 CHAPTER XVIII. Before concluding this volume it will be proper to offer a few remarks upon American institutions and such of their effects as are obvious to a temporary resident in the States. In apology for my own incompetence I must again remind the reader that these are merely surface observations offered in accordance with the preface to this work. The Constitution demands the first notice. When our American colonies succeeded in throwing off the yoke of England, it became necessary for them to choose a form of government. No country ever started under such happy auspices. It had just concluded a successful struggle with one of the greatest empires in the world. Its attitude of independence was sympathized with by the enthusiastic spirits of Europe, and had even gained the respect of that upright monarch, who on receiving the first ambassador from his revolted colonies addressed him with these memorable words. I was the last man in England to acknowledge the independence of America, but being secured I shall be the last man in England to violate it. Thus circumstanced each of the thirteen States, with the exception of Rhode Island, sent delegates to Philadelphia to deliberate on the form of government which should be adopted. This deliberative assembly of a free people presented a sublime spectacle in the eyes of nations. After two years of consideration and considerable differences of opinion, it was decided that the monarchical traditions of the Old World were effete and obsolete, and accordingly a purely Republican Constitution was promulgated, under which the United States have become a rich and powerful nation. It is gratifying to an English person to know that the Constitution of the United States was derived in great measure from that of England, enlarged and divested of those which were deemed its objectionable features. The different States had previously possessed local assemblies and governors, and the institutions connected with slavery. The last remained to this day in pretty much the same state as when they were bequeathed by England to America. Washington entered upon the office of President in 1789 and discharged its duties, as he did those of every other station, with that high-sold and disinterested patriotism which render him as worthy to be imitated and admired. There are three authorities, the President, the Senate, and the House of Representatives, all elected by the people. Thus their acts are to a certain extent expressive of the popular will. The President is elected by universal suffrage, once in four years. He receives a salary of five thousand pounds per annum, and is assisted by five secretaries, who, with two other executive officers, are paid at the rate of sixteen hundred pounds a year. This officer has considerable power and enormous patronage. He makes treaties which merely require the ratification of the Senate. He grants pardons and may place his veto on the acts of the other two estates, provided that they have not been returned by two-thirds of the members of the respective houses. There are sixty-two senators, or two from each state. These are elected by the local legislatures for a term of six years, and one-third of the number retire every two years. Each senator must be thirty years of age. He must be a resident of the state which he represents, and he must have been naturalized for nine years. The Lower House, or House of Representatives, is perhaps the most purely popular body in the world. The members are elected for two years by universal suffrage, that is, by the votes of all the free male citizens of America who have attained the age of twenty-one. Each member of the Lower House must have been naturalized for seven years, and he must have passed the age of twenty-five. Population has been taken as the basis of representation in the following very simple manner. The number of representatives was fixed by Act of Congress at two-hundred and thirty-three, although a new one has recently been added for California. The aggregate representative population is taken and divided by two-hundred and thirty-three, and the quotient, rejecting fractions, is the ratio of apportionment among the several states. The representative population of each state is then ascertained and is divided by the above-named ratio, and the quotient gives the number of representatives to each state. The state of New York, being the most populous, possesses thirty-three representatives. Two of the states, namely Delaware and Florida, require no more than one each. On a rough calculation each member represents about ninety-thousand persons. The two houses together are named Congress, and the members of both receive thirty-two shillings per diem for their attendance, without deduction in case of sickness, in addition to traveling expenses. All measures of legislation and taxation must receive the approval of the President and the Congress, the majority in Congress representing the popular will. Every state has its assembly and governor, and to a certain extent has power to make his own laws. The members of these assemblies, the governors of the states, and the mayors and municipal officers of the cities, are all elected by universal suffrage. No system of direct taxation is adopted in the states, except for local purposes. The national revenue is derived from customs duties, on many articles so high as to amount to protective duties, from the sale of wild lands, and from one or two other sources. The annual revenue of the country is about twelve million pounds sterling, and the expenditure is under the income. The state officials are rather poorly paid. The chief ambassadors do not receive more than eighteen hundred pounds per annum, and the chief justice, whose duties are certainly both arduous and responsible, only receives a salary of one thousand pounds a year. The principal items of expenditure are connected with the army and navy, and the officers in both these services are amply remunerated. The United States Navy is not so powerful as might be expected from such a maritime people. There are only twelve ships of the line and twelve first-class frigates, including receiving ships and those on the stops. The standing army consists of ten thousand men, and is regarded with some jealousy by the mass of the people. The pay in this branch of the service varies from none of a major general, which is one thousand pounds a year, to that of a private, which is about one shilling six pence a day. This last is larger than it appears, as it is not subject to the great deductions which are made from that of an English soldier. The real military strength of America consists of an admirably trained militia force of about two million two hundred thousand men, supported at an enormous expense. This large body is likely to prove invincible for defensive purposes, as it is composed of citizens trained to great skill as marksmen and animated by the strongest patriotism, but it is to be hoped that it also furnishes a security against an offensive war on a large scale, as it is scarcely likely that any great number of men would abandon their business and homes for any length of time for aggressive purposes. The highest court of law in the United States is the Supreme Court, which holds one annual session at Washington. It is composed of a chief justice and eight associate justices, and is the only power not subjected directly or indirectly to the will of the people. The United States are divided into nine judicial circuits, in each of which a circuit court is held twice a year by a justice of the Supreme Court, assisted by the District Judge of the State in which the court sits. There is, however, a great weakness both about the executive and the administration of justice, the consequence of which is that, when a measure is placed upon the statute book which is supposed to be obnoxious to any powerful class, a league is formed by private individuals for the purpose of enforcing it, or in some cases it would become a dead letter. The powerful societies which are formed to secure the working of the main law will occur at once to English readers. Each state possesses a distinct governmental machinery of its own, consisting of a governor, a senate, and a house of representatives. The governor is elected by a majority of the votes of the male citizens for a term of years, varying in different states from one to four. The senators are elected for light periods, and the representatives are chosen for one or two years. The largest number of representatives for any one state is three hundred and fifty-six. The all-power in the United States is held to a great extent on popular sufferance. It emanates from the will of the majority, no matter how vicious or ignorant that majority may be. In some cases this leads to a slight alteration of the Latin axiom Salus populi es supremalex, which may be read, the will of the people is the supreme law. The American constitution is admirable in theory. It enunciates the incontrovertial principle, all men are free and equal. But unfortunately a serious disturbing element, and one which, by its indirect effects, threatens to bring the machinery of the republic to a deadlock, appears not to have entered into the calculations of these political theorists. This element is slavery, which exists in fifteen out of thirty-one states, and it is to be feared that by a recent act of the legislature the power to extend it is placed in the hands of the majority, should that majority declare for it in the new states. The struggle between the advocates