rate, it will prove that he does not harbor malice prepense against the whole Yankee nation.

"We left Southampton this morning, feeling much, when we parted from Captain Hall and his family, as if we were launching alone in the wide world. He told us, at the last, if we got into any difficulty, if we were at Johnny Groat's, to send for him. As far as the most thoughtful kindness and foresight can provide against difficulties, he has done so for us. Both he and Mrs. Hall have given us letters of introduction, (unasked,) and a score, at least, to their friends in London and Scotland, people of rank and distinction. To these they have added addresses to trades-people of all descriptions, and all manner of instructions as to our goings-on; a kind of mapping and charting inestimable to raw travellers like us. He has even had lodgings provided for us in London by his man of business, so that we shall find a home in that great, and, to us, unknown sea.

You will smile at all our letters running upon this theme of Captain H., and you may perchance fancy that our preconceived opinion of this gentleman is rather bribed by personal kindness than rectified. But remember that we had no claim upon his kindness. It is not our personal benefits (though heaven knows we are most grateful for them) that I am anxious to impress upon you, but to give you the advantage of our point of sight of a character that some of our people have misunderstood, and some misrepresented. I have no such crusading notions, as that I could set a whole nation's opinion right, but I should hope to affect yours, and perhaps half-adozen others. Captain H. has a mind wide awake, ever curious and active. These qualities have been of infinite service to him as a traveller, and to his charmed readers as well; but it is easy to see how, among strangers, they might betray him into some little extravagances. Then he is a seaman and a Briton, and liable on both scores to unphilosophic judgment. With the faults that proceed from an excess of activity, we, of all people, should be most patient, and certainly we might have forgiven some mistaken opinions in conformity to preconceived patterns, instead of imputing them to political prostitution. We might, indeed, had we been wise, have found many of his criticisms just and salutary, and thanked him for them, and have delighted in his frankness, his sagacity, and his vein of very pleasant humor; but, alas! our Saxon blood is always uppermost, and we go on cherishing our infallibility, and, like a snappish cook, had much rather spoil our own pie, than have a foreign finger in it. It is an old trick of the English bull-dog to bark at his neighbor's door, but let him do so if he will caress you at his own."-Vol. i. PP. 42-44.

The closing sentiment of the passage is a bad one, but we will not stop to quarrel with it.

We

Other passages from these volumes might be selected to prove the incorrectness of the common notion prevailing among our countrymen, that England is wanting in courtesy to strangers, and justify the assertion, that no one who visits it, properly introduced, and remains there a sufficient time to receive attentions, can justly complain of being neglected; indeed it is hardly possible to be many days an inmate of an English family, particularly in the country, without feeling, as Miss S. says she did when she left a friend's lodge near Southampton, "warmed to the heart's core with the realization of the old poetic ideas of English hospitality." Her picture, however, is not without its shading; she is offended by the strong contrasts in the condition of man which England presents the lofty elevation of the few, and the deep abasement of the many. The distinction of ranks, and all the usages which grow out of it, are abominations in her eyes; the servant's touch of the hat to his master she regards as a degrading acknowledgment of "the gulf between" them, and that " any of God's creatures should look up to a station behind a lord's coach as a privileged place," a proof that something must be "rotten in the state." fully believe in Miss Sedgwick's sincerity in these strong expressions of her dissatisfaction at the deformities, as she considers them, in the constitution of society in England; at the same time, we do not understand how a person of her excellent sense can be so misled by names and appearances. Political institutions have an undoubted influence upon the manners and customs of nations, but they do not change the human heart, and a feeling common to that, the world over, is the aristocratic one, which is no where stronger than in our free republic. In the absence of the distinctions of rank, and the privileges of birth, we gratify the passion by the means which fortune, or talent, or temporary power confers, and in spite of the progress of the democratic principle, and of the levelling effect of the modern modes of travelling, by which human beings are heaped together like their trunks and carpet-bags, the limits in our society are as definitely marked, and the system of exclusion as rigorously enforced, as ever. He who thinks it will ever be otherwise while man's moral being remains unchanged is a dreamer; he may sooner expect to see the mountains fade away from the face of nature, and melt down into the valleys. Nor do we think that we have any great cause for self-complacency in the

view of our freedom from those little ceremonials which were so annoying to Miss S.; we are beginning to discover that we have stripped the social fabric a little too closely; that some of the decorations which hung upon its walls were useful, as well as ornamental, and that republican familiarity may be carried so far as to become rudeness and impudence. Who does not feel more kindly disposed towards an acquaintance, after exchanging salutations with him, than if he had passed him in the street without notice, and just as this courtesy begets the kindness, does the external sign of respect in the servant keep up the inward feeling of it. It seems to us, that the error in regard to all these things lies in supposing that individual independence is a possible condition of human existence; the relation of man to man is one of mutual service, reaching through all the gradations of society, and uniting them all by the bond of mutual interest. As to standing behind a lord's carriage in a liveried coat, we confess it does not strike us in that supremely ludicrous light in which it appeared to Miss S.; it is a service rendered for an equivalent, and what is there in it more degrading than in a vast many of the services required in life, or more restricting" to the circle of half a dozen ideas," than in standing all day behind a counter waiting upon purchasers? The same thing is true of a great majority of the occupations of mankind which are not of an intellectual character, and have no direct influence in improving the mind, but they are indispensable to the general welfare, and ought not to be discredited.

