assured, that fluttering sensibility to foreign censure, and that inordinate vanity which exposes them to present ridicule, will cease to tarnish the American character.

Though the discrepancies of statement in the works of British travellers with regard to the United States, be confessedly irreconcilable with fair and impartial observation, still there exist few instances in which we feel disposed to attribute the blunders and inconsistencies of these writers to intentional misrepresentation. There is no other country in the world, perhaps, in which, to the eye of an Englishman, a little prejudice may so easily pervert the whole colouring and proportions of the picture which it presents. He finds in America so much that is admirable mingled with so much that is offensive, so much that contributes to the physical necessities of man, and so little that can be made to minister to his higher enjoyments, and is alternately shocked and gratified by so much arrogance, energy, intelligence, weakness, folly, wisdom, and impertinence, that the character of the impression produced by this apparently incongruous aggregate, must depend in a great measure on the peculiar temperament of the observer.

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