of freedom and slavery is now convulsing America. It has already led to outrage and bloodshed in the state of Kansas, and appearances seem to indicate a prolonged and disastrous conflict between the North and South. The question is one which cannot be passed over by any political party in the states. Perhaps it may not be universally known, in England, that slavery is a part of the ratified constitution of the states, and that the government is bound to maintain it in its integrity. Its abolition must be procured by an important change in the constitution, which would shake and might dislocate the vast and unwieldy republic. Each state, I believe, has in its power to abolish slavery within its own limits, but the federal government has no power to introduce a modification of the system in any. The federal compact binds the government not to meddle with slavery in the states where it exists, to protect the owners in the case of runaway slaves, and to defend them in the event of invasion or domestic violence on account of it. Thus, the rights and property in slaves and the slaveholders are legally guaranteed to them by the Constitution of the United States. At the last census the slaves amounted to more than three million, or about an eighth of the population, and constitute an alien body, neither exercising the privileges nor animated by the sentiments of the rest of the Commonwealth. Slavery at this moment, as it is the cursed and the shame, is also the canker of the Union. By it, by the very Constitution of a country which proudly boasts of freedom, three millions of intelligent and responsible beings are reduced to the level of mere property—property, legally reclaimable too, in the free states, by an act called the Fugitive Slave Act. That there are slaveholders, amiable, just and humane, there is not a doubt, but slavery, in its practice, as a system deprives these millions of knowledge, takes away from them the Bible, keeps a race in heathen ignorance in a Christian land, denies to the slaves' compensation for their labor, the rights of marriage and of the parental relation, which are respected even among the most savage nations. It sustains an iniquitous internal slave trade, it corrupts the owners and casts a slur upon the dignity of labor. It acts as an incubus on public improvement, and invitiates public morals, and it proves a very formidable obstacle to religion, advancement, and national unity, and so long as it shall remain a part of the American Constitution, it gives a living lie to the imposing declaration, all men are free and equal. Where the whole machinery of government is capable of being changed or modified by the will of the people, while the written Constitution remains, and where hereditary and territorial differences of opinion exist on very important subjects, it is not surprising that party spirit should run very high. Where the highest offices in the state are neither lucrative enough nor permanent enough to tempt ambition, where in addition their occupants are appointed by the president merely for a short term, and where the highest dignity frequently proceeds a lifelong obscurity, the notoriety of party leadership offers a great inducement to the aspiring. Party spirit pervades the middle and lower ranks. Every man, almost every woman, belongs to some party or other, and aspires to some political influence. Any person who takes a prominent part, either in local or general politics, is attacked on the platform and by the press, with a fierceness, a scurrility, and a vulgarity, which spare not even the sanctity of private life. The men of wealth, education, and talent, who have little either to gain or lose, and who would not yield up any carefully adopted principle to the insensitive clamour of an unbridled populace, stand aloof from public affairs, with very few exceptions. The men of letters, the wealthy merchants, the successful in any profession are not to be met with in the political arena, and frequently abstain even from voting at the elections. This indisposition to mix and politics probably arises both from the coarse abuse which assails public men, and from the admitted inability, under present circumstances, to stem the tide of corrupt practices, mob law and intimidation, which are placing the United States under a tyranny as severe as that of any privileged class, the despotism of a turbulent and unenlightened majority. Numbers are represented exclusively, and partly in consequence, property, character, and stake in the country are the last things which would be deemed desirable in a candidate for popular favour. Owing to the extraordinary influx of foreigners, an element has been introduced which could scarcely have been entered into in the views of the framers of the Constitution, and is at this time the greatest hindrance to its beneficial working. The large numbers of Irish Romanists who have immigrated to the States, and whose feelings are too often disaffected and anti-American, evade the naturalization laws, and by surreptitiously obtaining votes, as a most mischievous influence upon the elections. Education has not yet so permeated the heterogeneous mass of the people as to tell effectually upon their choice of representatives. The electors are caught by claptrap, noisy declamation, and specious promises coupled with laudatory comments upon the sovereign people. As the times for the elections approach, the candidates of the weaker party endeavor to obtain favour and notoriety by leading a popular cry. The declamatory vehemence, with which certain members of the Democratic Party endeavored to fasten a quarrel upon England at the close of 1855, is a specimen of the political capital which is too often relied upon in the States. The enormous numbers of immigrants who annually acquire the rights of citizenship without any other qualification for the franchise than their inability to use it aright by their ignorance, turbulence, and often by their viciousness, tend still further to degrade the popular assemblies. It is useless to speculate upon the position in which America would be without the introduction of this terrible foreign element. It may be admitted that the Republican form of government has not had a fair trial. Its present state gives rise to serious doubts in the minds of many thinking men in the States, whether it can long continue in its present form. The want of the elements of permanency in the government keeps many persons from entering public life, and it would appear that merit and distinguishing talent, when accompanied by such a competence as renders a man independent of the emoluments of office, are by no means a passport to success. The stranger visiting the United States is surprised with the entire absence of gentlemanly feeling in political affairs. They are pervaded by a course and repulsive vulgarity, they are seldom alluded to in the conversation of the upper classes, and the ruling power in this vast community is in danger of being abandoned to corrupt agitators and Norsi charlatans. The President, the members of Congress, and to a still greater extent the members of the state legislatures, are the delegates of a tyrannical majority rather than the representatives of the people. The million succeeds in exacting an amount of cringing political subserviency in attempting to obtain which, in a like degree, few despots have been successful. The absence of a property qualification, the short term for which the representatives are chosen, and the want in many instances of a pecuniary independence among them, combined with a variety of other circumstances, place the members of the legislatures under the direct control of the populace. They are its servile tools, and are subject to its wayward impulses and its proverbial fickleness, hence the remarkable absence of any fixed line of policy. The public acts of America are isolated, they appear to be framed for the necessities of the moment under the influence of popular clamor or pressure, and sometimes even seem neither to recognize engagements entered into in the past or the probable course of events in the future. America does not possess a traditional policy, and she does not recognize any broad and well-defined principle as the rule for her conduct. The national acts of spoilation or meanness which have been sanctioned by the legislature may be distinctly traced to the manner in which the primary elections are conducted. It is difficult, if not impossible, for the European governments to do more than guess at the part which America will take on any great question, whether in the event of a collision between nations she will observe an impartial neutrality or throw the weight of her influence into the scale of liberty or despotism. It is to be feared that political morality is in a very low state. The ballot secures the electors from even the breath of censure by making them irresponsible. Few men dare to be independent. The plea of expediency is often used in extenuation of the grossest political dishonesty. To obtain political favor or position a man must stoop very low. He must cultivate the goodwill of the ignorant and the vicious. He must excite and minister to the passions of the people. He must flatter the bad and assail the honorable with unmerited opprobrium, while he makes the assertion that his country has a monopoly of liberty, the very plan which he is pursuing shows that it is fettered by mob rule. No honorable man can use these arts, which are, however, a high road to political eminence. It is scarcely necessary to remark