But, after all, the people of England have great reason to be satisfied with the good that is said of them by our traveller, when they consider, that having taken as a standard of comparison her own utopian and ideal commonwealth, she has found nothing to complain of but political evils, and these, no doubt, greatly magnified in her eyes by being new to her. We have passed, without comment, her account of the many distinguished individuals whose acquaintance she formed, as it was our intention to confine our remarks to the points before specified-the general moral impression produced by the state of things in Europe upon an American mind of uncommon intelligence, unsophisticated, as we may say, by the conventional usages, and long-transmitted opinions existing there. We have seen what she found to admire, and what to condemn, in the first transatlantic country with which she

became acquainted. A short passage from her book, written on the eve of her departure, will show with what feelings she left that country; we extract it as a parting testimonial, alike creditable to the traveller, and to the land that had so kindly received her.

"To-morrow we leave England, having seen but a drop in the ocean of things worthy to be examined. We mean next year to travel over it; to see the country, to visit the institutions of benevolence, the schools, etc. We are now to plunge into a foreign country, with a foreign language, and foreign customs. It seems like leaving home a second time. If any thing could make us for get that we are travellers, it would be such unstinted kindness as we have received here. You cannot see the English in their homes, without reverencing and loving them; nor, I think, can an AngloAmerican come to this, his ancestral home, without a pride in his relationship to it, and an extended sense of the obligations imposed by his derivation from the English stock. A war between the two countries, in the present state of their relations and intercourse, would be fratricidal, and this sentiment I have heard expressed on all sides."-Vol. i., p. 120.

Miss Sedgwick passed rapidly from England through Belgium to the banks of the Rhine, and limited her excursions in Germany to the borders of that beautiful river. A delightful season, an enchanting country, pleasant acquaintances formed at Wisbaden and the neighboring water-places, and the personal civilities received there, must have produced the most agreeable impressions upon her mind, judging from the high encomiums she bestows upon Germany and the Germans, saying of the former, "I leave this country with an interest, respect, and attachment, that I did not expect to feel for any country after leaving England ;" and of the lat ter, "I feel richer for the delightful recollections I carry with me of the urbanity of the Germans; on the whole, they seem to me the most rational people I have seen. They enjoy the present, and with the truest economy of human life, make the most of the materials of contentment that God has given them. Is not this better than vague, illimitable desires, and ever-changing pursuits?" We unhesitatingly answer yes, and in the sentiment find a sufficient explanation for the fact, which Miss S. repeatedly recognizes, that "the German peasant, in his pent-up village, has a look of contentment and cheerfulness that our people have not." That, however, we may not do her injustice, we must add,

that she does not place Germany, or any other country, before her own in her estimate of the happiness enjoyed by its inhabitants, but considers this as the happiest in the world "for the general interests of humanity-the favored land;" a point which it is very fair for an American to insist upon, but one which other nations will claim a right to doubt. It will be seen that our author's account of Germany contained in these volumes, is drawn from a knowledge of a very small portion of it; still we do not think it would have been less favorable had she known it more widely, and dwelt longer within it. No country on the continent grows upon one so much by acquaintance as this; like its own delicious wines, it becomes pleasanter, and increases in favor, the better it is known. Apropos of Rhine wine, what a pity it is that Miss S. did not stop at the chateau of Johannisberg as she was passing, and taste a glass or two of Prince Metternich's old cabinet; it would surely have softened her heart towards him, and spared him some of the opprobrious epithets which now mark him as the object of her peculiar abhorrence; a distinction, by the way, we cannot think he deserves. As a minister of an absolute sovereign, it was his duty to struggle against the encroachment of liberal opinions, and he has done nothing more than the faithful performance of it required of him; his hand may have fallen very heavy upon many excellent men, and some of them friends of our author, who were charged with no crimes but political ones, but these, it should be remembered, are regarded as the most dangerous to the state by the government he had sworn to protect. When a nation wants a revolution, they rise in the majesty of their strength and effect it; but the resistance of individuals to the sovereign power, whatever may be the form of government, has always been accounted a conspiracy, and proceeded against as such. The government of Austria is an odious despotism, and we have not a word to say in defence of it, but while it remains so, we know not how Prince Metternich can be blamed for so administering it.

We see enough in these volumes to convince us, that persons of candor cannot long retain their prejudices as travelling companions; they leave them on the road with their worn-out garments; the heart grows by travelling, as Miss S. very happily expresses it, and it is really delightful to observe how very capacious a naturally big heart like hers