only the best parts of her book, but generally full of sound, sterling We have already excepted one.

sense.

To the English traveller, around whose heart the love of country and the influences of early association may yet cling, New England appears to me, of all the portions of the United States which I have visited, most likely to afford gratification; and the Yankees,-properly so called,-the Americans with whom he will find, and towards whom he will feel, most sympathy. They do us the honour to call themselves purely English in their origin; they alone, of the whole population of the United States, undoubtedly were so; and in the abundant witness which their whole character, country, and institutions, bear to that fact, I feel an additional reason to be proud of England,—of Old England, for these are her children, this race of men, as a race incomparably superior to the other inhabitants of this country. In conversing with New Englandmen, in spite of any passing temporary bitterness, any political difference, or painful reference to past times of enmity, I have always been struck with the admiring, and, in some measure, tender feeling with which England, as the mothercountry, was named. Nor is it possible to travel through the New England states, and not perceive, indeed, a spirit (however modified by different circumstances and institutions) yet most truly English in its origin. The exterior of the houses, their extreme neatness and cleanliness, -the careful cultivation of the land, the tasteful and ornamental arrangement of the ground immediately surrounding the dwellings, that most English of all manifestations,—above all, the church spires pointing towards heaven, from the bosom of every village,— recalled most forcibly to my mind my own England, and presented images of order, of industry, of taste, and religious feeling, nowhere so exhibited in any other part of the Union. I visited Boston several times, and mixed in society there, the tone of which appeared to me far higher than that of any I found elsewhere. A general degree of cultivation exists among its members, which renders their intercourse desirable and delightful. Nor is this superior degree of education confined to Boston: the zeal and the judgment with which it is being propagated throughout that part of the country is a noble national characteristic. A small circumstance is a good illustration of the advance which knowledge has made in these states. Travelling by land from New Haven to Boston, at one of the very smallest places where we stopped to change horses, I got out of the carriage to reconnoitre our surroundings. The town (if town it could be called) did not appear to contain much more than fifty houses: amongst the most prominent of these, however, was a bookseller's shop. The first volumes I took up on the counter were Spurzheim's volume on Education, and Dr. Abercrombie's works on the Intellectual and Moral Faculties. I saw more pictures, more sculptures, and more books in private houses in Boston than I have seen any where else. I could name more men of marked talent that I met with there than any where else. Its charitable and literary institutions are upon a liberal scale, and enlightened principles. Among the New Englanders, I have seen more honour and reverence of parents, and more witnesses of a high religious faith, than among any other Americans with whom I have lived and conversed.-Pp. 278–280.

The opinion of Mr. Latrobe, whom we consider justly entitled to our respect, since his volumes every where testify his judgment, freedom from prejudice, and high, gentlemanly love of truth, is not very different from that of the female journalist.

Instead, however, of pursuing the ordinary course to Newport and Providence, we were set ashore at the little port of Newhaven in Connecticut, and subsequently pursued our journey through the centre of that state to Hartford and Northampton. In landing among these, the early settlements of the New

World, after glancing at the states more to the southward, you are struck with the air of comparative antiquity in many objects. The houses, the enclosures, and the trees planted among them, have a much more English appearance. The towns and villages are more thickly strewed over the face of the country, and their outskirts much less ragged and less incumbered with rubbish and building materials. The population seems to be at home on the soil, and children to have succeeded to the inheritance of their fathers for many generations. Old houses of imported brick, aged Lombardy poplars, grass-grown and discoloured pavements and thresholds, and orchards full of grey distorted apple-trees, mark the vicinity of many of the earliest settlements. Here or there stands an ancient tree-the sole survivor of the original forest, and a boundary-mark of the first colonists. The cemeteries are more spacious and more decently maintained than you will observe elsewhere, and within their precincts you see many a time-stained tombstone, of the exact pattern and fashion in ornament and inscription, as those picturesque memorials of the dead which crowd the hallowed church-yards of the mother-country. The signs of long and steady cultivation may be remarked on the face of the landscape; and, all these things combined, throw a degree of interest over the country apart from the charms of natural scenery, which contrasts agreeably with that air of rawness and newness which is imprinted upon the works of man in other portions of the continent, and which is so opposed to anything like poetry and sentiment. Vol. I. pp. 42, 43.

Two centuries and a half have rolled by since the May Flower and her burden of pilgrims approached the shores of this part of America, then totally unknown and unexplored; and no country on earth can boast a more remarkable and a more chequered history since that period. Whatever may be your modification of religious opinion, you cannot but admire the strength of mind, simplicity of faith and purpose, and almost super-human perseverance and hardihood of character of the early colonists. They were placed truly in fearful circumstances, and it is both instructive and consoling to see how the back became suited to the burden. However rudely transplanted from the bosom of civilized society, they steeled their souls,' and were gifted with a power of endurance which might be deemed beyond nature by those who have not seen how much strength both of mind and body, man has been endowed with, and is capable of exerting under the excitement of peculiar circumstances, beyond that modicum of either, which he may be called to exert in the common walks of life.