upon the effect which is produced in society, generally, by this political corruption. The want of a general and high standard of morality is very apparent. That dishonesty, which is so notoriously and often successfully practiced in political life, is not excluded from the dealings of man with man. It is gested about under the name of smartness, and commanded under that of cuteness, till the rule becomes a frequent and practical application, that the disgrace attending a dishonorable transaction lies only in its detection, that a line of conduct which custom has sanctioned in public life cannot be very blameable in individual action. While the avenues to distinction in public life are in great measure closed against men of honor, wealth offers a sure road to eminence, and the acquisition of it is the great object followed. It is often sought and obtained by means from which considerations of honesty and morality are omitted. But there is not, as with us, that righteous censorship of public opinion which brands dishonesty with infamy and places the offender apart, in a splendid leprosy from the society to which he hoped wealth would be a passport. If you listen to the conversation in the cars, steam boats and hotels, you become painfully impressed with the absence of moral truth which pervades the country. The success of Barnum, the immense popularity of its infamous autobiography, and the pride which large numbers feel in his success, instins the perverted moral sense which is very much the result of the absence of principle in public life, for the example of men in the highest positions in a state must influence the masses powerfully either for good or evil. A species of moral obliquity pervades a large class of the community by which the individuals composing it are prevented from discerning between truth and falsehood, except as either tends to their own personal aggrandizement. Thus truth is at a fearful discount, and men exult in successful roguery as though a new revelation had authorized them to rank it among the cardinal virtues. These remarks apply to a class, unfortunately a very numerous one, of the existence of which none are more painfully conscious than the good among the Americans themselves. Of the upper class of merchants, manufacturers, sip-builders, etc., it would be difficult to speak too highly. They have acquired a worldwide reputation for their uprightness, punctuality, and honorable dealings in all mercantile transactions. The oppression which is exercised by a tyrant majority is one leading cause of the numerous political associations which exist in the States. They are the weapons with which the weaker side combats the numerically superior party. When a number of persons hit upon a grievance, real or supposed, they unite themselves into a society and invite delegates from other districts. With a celerity which can scarcely be imagined, declarations are issued in papers established advocating party views, public meetings are held, and a complete organization is secured with ramifications extending all over the country. A formidable and compact body thus arises, and it occasionally happens that such a society, originating in the weakness of a minority, becomes strong enough to dictate a course of action to the executive. Of all the associations ever formed, none promised to exercise so important an influence as that of the Know-Nothings or the American Party. It arose out of the terrific speed of a recognized evil, namely the power exercised upon the legislature by foreigners, more especially by the Irish Romanists. The great influx of aliens, chiefly Irish and Germans, who speedily or unscrupulously obtained the franchise, had caused much alarm throughout the country. It was seen that the former, being under the temporal and spiritual dominion of their priests, and through them under an Italian prince, were exerting a most baneful influence upon the republican institutions of the states. Already in one or two more states the Romanists had organized themselves to interfere with the management of the public schools. This alarm paved the way for the rapid expansion of the new party which at first made its appearance before men's eyes with a secret organization and enormous political machinery. Its success was unprecedented, favored by the secrecy of the ballad. It succeeded in placing its nominees in all the responsible offices in several of the states. Other parties appeared paralyzed, and men yielded before a mysterious power of whose real strength they were in complete ignorance. The avowed objects of the Know-Nothings were to establish new naturalization laws, prohibiting any from acquiring the franchise without a residence of twenty-one years in the states, to procure the exclusion of Romanists from all public offices, to restore the working of the Constitution to its original purity, and to guarantee to the nation religious freedom of free Bible and free schools, in fact, to secure to Americans the rights which they are in danger of ceasing to possess, namely that of governing themselves. The objects avowed in the preliminary address were high and holy. They stirred the patriotism of those who arrived under the tyranny of an heterogeneous majority, while the mystery of nocturnal meetings, and a secret organization, conciliated the support of the young and ardent. For a time a hope was afforded the revival of a pure form of Republican government, but unfortunately the Know-Nothing Party contained the elements of dissolution within itself. Some of its principles savored of the intolerance and of persecution for religious opinions, and it ignored the subject of slavery. This can never be long excluded from any party consideration, and though politicians strive to evade it, the question still recurs, and will force itself into notice. Little more than a year after the Know-Nothings were first heard of, they came into collision with the subject in the summer of 1855, and after stormy dissensions at their great convention broke up into several branches, some of which totally altered or abandoned the original objects of their association. Their triumph was brief. Some of the states in which they were the most successful have witnessed their signal overthrow, and it is to be feared that no practical good will result from their future operations. But the good cause of constitutional government in America is not lost with their failure. Public opinion, whenever it shall be fairly appealed to, will declare itself in favor of truth and order. The conservative principle, though dormant, is yet powerful, and though we may smile at Republican inconsistencies and regret the state into which Republican government has fallen, it is likely that America contains the elements of renovation within herself, and will yet present to the world the sublime spectacle of a free people governing itself by just laws and rejoicing in the purity of its original Republican institutions. The newspaper press is one of the most extraordinary features in the United States. Its influence is omnipresent. Every party in religion, politics, or morals speaks not by one, but by fifty organs, and every nicely defined shade of opinion has its voices also. Every town of large size has from ten to twenty daily papers. Every village has its three or four, and even a collection of huts produces its one daily, or two or three weeklies. These prints started to exist without any fiscal restrictions. There is neither stamp nor paper duty. Newspapers are not a luxury, as with us, but a necessary of life. Very in price from one halfpenny to three pence, and no workman who could afford his daily bread would think of being without his paper. Hundreds of them are sold in the hotels at breakfast time, and in every steamer and railway car, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Western Prairies, the traveller is assailed by newsboys with dozens of them for sale. They are bought in hundreds everywhere, and are greedily devoured by men, women, and children. Almost as soon as the locality of a town is chosen a paper starts into life, which always has the effect of creating an antagonist. The newspapers in the large city spare no expense in obtaining, either by telegraph or otherwise, the earliest intelligence of all that goes on in the world. Every item of English news appears in the journals, from the movements of the court to those of the literary, and a weekly summary of parliamentary intelligence is always given. Any remarkable law proceedings are also succinctly detailed. It follows that a dweller at Cincinnati, or New Orleans, is as nearly well-versed in English affairs as a resident of Birmingham, and English politics and movements in general are very frequent subjects of conversation. Since the commencement of the Russian War, the anxiety for English intelligence has increased, and every item of Crimean or Baltic news, as recorded in the letters of the special correspondence, is reprinted in the American papers without abridgment, and is devoured by all classes of readers. The great fault of most of these journals is their gross personality, even the privacy of domestic life is invaded by their argous-eyed scrutiny. The papers discern everything, and as everybody reads, no current events, whether in politics, religion, or the world at large, are unknown to the masses. The contents of an American paper are very miscellaneous. Besides the news of the day, it contains congressional and legal reports, exciting fiction, and reports of sermons, religious discussions, and