THEY DECK'D HER BROW WITH FLOWERS. BY J. E. CARPENTER SOURCES AND PROSPECTS OF SCIENCE, PSYCHOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. RECOLLECTIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, IN 1849-50-51. PART I. If you would know the form of the rock at Dover, you need only look at that at Calais; and if you would acquaint yourself with the composition of the soil at Calais, you may learn it by analysing that at Dover. They were once united, but afterwards torn apart by a convulsion :— -Cliffs which had been rent asunder; A dreary sea now flows between ; The trace of that which once hath been. The accidents of culture may make some little, and temporary, difference in the appearance between the farms on each side; but the same plants are indigenous to, and will flourish best in, both. It is thus morally with the inhabitants of Great Britain and those of the United States of North America. Both people have the same Anglo-Saxon, Danish, and Norman foundation, carrying with it the same skill in navigation, and the same enterprise in war and commerce; both retain the same love of liberty, obey the same common law, and respect the interpretation of the same judges. The faults, too, and vices of both (amiable weaknesses shall we agree to call them?) are pretty nearly the same. Both people have unbounded self elation-the citizens of the United States from overvaluing themselves; the English, from underestimating the rest of the world. And it must be acknowledged that in regard to the mental process by which that pleasing result is attained, our transatlantic cousins have the merit of being, if not less ridiculous than ourselves, at least less offensive. But such are our reciprocal misapprehensions, and so desirable is it to remove them, that, in any trial of skill between us, the worst thing for ourselves would be that we should beat, and the worst thing for our rivals that we should be beaten. Again, to the paw of the lion and to the claw of the eagle belongs the same tender disinterested instinct to cherish and protect, to endow with what we justly call the advantages of our free institutions, as large a portion of the world as possible. This is evinced on the part of the United States by a continual expansion which knows no parallel, except in our own colonial augmentation, or in the deadly, noiseless, Upas-like growth of despotic Russia; and it is illustrated by their nation arrogating to themselves, and having conceded to them, the name of Americans; whereas the other inhabitants of America are called Canadians, Mexicans, Peruvians, &c., from the name of the limited country, not that of the vast quarter of the globe on which they live. Now, in the United States, in the ordinary Jan.-VOL. XCIV. NO. CCCLXXIII. B transactions of business, Mexican and Spanish money is current; but the money of the United States only is taken at their post-office; and, should you there offer a Mexican dollar in payment, you would be asked, as a matter of course, whether you had "no American money with you. Respecting a great people, having so much of our own blood and character, to whom our grandchildren emigrating may belong, as their emigrating grandsires belonged to us, we must naturally entertain no ordinary curiosity. Much has been written on this subject. Something, however, probably remains to be told; both because some tourists have composed their travels as if they supposed that, by always turning up their noses, they should pass for having an aristocratic organisation; and because that which was written on the United States ten years ago is as obsolete now as it would have been had it been written on an old country of Europe a hundred years since. Under this impression, a few random recollections of a tour in North America, principally in the United States, but not confined to them, are thrown together with a haste which demands apology. In the July of 1849 I arrived in New York from Liverpool, and in the September of 1851 I returned to Liverpool from New York. The time devoted to my tour was comprised between these periods. * I went out to America in the English mail-steamer Europa, belonging to the Cunard company, and returned by the American mail-steamer Atlantic, belonging to the company named after Mr. Collins. I am bound to mention that in the Europa, in consequence of a small cistern which supplied the passengers' cabin not having been cleaned out when a large cistern supplying other portions of the vessel was cleaned out, the water served in the passengers' cabin, though filtered through a sponge, to make it look clear, was intolerably disgusting to the taste. The effect was distressingly obvious from the first: the cause, and the fact that all the time the cabins of the officers and crew of the ship had been supplied with good water, I only learnt towards the end of the voyage. the Atlantic steam-ship, and all connected with its management, I could speak only with unqualified praise. But, of With the appearance of New York and its bay the British public is already familiar, from descriptions and from pictures; and I will merely mention that I have never seen anything of its kind so beautiful as the prospect of the two seen together; and that the best view which I have had of them is from a hill in Statten Island, commonly called, from the residence of a New Orleans lady, Madame Grimes's Hill. This view, I am assured, reminds Eastern travellers of a view of Constantinople from the Golden Horn. As Washington is the political, so New York undoubtedly may claim to be the commercial, capital of the United States. What Lombardstreet is to London, Wall-street is to New York; and, according to the wills or exigencies of its bankers, money is scarce or abundant, credit is easy or inaccessible, and trade is slow or brisk, throughout the Union. * An arrangement may here be pointed out, showing at once to which of the two great Atlantic steam-navigation companies any vessel may belong. The names of all the vessels of the Cunard company end with an a, as Arabia, America, Europa; while those of the Collins company end with a c, as Pacific, Baltic, Atlantic. Though the commercial superiority of New York is acknowledged, it is far from having a social or literary supremacy conceded to it by all, either of the more northern or southern cities. And the Englishman, who should form his judgment of the American character merely from the fashionable parties of New York, and from the large hotels of the northern watering-places, such as