Their minds were not only unappalled by the exchange they had made, between a paradise of pleasure and plenty, and a wilderness of wants,'—the change of clime' and scene, unheard-of hardships and privations, cold, hunger, and disease; but evidently gaining strength from the very destitution of their position, their being beyond all certain human aid and help-in the fervour of religious dependence on God they struggled on under all these accumulated causes of trial, and those of a yet more fearful character which awaited them in the roused and implacable hostility of the tribes whom they supplanted from without, or the fire of fanaticism and schism within their settlements, and finally triumphed. Vol. I. pp. 45, 46.

In those early times, and under those peculiar circumstances, all men expressed themselves with vehemence, and acted with violence. Scarcely had the first colonist landed, before religious feuds broke out and further separations occurred. Men who had quitted their native country, hand in hand, for the same holy cause, found in the solitude of their new position fresh subjects of difference, which admitted of no adjustment and no mutual forbearance and forgiveness; but proudly drew away from each other deeper into the woods, unappalled by danger and utter loneliness. The severity of manners and morals practised among them was accompanied by distrust, intractability, and rancour. The emigration of the Quakers and Baptists lent fuel to the flame, and persecution was added to other troubles. From being the oppressed, they became the oppressors.-Vol. I. p. 47.

The following observations are particularly deserving of our notice, as pointing out a fact steadily kept out of view by our common babblers, about the free institutions of America.

However stern the necessity appeared to be, which bade the Puritans seek elsewhere for a land where they might worship God without molestation, according to their own consciences, abundant testimonials are extant of the ardent love and affection with which these early emigrants looked back to the land of their fathers. "We in this country," says one of them, "have left our near relations, brothers, sisters, fathers' houses, nearest and dearest friends; but if we can get nearer to God here, He will be instead of all, more than all to us. We may take that out of God that we forsook in father, mother, brother and sister, and friend, that hath been near and dear to us as our own soul. Even among the most wicked sinners there may be found some righteous,—some corn among the chaff,- -some jewels among the sand,-some pearls among a multitude of shells. Who hath made England to differ from other nations, that more jewels are to be found there than elsewhere? or what hath that island that it hath not received? The East and the West Indies yield their gold, and pearl, and sweet spices-but I know where the spicy Christians be, England hath yielded these, yet not England, but the grace of God that hath ever been with them. We see what hope we may have concerning New England, though we do not deserve to be named the same day with our dear mother."

And that this love was real and unfeigned, was proved for years, by their cherished relations with home, as they taught their children to call their mothercountry;-by their willingness of dependence; their very prejudices;-the blood which they freely shed in the quarrels of their king, and by a multitude of other testimonials now thrown aside and forgotten. For awhile this affection grew with their growth, and increased with their strength. It need not have been estranged, and perhaps never would have been, had England understood her true interests, and always acted with justice. But she was only a stepmother at best. Perhaps temporary oppression from the measures of government on one hand, and a sense of growing strength and importance on the other, would hardly have effected it, despite the democratic feeling which existed in the country from its earliest settlements. There are other things which are even more potent than oppression in producing the separation of colonies from the parent states-offended pride; pique; the soreness produced by unmerited ridicule; the disgust consequent upon being undervalued-and other passions of that class whose workings are more hidden, but infinitely more sure and certain in their effects.

In referring to the early history of this country and the circumstances of its colonization, there is one fact which it is perhaps well to bear in mind, at a time when the spirit of change seems to pervade the very air we breathe; and the example of America is frequently quoted, to prove that the advocates for the overthrow of our constitution, and covertly of our monarchical form of government, are not the rogues or dupes which most honest men would suppose. We are told to look to her, to see how a country may throw aside monarchy, become a democratic republic,-flourish, and increase, and give abundant promise of future greatness and power. This is true, the United States do flourish, and they do increase, and they promise great things,-may they fulfil them! this is to be gathered from their history, that when the American colonies threw off their allegiance to the monarch of Great Britain and his government, they never threw aside the British constitution, which did not intimately concern them.

But

Many suppose that it was not till the Revolution that the Americans began to govern themselves, when, in fact, they had all along been brought up to selfgovernment. The constitution generally agreed to by the different bands of

* Mr. Whitney, a pastor of Lynn, Massachusetts, from 1636 to 1690. VOL. XVII. NO. IX. 3 2

colonists was a pure democracy; many of them, even down to the time of the Revolution, possessed and exhibited all the essential attributes of free states. The Puritans were especially republicans in creed and discipline; and in all their arrangements, this principle was predominant. And this the government at home knew and acknowledged for many years, and had it been always remembered, the bond between us might long before this have changed its character, but it never would have been rudely broken. The royal prerogative of control was wisely and sparingly exercised in the internal affairs of the colonies, even in their earliest and feeblest state; and it was not till it began to be inauspiciously and oppressively put forward, that there was any avowed disposition on their part to resist. Vol.I. p. 48–51.

The picture of a quiet Sunday, at Royalton, in New England, is very graphic.