religious anniversaries. It pries into every department of society, and informs its readers as to the doings and condition of all. Thus every party and sect has a daily register of the most minute sayings and doings, and proceedings and progress of every other sect, and as truth and error are continually brought before the masses, they have the opportunity to know and compare. There are political parties under the names of Whigs, Democrats, No-Nothings, Free-Soilers, Fusionists, Hunkers, Woolly-Heads, Doe-Faces, Hard-Shells, Soft-Shells, Silver-Greyes, and I know not what, besides, all of them extremely puzzling to the stranger but of great local significance. There are about a hundred so-called religious denominations, from the Orthodox bodies and their subdivisions to those professing the lawless fanaticism of Mormonism, or the chilling dogmas of atheism. All these parties have their papers, and each movement has its organ. The women's rights movement and the spiritual manifestation movement have several. There is a continual multiplication of papers corresponding not only to the increase of population, but to that of parties and vagaries. The increasing call for editors and writers brings person in their ranks who have neither the education nor the intelligence to fit them for so important an office as the irresponsible guidance of the people. They make up for their deficiencies in knowledge and talent by fiery and unprincipled partisanship, and augment the passions and prejudices of their readers instead of placing the truth before them. The war carried on between papers of opposite principles is something perfectly terrific. The existence of many of these prints depends on the violent passions which they may excite in their supporters, and frequently the editors are men of the most unprincipled character. The papers advocating the origins of the different religious denominations are not exempt from the charge of personalities and abusive writing. No discord is so dread as that carried on under the cloak of religion, and religious journalism in the States is on a superlatively bitter footing. But evil as is, to a great extent, the influence exercised by the press, terrible as is its scrutiny, and unlimited as is its power, destitute of principle as it is in great measure, it has its bright as well as its dark side. Theory's opinions, men and things are examined into and sifted until all can understand their truth and error. The argument of antiquity or authority is exploded and ridiculed, and the men who seek to sustain antiquated error on the foundation of a feat tradition are compelled to prove it by scripture or reason. As such are the multitudinous and torturous ways in which everything is discussed. That multitudes of persons who have neither the leisure nor ability to reflect for themselves know not what to believe, and there is a very obvious absence of attachment to clear and strong defined principles. The great circulation which the newspapers enjoy may be gathered without giving copious statistics from the fact that one out of the many New York journals has a circulation of one hundred and eighty-seven thousand copies. The New York Tribune may be considered the leading journal of America, but it adheres to one set of principles, and Mr. Horace Greeley, the editor, has the credit of being a powerful advocate of the claims of morality and humanity. It is impossible for a stranger to form any estimate of the influence really possessed by religion in America. I saw nothing which led me to doubt the assertion made by persons who have opportunities of forming an opinion that America and Scotland are the two most religious countries in the world. The Sabbath is well observed, not only as might be expected in the New England states, but in the large cities of the Union, and even on the coasts of the Pacific, the legislature of California has passed an act for its better observance in that state. It is probable that, in a country where business pursuits and keen competition are carried to such an unheard of extent, all classes feel the need to rest on the seventh day and regard the Sabbath as a physical necessity. The churches of all denominations are filled to overflowing, the proportion of communicans to attendance is very large, and the foreign missions and other religious societies are supported on a scale of remarkable liberality. There is no established church or dominant religious persuasion in the states. There are no national endowments. All are on the same footing, and live or die as they obtain the suffrages of the people. While the state does not recognize any one form of religion, it might be expected that she would assist the ministers of all. Such is not the case, and though government has wisely thought it necessary to provide for the education of the people, it has not thought it advisable to make any provision for the maintenance of religion. One worships after his own fashion, the sex are numerous and subdivided, and all enjoy the blessings of a complete religious toleration. Strange sex have arisen, the very names of which are scarcely known in England, and each has numerous adherents. It may be expected that fanaticism would run to a great height in the states. Among the one hundred different denominations which are returned in the census-tables, the following designations occur. Mermanites and Burgers, Believers in God, Children of Peace, Disunionists, Danian, Democratic Gospel, and Ebenezer Socialists, Free Inquirers, Inspired Church, Millerites, Mennonites, New Lights, Perfectionists, Pathanites, Pantheists, Tunkards, Restorationists, Superalists, Cosmopolites, and Hosts of Others. The clergy depend for their salaries upon the congregations for whom they officiate, and upon private endowments. The total value of church property in the United States is estimated at eighty-six million four hundred thousand dollars, of which one half is owned in the state of Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania. The number of churches exclusive of those in the newly organized territories is about thirty-eight thousand. There is one church for every six hundred and forty-six of the population. The voluntary system is acted upon by each denomination, though it is slightly modified in the Episcopalian Church. In it, however, the bishops are elected, the clergy are chosen by the people, and its affairs are regulated by convention. It is the oldest of the denominations, and is therefore entitled to the first notice. It has thirty-eight bishops, seventeen hundred fourteen ministers, and one hundred and five thousand communicants. It has fourteen hundred churches, and its church property is estimated at eleven million two hundred thousand dollars. A large number of the educated and wealthy are members of this body, with the exception of some omissions and alterations are the same as those of the Church of England. Some of its bishops are men of very high attainments. Dr. McIlvain, the Bishop of Ohio, is a man of great learning and piety, and is well known in England by his theological writings. The Methodists are the largest religious body in America, as at home they have their strong sectional differences, but they are very useful and are particularly acceptable to the lower orders of society and among the colored population. They possess twelve thousand four hundred churches, eighty four hundred ministers, and one million seven hundred thousand communicants, and the value of their church property exceeds fourteen million dollars. The Presbyterians are perhaps the most important of the religious bodies as regards influence education and wealth. Their stronghold is in New England. They have seventy seven hundred congregations, fifty eight hundred ministers, and six hundred and eighty thousand communicants. Their church property is of the value of fourteen million dollars. The Baptists are very numerous. They have eighty one hundred churches, eighty five hundred ministers, one million fifty eight thousand communicants, and church property to the amount of eleven million dollars. The Congregationalists possess sixteen hundred churches, eighteen hundred ministers, and two hundred and seven thousand communicants. Their property is of the value of eight million dollars. The Roman Catholics possessed at the date of the last census one thousand one hundred churches and church property to the amount of nine million dollars. There is church accommodation for about fourteen million persons or considerably more than half the population. There are thirty five thousand Sabbath schools with two hundred and fifty thousand teachers and twenty five million scholars. Besides the large number of churches, religious services are held in many schools and courthouses and even in forests and fields. The dissemination of the Bible is on the increase. In the last year the Bible Society distributed upwards of eleven million copies. The Society for Religious Publications employed thirteen hundred co-portures and affected sales during the year to the amount of five hundred twenty six thousand dollars. The principle of the religious societies are for the observance of the Sabbath, for temperance, anti-slavery objects, home missions, foreign missions, etc., and the last general receipts of all these societies were three million fifty three thousand dollars. In the state of Massachusetts the Unitarians are a very influential body, numbering many of the most intellectual and highly educated of the population. These however are divided upon the amount of divinity with which