Saratoga and Newport, would do injustice to its more sterling, and to its more engaging traits. In their speculative character, in their vast commission business, in their love of ostentation, in their amusing habit of praising their city and themselves, the New Yorkers (as the inhabitants of New York are called) must remind one, who has ever mixed in Liverpool society, of something that he has seen before. In New York, as in Liverpool, the young ladies walk out in the streets (or, according to the common phrase with the Americans, which I wish they could be induced to alter, "on the street") with the very thinnest shoes and the very gayest dresses, such as in London or Paris it would be unusual, not to say improper, to wear in a morning, except in a carriage, a horticultural fête, or a concert. In New York, too, you occasionally see a brusquerie, or pertness of manner, which is not very bewitching, but of which I think I many years ago observed traces amongst some of the "Lancashire witches" of Liverpool. And as the people of Liverpool have not always their pretensions allowed by the neighbouring Cheshire squirearchy, so those of New York do not invariably pass current at their own value with the well-bred gentry of Virginia and South Carolina, or the literary coteries of Boston. Yet New York and Liverpool contain charming individuals and families; and some I should name (would it not be an unpardonable liberty) that would grace and honour any society, either of America or Europe. But it must be admitted that in most of the sets of New York, and especially in that which is considered the most fashionable, the gold and the silver, and the brass and the iron, and the clay, are sometimes, as in Nebuchadnezzar's image, rather incongruously intermingled. The New Yorkers require excitement; they delight in a lion, whether it is an author or a singer, a hero or a heroine, a prince or a princess. They are often taken in; but in these cases, Doubtless the pleasure is as great for both parties have their amusement out of the deception. Yet it must make any honest and observant person, acquainted with both nations, indignant to hear, as I have heard, a disposition to run after lords reproached by the English against the Americans. I do not believe that in any portion of the Union does that (as Punch so happily calls it) "flunkeyism" prevail, which is so common amongst that particular section of English and Scotch society that styles itself the upper, but is styled by others the middle class; and as for the Irish, the one only matter in the British constitution which many of them seem to comprehend is, that an hereditary legislator is an object of respect. In the United States, no doubt, a lord is regarded with some interest and curiosity, from historical associations. A lord founded the state of Maryland; several able governors of particular states, in the colonial times, adorned the peerage; From the loud talking, exaggerated manners, and self-sufficient airs of some of the members of this company, it has been styled by the French les comédiens. a lord was one of the ablest advocates of the rights of the colonists at the commencement of the revolutionary war, and his speeches are at this day studied as those of a classic, by every educated American, from the schoolboy up to the President. But in the United States, as contradistinguished from England, his excellency and my lord take their chance with the author and the singer, and the last interesting importa tion of the day; and-which no doubt seems to the ambassador and his lordship very bizarre-are probably beaten out of the field. I know a case in which the family of an English peer, who, in the country, are on visiting terms with the family of a neighbour, a very rich manufacturer, do not condescend even to bow to them in London; and this state of things the manufacturer has endured. At the time that the late Sir Robert Peel was summoned from Italy by William IV. to form an administration, I myself heard the younger son of a newly-made peer exclaim aloud, in the library of a London club, that things had come to a pretty pass, when the government of this country was kept at a stand-still a fortnight "for the son of a cotton-spinner.' And if there were any sons of cotton-spinners present-and they were as likely to be as not-it is not improbable that they thought this speech as fine and spirited as the speaker did himself. Verily there are some points on which the United States have much to learn before they can venture to compete with an old country like England! In New York ostentation of wealth is more important to social position than it is in any other great city in the Union. Many private houses have large and richly-furnished suites of reception-rooms, in which, nevertheless, the establishment is exceedingly small, and the family, on ordinary occasions, dine in a little back parlour on the area-floor. Very costly dinners are given by persons who can afford them; and I have heard of a ball in the winter, for the flowers to decorate which as much was paid as 1000 dollars-a little more than 2001. These fêtes are imitated by persons who affect the same station, but cannot afford the same expenses. A crisis comes, and the pretender to wealth goes down; but he rises again in the west, somewhere on the Ohio, Mississippi, or great lakes; and there the tourist will recognise him engrossed in his schemes, to acquire the means once more to cut a dash. Respecting expenditure, I will observe that you never, in New York, hear any one say openly, "I cannot afford it," a phrase which, in England, is occasionally in the mouth of almost every one who has a character, and is accustomed to have money. The great northern watering-places of the United States remind an Englishman of Harrogate; but they are more fashionably attended than Harrogate has recently been. In these there are immense hotels, and the ordinary mode of living is, in one of them, to take a bedroom only, and, using the public drawing-room and dining-room, to have your meals at a vast table d'hôte. At Harrogate, by the prescriptive usage of the place, you are permitted-and, indeed, expected-to speak to your neighbour at dinner, without any introduction; though it is commonly understood that a mere Harrogate acquaintance need not afterwards be kept up. But at these northern watering-places, should a gentleman, or should a lady, attempt to enter into conversation with a lady occupying the next chair, the person making the advance would stand a good |