It was here our lot to spend a quiet Sunday. During the earlier hours of the day, a few loungers were seen under the arcade of our inn, else the village appeared deserted. Suddenly divers gigs, light carts, sulkies, and horsemen, came from all sides, and congregated under a line of sheds constructed at the back of the church. The congregation assembled. A plain, and unaffected sermon was delivered by a baptist minister, prefaced and followed by the congregational singing, led by the feeble notes of a single flute. The service ended, the quiet street of the village appeared, for an instant, full of busy feet; doors were opened and shut, the gigs and sulkies were filled, and straightway whirled away, but few minutes sufficed to restore it to its solitude, and for the remainder of the day, hardly a sound was heard. The good people of Royalton seemed to be quietly digesting the spiritual food thus afforded them, and their Sunday was literally a day of rest.—Vol. I. p. 60.

But the remarks on the general character of the people, which are written throughout in a spirit free from the gall and venom in which some of the pens lately busy with Americans have been evidently dipped, are more than graphic.

The manners and habits of this great eastern division of the American people are strikingly distinct from their fellow-citizens to the southward. The character of the inhabitants of New England for diligence, shrewdness, and all those matter-of-fact talents which tell in a country like this, where every man is struggling to get and maintain an independence, is probably familiar to you. They are speculative, at the same time that their caution, clear-sightedness, and indomitable perseverance, generally ensure success. In politics, their practical conduct is strikingly opposed to the theoretical vagaries of the south. They have often, and not without reason, been compared to the northern inhabitants of our own island; but, I think, the New Englanders have all the steadiness and prudence of the Scotch, with yet greater degree of ingenuity. Like the Scotch, they foster education; like the Scotch, they are inclined to the more severe forms of religious discipline and worship; like the Scotch, they are fearfully long-winded; like them, they are gadders abroad, loving to turn their faces southward and westward, pushing their fortunes wherever fortunes are to be pushed, and often in places and by shifts where no one ever dreamed that fortunes were to be gained. They may be found supplanting the less energetic possessor of land and property in every state of the Union. They have a finger upon the rim of every man's dish, and a toe at every man's heel. They are the pedlars and schoolmasters of the whole country; and, though careless of good living abroad, when at home and at ease, they are fond of "creature comforts." No where is the stomach of the traveller or visitor put in such constant peril as among the cake-inventive housewives and daughters of New England. Such is the universal attention paid to this particular branch of epicurism in these states, that I greatly suspect that some of the Pilgrim Fathers must have come

over to the country with the cookery book under one arm and the Bible under the other; though I find in more than one code of ancient laws made in early times, orders issued that no person should make "cakes or buns, except for solemn festal occasions, such as burials and marriages." There are but few boys among them; many of their children seem to start up at once to puny men. I should not think that they were a fun-loving nation, or had great reverence for holidays;-jokes are an abomination to many among them.

Though, in common with all Americans, they are proud and boastful of their claims to unlimited freedom, they are fond of imposing grievous burdens upon the inferior orders of animals within their power; and you see horses and cows, pigs and geese, labouring under the most singular yokes it is possible to conceive.

The faults allied to this kind of character are easily recognizable. Where education and religion has had its proper influence, and high-mindedness, and innate sense of honour exist, all this shrewdness and strength of character will add to the respectability of the possessor, and to the good of the social circle. But where it is allied with meanness and littleness of soul, it must bear the stamp of sordid and low cunning in petty transactions, and of uncompromising, ungenerous aggrandizement and selfishness in larger operations. Hence the diverse terms in which you hear the so-called Yankee or Easternman named, and the praise and obloquy with which the character which I have attempted so roughly to sketch is alternately drawn. I was never, to my knowledge, taken in by any of my particular or casual acquaintance in any of the eastern states, and I am far from believing, though I may have laughed at the thousand-and-onetales related of the extravagant ingenuity and cunning of the Yankee pedlars tramping through every nook of the Union; but I can easily conceive that there is many an arrant rogue among them, and many an arrant goose amongst their customers.―Vol. I. pp. 60—63.

We have quoted thus largely from Mr. Latrobe, because he writes in a way to be depended on; and the generality of English travellers in America appear to have been guided by nothing but their prejudices and narrow-minded views of what they have not had sense enough to investigate, before they pronounced their opinions. It may not, however, be amiss to make another extract or two, before we close his truly interesting volumes; as they may serve as a guide to our readers, as to the weight to be affixed to any future publications upon the national peculiarities of our transatlantic brethren. Our author prefaces his observations, by saying, what really seems to escape the notions of cursory travellers, that the United States have no claim to be considered yet, as sufficiently united, to allow of a judgment being passed upon their national character, from evidence offered by an examination of any individual district.

Here you will find (he remarks) the children of the Pilgrim Fathers, and the early colonists from the pure English stock; whose descendants have also spread over the fresh virgin soil of Ohio, and the other states in the same parallel, and planted themselves in every part of the Union where shrewdness and industry could win their way. You may trace the French refugee in West Chester; the Dutch in New York; the German in the valley of the Mohawk; the Swede in New Jersey and Delaware; the Quaker and the German in Pennsylvania, together with distinct colonies of Irish; the descendant of the Cavalier in Virginia, Maryland, and the states to the south, and the Italian and Spaniard in Florida. On the other hand, between the Creole in Louisiana, and the French Canadian on the Upper Lakes and rivers-you detect many races of men, with peculiar