they shall invest our Lord. The hostile spirit which animates some of the religious journals has been already noted. There is frequently a good deal of rivalry between the members of the different sects, but the way in which the ministers of the Orthodox denominations act harmoniously together for the general good is one of the most pleasing features in America. The charitable religious associations are on a gigantic scale and are conducted with a liberality to which we in England are strangers. The foreign missions are on a peculiarly excellent system and the self-denying labors and zeal of their missionaries are fully recognized by all who have come in contact with them. No difficulty is experienced in obtaining money for these objects. It is only necessary to state that a certain sum is required and without setting any begging machinery to work, donations exceeding the amount flow in from all quarters. Altogether it would appear from the data which are given that the religious state of America is far more satisfactory than could be expected from so heterogeneous a population. The New England states possess to a great extent the externals of religion and inherit in a modified degree the principles of their Puritan ancestors, and the New Englanders have emigrated westward in large numbers, carrying with them to the newly settled states the leaven of religion and morality. The churches of every denomination are crowded and within my observation by as many gentlemen as ladies, but that class of aspiring spirits, known under the name of young America, boasts the perfect freedom from religious observances of every kind. There is a creed known by the name of universalism, which is a compound of antinomianism with several other forms of error, and embraces tens of thousands within its pale. It often verges upon the most complete pantheism and is very popular with large numbers of the youth of America. There is a considerable amount of excitement kept up by the religious bodies in the shape of public reunions, congregational soirees, and the like, producing a species of religious dissipation very unfavorable, I should suppose, to the growth of true piety. This system, besides aiding the natural restlessness of the American character, gives rise to a good deal of spurious religion, and shortens the lives and impairs the usefulness of the ministers by straining and exhausting their physical energies. To the honor of the clergy of the United States it must be observed that they keep remarkably clear from party politics, contrasting in this respect very favorably with the priests of the Church of Rome, who throw the weight of their influence into the scale of extreme democracy and fanatical excesses. The unity of action which their ecclesiastical system ensures to them makes their progressive increase much to be deprecated. It is owing in great measure to the efforts of the ministers of religion that the unbending principles of truth and right have any hold upon the masses. They are ever to be found on the side of rational and constitutional liberty in its extreme form, as opposed to license and anarchy. And they give the form of practical action to the better feelings of the human mind. Amid the great difficulties with which they are surrounded, owing to the want of any fixed principles of right among the masses, they are ever seeking to impress upon the public mind that the undeviating laws of morality and truth cannot be violated with impunity any more by millions than by individuals, and that to nations as to individuals the day of reckoning must sooner or later arrive. The voluntary system in religion, as it exists in its unmodified form in America, has one serious attendant evil. Where a minister depends for his income, not upon the contributions to a common fund, as is the case in the Free Church of Scotland, but upon the congregation under which he ministers, his conscious is to a dangerous extent under the power of his hearers. In many instances his uncertain pecuniary relations with them must lead him to slur over popular sins, and keep the unpalatable doctrines of the Bible in the background, practically neglecting to convey to fallen and wicked men his Creator's message, repent and believe the Gospel. It has been found impossible in the States to find a just medium between State support, and the apathy which in the opinion of many it has a tendency to engender, and an unmodified voluntary system, with the subservience and high pressure which are incidental to it. Be this as it may, the clergy of the United States deserve the highest honor for their highest standard of morality, the fervor of their ministrations, the zeal of their practice, and their abstinence from politics. CHAPTER XIX. At a time when the deficiencies of our own educational system are so strongly felt, it may be well to give an outline of that pursued in the States. The following statistics, taken from the last census, show that our transatlantic brethren have made great progress in moral and intellectual interests. At the period when the enumeration was made, there were eighty thousand nine hundred fifty-eight public schools, with ninety-two thousand teachers, and two million nine hundred thousand scholars, one hundred and nineteen colleges with twelve thousand students, forty-four schools of theology, thirty-six schools of medicine, and sixteen schools of law. Fifty millions of dollars were annually spent for education, and the proportion of scholars to the community was as one to five. But it is to the common school system that the attention should be particularly directed. I may promise that it has one unavoidable defect, namely, the absence of religious instruction. It would be neither possible nor right to educate the children in any denominational creed, or to instruct them in any particular doctrinal system. But would it not, to take the lowest ground, be both prudent and politic to give them the knowledge of the Bible, as the only undeviating rule and standard of truth and right? May not the obliquity of moral vision, which is allowed to exist among a large class of Americans, be in some degree chargeable to those who have the care of their education, who do not place before them, as a part of their instruction, those principles of truth and morality, which, as revealed in Holy Scripture, lay the whole universe under obligations to obedience. History and observation alike show the little influence practically possessed by principles destitute of superior authority, how small the restraint exercised by consciousness is, and how far those may wander into error who once desert life's polar star the fear of God. When regretting the exclusion of religious instruction from the common school system, the difficulties which beset the subject must not be forgotten, the multiplicity of the sex, and the very large number of Roman Catholics. In schools supported by a rate levied indiscriminately on all, to form a course of instruction which could bear the name of a religious one, and yet meet the views of all, and clash with the consciousness and prejudices of none, was manifestly impossible. The religious public in the United States has felt that there was no tenable ground between thorough religious instruction and the broadest toleration. Driven by the circumstances of their country to accept the latter course, they have exerted themselves to meet this omission in the public schools by a most comprehensive Sabbath school system. But only a portion of the children under secular instruction in the week attend to these schools, and it must be admitted that to bestow intellectual culture upon the pupils, without giving them religious instruction, is to draw forth and add to the powers of the mind without giving it any helm to guide it. In other words, it is to increase the capacity without diminishing the propensity to do evil. Apart from this important consideration the educational system pursued in the States is worthy of the highest praise, and of an enlightened people in the nineteenth century. The education is conducted at the public expense, and the pupils consequently pay no fees. Parents feel that a free education is as much a part of the birthright of their children as the protection which the law affords to their life and property. The schools called common schools are supported by an education rate, and in each school are under the administration of a general board of education, with local boards elected by all who pay the rate. In the State of Massachusetts alone the sum of nine hundred twenty-two thousand dollars was raised within the year, being at the rate of very nearly a dollar for every inhabitant. Under the supervision of the general board of education in the State, schools are erected in districts according to the educational necessities of the population, which are periodically ascertained by a census. To give some idea of the system adopted I will just give a sketch of the condition of education in the State of New York as being the most populous and important. There is a State tax or appropriation of eight hundred thousand dollars, and this is supplemented by a rate levied on real and personal property. Taking as an authority the return made to the legislature for the year ending in eighteen fifty-four, the total sum expended for school purposes within the State amounted to two million four hundred seventy thousand dollars. The total number of children in the organized districts of the State was one million one hundred fifty thousand, of whom eight hundred sixty three thousand were registered as being under instruction. The general management of education within the State is vested in a central board with local boards in each of the organized districts to which the immediate government and official supervision of the schools are entrusted. The system comprises the common schools with their primary and upper departments, a normal school for the preparation of teachers, and a free academy. In the City of New York there are two hundred twenty-four schools in the receipt of public money, of which twenty-five are for colored children, and the number of pupils registered is given at one hundred thirty-four thousand. These common or reward schools are extremely handsome and are fitted up at great expense, with every modern improvement in heating and ventilation. Children of every class, residing within the limits of the City, are admissible without payment, as the parents of all are supposed to be rated in proportion to their means. There is a principle to each school, assisted by a numerous and efficient staff of teachers, who in their turn are expected to go through a course of studies at the normal school. The number of teachers required for these schools is very great, as the daily attendance in two of them exceeds two thousand. The education given is so very superior, and habits of order and propriety are so admirably inculcated, that it is not uncommon to see the children of wealthy storekeepers side by side with those of working mechanics. In each school there is one large assembly room capable of accommodating from five hundred to one thousand children and ten or twelve capacious classrooms. Order is one important rule, and that it may be acted upon. There is no overcrowding, though pupils being seated at substantial mahogany desks holding only two. The instruction given comprises all the branches of a liberal education with the exception of languages. There is no municipal community out of America in which the boon of a first-rate education is so freely offered to all as in the City of New York. There is no child of want who may not freely receive an education which will fit him for any office in his country. The common school is one of the glories of America, and every citizen may be justly proud of it. It brings together, while in a pliant condition, the children of people of different origins, and besides diffusing knowledge among them, it softens the prejudices of race and party, and carries on a continual process of assimilation. The Board of Education of New York has lately thrown open several of these schools in the evening with very beneficial results. The number of pupils registered last year was ninety-three hundred. Of these, thirty-four hundred were above the age of sixteen and under twenty-one, and eleven hundred were above the age of twenty-one. These evening schools entailed an additional expense of seventeen thousand five hundred dollars, the whole expenditure for school purposes in the city, being four hundred and thirty-one thousand dollars. In the ward and evening schools of New York, one hundred thirty-three thousand individuals received instruction. Each ward or educational district elects two commissioners, two inspectors, and eight trustees. The duties of the inspectors are very arduous, as the examinations are frequent and severe. The crowning educational advantage offered by this admirable system is the Free Academy. This academy receives its pupils solely from the common schools. Every person representing himself is a candidate and must be more than thirteen years of age. Having attended a common school for twelve months, he must produce a certificate from the principal that he has passed a good examination in spelling, reading, writing, English grammar, arithmetic, geography, elementary bookkeeping, history of the United States, and algebra. This institution extends to the pupils in the common schools the advantage of a free education in those higher departments of learning which cannot be acquired without considerable expense in any other college. The yearly examination of candidates for admission takes place immediately after the common school examinations in July. There are at present nearly six hundred students under the tuition of fourteen professors, and as many tutors as may be required. The course of study extends over a period of five years, and is very complete and severe. Owing to the principal adopted in their selection, the pupils, representing every social and pecuniary grade in society, present a very high degree of scholarship and ability. In this academy the vestiges of antagonism between the higher and lower classes are swept away. Indeed, the poor man will feel that he has a greater interest in sustaining this educational system than the rich, because he can only obtain through it those advantages for his children which the money of the wealth he can procure from other sources. He will be content with his daily toil, happy in the thought that, by the wise provision of his government, the avenues to fame, preferment, and wealth are opened as freely to his children as to those of the richest citizen in the land. In order to secure a supply of properly qualified teachers, the Board of Education has established a normal school, which numbers about four hundred pupils. Most of these are assistant teachers in the common schools, and attend the normal school on Saturday to enable themselves to obtain further attainments and higher qualifications for their profession. Under this system of popular education, the average cost per scholar for five years, including books, stationary, fuel, and all other expenses, is seven dollars two cents per annum. This system of education is followed in nearly all the states, and while it reflects the highest credit on America, it contrasts strangely with the niggered plan pursued in England, where so important a thing as the education of the people depends almost entirely on precarious subscriptions and private benevolence. With a gratuitous and comprehensive educational system, it may excite some surprise that the citizens of New York and other of the populous cities are compelled to supplement the common schools with those for the shoeless, the ragged, and the vicious, very much on the plan of our Scotch and English ragged schools. Already the large cities of the New World are approximating to the condition of those in the old, in producing a subsistence or deposit of the drunken, the dissolute, the vicious, and the wretched. With parents of this class, education for their offspring is considered of no importance, and the benevolent founders of these schools are compelled to offer material inducements to the children to attend, in the shape of food and clothing. At these schools, in the place of the cleanly, neat, and superior appearance of the children in the common schools, dirt, rags, shoeless feet, and pallid, vicious, precocious countenances are to be seen. Nothing destroys so effectually the external distinguishing peculiarities of race as the habit of evil. There is a uniformity of expression invariably produced, which is most painful. These children are early taught to look upon virtue as only a cloak to be worn by the rich. This dangerous and increasing class in New York is composed almost entirely of foreign immigrants. The instruction in these schools is given principally by ladies of high station and education. It is a noble feature in New York, high life, and in process of time may diminish the gulf which is widening between the different classes, and may lessen the hideous contrasts which are presented between princely fortunes on the one hand and vicious poverty on the other. Taking the various schools throughout the Union, it is estimated that between four and five million individuals are at this time receiving education. To turn from the social to the material features of the United States, their system of internal communication deserves a brief notice, for by it their resources have been developed to a prodigious extent. The system of railways, telegraphs, and canal and river navigation presents an indication of the wealth and advancement of the United States, as well as any other feature of her progress. She contains more miles of railway than all the rest of the world put together. In a comparatively new country like America, many of the items of expense which attend to the construction of railways in England are avoided. The initiatory expenses are very small. In most of the states, all that is necessary is for the company to prove that it is provided with the means to carry out its scheme when it obtains a charter from the legislature at a very small cost. In several states, including the populous ones of New York and Ohio, no special charter is required, as a general railway law prescribes the rules to be observed by joint stock companies. Materials iron alone accepted are cheap, and the right of way is usually freely granted. In the older states, land would cost not more than twenty pounds an acre, wood frequently costs nothing more than the labor of cutting it, and the very level surface of the country renders tunnels, cuttings, and embankments generally unnecessary. The average cost per mile is about thirty-eight thousand dollars, or seventy-six hundred pounds. In the states where land has become exceedingly valuable, land damages form a heavy item in the construction of new lines, but in the south and west the case is reversed, and the proprietors are willing to give as much land as may be required in return for having the resource of their localities opened up by railway communication. It is estimated that the cost of railways in the new states will not exceed four thousand pounds per mile. The termini are plain, and have been erected at a very small expense, and many of the wayside stations are only wooden sheds. Few of the lines have a double line of rails, and the bridges or viaducts are composed of logs of wood, with little iron work and less paint, except in a few instances. And where the lines intersect, cultivated districts, fences are seldom seen, and the paucity of porters and other officials materially reduces the working expenses. The common rate of speed is between twenty-two and thirty miles an hour, but there are express trains which are warranted to perform sixty in a like period. The fuel is very cheap, being billets of wood. The passenger and goods traffic on nearly all the lines is enormous, and it is stated that most of them pay a dividend of between eight to fifteen percent. The primary design has been to connect the sea coast with all parts of the interior. The ulterior is to unite the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. At the present time there are about twenty-five thousand miles of railway and operation and course of construction, and the average rate of fare is seldom more than one pence per mile. Already the chief cities of the Atlantic have been connected with the vast valley of the Mississippi, and before long the regions bordering on Lake Huron and Lake Superior will be united with Mobile and New Orleans. In addition to this enormous system of railway communication, the canal and river navigation extends over ten thousand miles, and rather more than three thousand steamboats float on American waters alone. The facilities for telegraph communication in the states are a further evidence of the enterprise of this remarkable people. They now have twenty-two thousand miles of telegraph in operation, and the cost of transmitting a message is less than a half penny a word for any distance under two hundred miles. The cost of construction, including every outlay, is about thirty pounds per mile. The wires are carried along the railways, through forests and across cities, rivers, and prairies. Messages passing from one very distant point to another have usually to be rewritten at an intermediate station, though by an improved plan they have been transmitted direct from New York to Mobile, a distance of eighteen hundred miles. By the Cincinnati telegraphic route to New Orleans, a distance from New York of two thousand miles, the news brought by the British steamer to Sandy Hook at eight in the morning has been telegraphed to New Orleans, and before eleven o'clock the effects produced by it upon speculations there have been returned to New York. The message accomplishing a distance of four thousand miles in three hours. The receipts are enormous, for in consequence of the very small sum charged for transmitting messages, as many as six hundred are occasionally sent along the principal lines in one day. The seven principal morning papers in New York paid in one year fifty thousand dollars for dispatches, and fourteen thousand for special messages. Messages connected with markets, public news, the weather, and the rise and fall of stocks are incessantly passing between the great cities. Any change in the weather likely to affect the cotton crop is known immediately in the northern cities. While in the exchange at Boston I witnessed the receipt of a telegraphic dispatch announcing that a heavy shower was falling at New Orleans, it must not be supposed that there is no poverty in the New World. During one year one hundred thirty five thousand paupers were in the receipt of relief, of whom fifty nine thousand were in the state of New York, but to show the evil influence of the foreign, more especially the Irish element in America, it is stated that seventy five percent of the criminals and paupers are foreigners. The larger portion of the crime committed is done under the influence of spirits, and to impose a check upon their sale that celebrated enactment known under the name of the main law has been placed upon the statute books of several of the states, including the important ones of New York, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Nebraska. This law prohibits, under heavy penalties, the manufacture or sale of alcoholic liquors. It has been passed an obedience to the will of the people as declared at the elections, and though to us its provision seems somewhat arbitrary, its working has produced very salutary effects. When so much importance is attached to education and such a liberal provision is made for it, it is to be expected that a taste for reading would be universally diffused. And such is the case. America teams with books. Every English work worth reading is reprinted in a cheat form in the states as soon as the first copy crosses the Atlantic. Our reviews and magazines appear regularly at half price, and Dickens's household words and Chambers' journal enjoy an enormous circulation without any pecuniary benefit being obtained by the authors. Everyone reads the newspapers and Harper's magazine, and everyone buys bad novels on worse paper in the cars and steamboats. The states, although amply supplied with English literature, have many popular authors of their own, among whom may be named Prescott, Bancroft, Washington Irving, Stowe, Stevens, Weatherall, Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, and Bryant. Books are very cheap wherever the editions of English works are concerned, and a library is considered an essential part of the fitting up of a house. In many of the states there are public libraries supported by a rate. In the state of New York, in the year ending 1854, the commissioners of education received $90,500 for libraries. Perhaps the greatest advantage offered to immigrants is the opportunity everywhere afforded of investing small sums of money advantageously. In England, in most branches of trade, the low rate of wages renders it impossible for the operative to save any portion of his earnings, and even when he is able to do so, he can rarely obtain a higher rate of interest for his money than that which the savings bank offer. Economized as he may, his hard-won savings seldom are sufficient to afford him a provision in old age. In America, on the contrary, the man who possesses five pounds or ten pounds has every hope of securing a competence. He may buy land in newly settled districts, which can sometimes be obtained at seven shillings an acre, and then hold it till it becomes valuable, or he may obtain a few shares in a thriving corporate concern. A hundred ways present themselves to the man of intelligence and industry by which he may improve and increase his little fortune. The necessaries of life are abundant and cheap, and aided by a free education he has the satisfaction of a well- grounded hope that his children will rise to positions of respectability and affluence, while his old age will be far removed from the pressure of want. The knowledge that each shilling saved may produce ten or twenty by judicious investment is a constant stimulus to his industry. Yet, from all that I have seen and heard, I should think that Canada West offers a more advantageous field for immigrants, equally free and unburdened by taxation, with the same social and educational advantages, with an increasing demand for labour of every kind, with a rich soil, extraordinary facilities of communication, and a healthy climate, pauperism is unknown, fluctuations in commercial affairs are comparatively small, and above all the immigrant is not exposed to the loss of everything which he possesses as soon as he lands. An infamous class of swindlers called immigrant-runners meet the poor adventurer on his arrival at New York. They sell him second class tickets at the price of first class, forged passes, and tickets to take him one thousand miles which are only available at the outside for two hundred or three hundred. If he holds out against their exertions he is beaten, reduced, loses his luggage for a time, or is transferred to the tender mercies of the boarding-housekeeper, who speedily deprives him of his hard-earned savings. These runners retard the westered progress of the immigrant in every way. They charge enormous rates for the removal of his luggage from the wharf, they plunder him in railway cars, in steam boats, in lodging-houses, and if Providence saves him from seeking into drunkenness and despair, and he can be no longer detained, they sell him a lot in some non-existent locality, or send him off to the West in search of some pretended employment. Too frequently, after the immigrant has lost his money in property, sickened by disappointment and deserted by hope, he is content to remain at New York, where he contributes to increase that dangerous class already so much feared in the Empire City. One point remains to be noticed, and that is the feeling which exists in America towards England. Much has been done to inflame animosity on each side. Several rivalries have been encouraged, and national jealousies fomented. In travelling through the United States I expected to find a very strong anti-English feeling. In this I was disappointed. It is true that I scarcely ever entered a car, steamboat or hotel, without hearing England made a topic of discussion in connection with war. But except on the few occasions in the West I never heard any other than kindly feelings expressed toward our country. A few individuals was prognosticate failure and disaster and glory in the anticipation of a busting up. But these were generally kernels of militia or newly arrived Irish immigrants. These last certainly are very noisy enemies and are quite ready to subscribe to the maxim that wherever England possesses an interest there an American wrong exists. Some of the papers likewise write against England in no very measured terms, but it must be borne in mind that declamatory speaking and writing are the safety valves of a free community, and the papers from which our opinion of American feeling is generally taken do not represent even a respectable minority in the nation. American commercial interests are closely interwoven with ours, and Brother Jonathan would not lightly go against his own interests by rushing into war on slight pretenses. While I was dining at a hotel in one of the great American cities a gentleman proposed to an English friend of his to drink success to Old England. Nearly two hundred students of a well known college were present, and one of them begged to join in drinking the toast on behalf of his fellow students. For, he added, we, in common with the educated youth of America, look upon England as a venerated mother. I have frequently heard this sentiment expressed in public spaces, and have often heard it remarked that kindly feeling towards England is on the increase in society. The news of the victory of the Alma was received with rejoicing, the heroic self-sacrifice of the cavalry at Balaclava excited enthusiastic admiration, and the glorious stand at Inkerman taught the Americans that their aged parent could still defend the cause of freedom with vigor of youth. The disasters of the winter and the gloomy months of inaction which succeeded it had the effect of damping their sympathies. The prophets of defeat were for a time triumphant, and our fading prestige and reputed incapacity were made the subjects of ill-nature discussion by the press. But when the news of the fall of Sebastopol arrived, the tone of the papers changed, and relying on the oblivious memories of their readers, they declared that they had always prophesied the demolition of Russia. The telegraphic report of the victory was received with rejoicing, and the ship which conveyed it to Boston was saluted with thirty-one guns by the state's artillery. The glory of the republic is based upon its advanced social principles and its successful prosecution of the arts of peace. As the old military despotisms cannot compete with it in wealth and enlightenment, so it attempts no competition with them in standing armies and the arts of war. National vanity is a failing of the Americans, and if their military prowess had never been proved before they might seek to display it on European soil. But their successful struggle with England in the War of Independence renders any such display unnecessary. The institutions of the states do not date from the military ages of the world, and the Federal Constitution has made no provision for offensive war. The feeling of the educated classes and of an immense majority in the free states is believed to be essentially English. Despotism and freedom can never unite, and whatever may be the declamations of the Democratic Party. The opinion of those who are acquainted with the state of popular feeling is that, if the question were seriously mooted, a war with England or a Russian alliance would secure to the promoters of either the indignation and contempt which they would deserve. It is earnestly to be hoped, and I trust that it may be believed, that none of us will live to see the day when two nations, so closely allied by blood, religion, and the love of freedom, shall engage in a horrible and fratricidal war. Such of the foregoing remarks has applied to the results of the visitation of the pure form of Republican government delivered to America by Washington I have hazarded with very great diffidence. In England we know very little of the United States, and however candid the intentions of a tourist may be, it is difficult in a short residence in the country so completely to throw off certain prejudices and misapprehensions as to proceed to the delineation of its social characteristics with any degree of fairness and accuracy. The similarity of language, and to a great extent of customs and manners, renders one prone rather to enter into continual comparisons of America with England than to look at her from the point of view which she really ought to be viewed, namely herself. There are, however, certain salient points which present themselves to the interested observer, and I have endeavored to approach these in as candid a spirit as possible, not exaggerating the obvious faults where there is so much to commend and admire. The following remarks were lately made to me by a liberal and enlightened American on the misapprehension of British observers. The great fault of English travelers in this land very often is that they see all things through spectacles which have been graduated to the age and narrow local dimensions of things in England, and because things here are new and all that is good instead of being concentrated into a narrow space so as to be seen at one glance is widely diffused so as not to be easily gauged, because in other words it is the spring here and not the autumn, and our advance has the step of youth instead of the measured walk of age, and because our refinements have not the precise customs to which they have been accustomed at home, they turn away in mighty dissatisfaction. There are excellencies in varieties and things which differ may both be good. CHAPTER XXXI On reaching Boston I found that my passage had been taken in the Cunard steamer America, reputed to be the slowest and wettest of the whole line. Some of my kind American friends anxious to induce me to remain for the winter with them had exaggerated the dangers and discomforts of a winter passage. The December storms, the three days spent in crossing the Newfoundland banks, steaming at half speed with fog bells ringing and foghorns blowing, the impossibility of going on deck and the disagreeableness of being shut up in a close heated saloon. It was with all these slanders against the ship fresh in my recollection that I saw her in dock on the morning of my leaving America, her large shapeless wall-sided hull looming darkly through a shower of rain. The friends who had first welcomed me to the States accompanied me to the vessel, rendering my departure from them the more regretful, and scarcely had I taken leave of them when a gun was fired, the lashings were cast off, and our huge wheels began their ceaseless revolutions. It was, in some respects, a cheerless embarkation. The Indian summer had passed away, the ground was bound by frost, driving showers of sleet were descending, and a cold, wailing wintry wind was sweeping over the waters of Massachusetts Bay. We were considerably retarded between Boston and Halifax by contrary winds. I had retired early to my birth to sleep away the fatigues of several preceding months, and was awoke about midnight by the most deafening accumulation of sounds which ever stunned my ears. I felt that I was bruised, and that the birth was unusually hard and cold, and after groping about in the pitch darkness I found that I had been thrown out of it upon the floor, a fact soon made self-evident by my being rolled across the cabin, a peculiarly disagreeable course of locomotion. It was impossible to stand or walk, and in crawling across to my birth I was assailed by my portmanteau which was projected violently against me. Further sleep, for some hours, was impossible. Bang, bang, would come a heavy wave against the ship's side, close to my ears, as if trying the strength of her timbers. Crash, crash, as we occasionally slipped heavy seas, with the waves burst over the lofty bulwarks, and with the fall of seven feet at once came thundering down on the deck above. Then one sound asserted its claim to be heard over all the others, a sound as if our decks were being stowed, a gun or some other heavy body had broken loose and could not be secured. The incessant groaning, splitting and heaving, and the roar of the water through the scuppers, it found a tardy egress from the deluge deck, was the result of merely a headwind and an ugly night. Late on the second evening of our voyage I walked on deck. It was the fag end of a gale, and the rain was pouring down upon the slippery planks. Brightly, a skyrocket whizzed upwards from a distant ship, and burst in a shower of flame, followed by two others, signalling our old acquaintance the Canada, bound from Liverpool to Boston. We sent up some fireworks in return, and soon lost sight of the friendly light on her paddle-box. She was the only ship that we saw till we reached the Irish coast. With some of the other passengers I was on deck at five in the morning to see the lights on the heads of Halifax Harbour. It was dark and intensely cold and wet. A shower of rain had frozen on deck during the night, and as it began to melt the water ran off in little sooty reels. Slowly, shivering figures came on deck, men in envelopes of fur, and oil-skin capes and coats, with teeth chattering with cold, with wrinkled brows and blue cold noses. And slowly lightened the clear eastern sky, and the crescent moon and stars disappeared one by one, and gradually the low pine-clad hills of Nova Scotia stood out in dark relief against the light, when all of a sudden, like a glory the broad sun rose behind the purple moorlands, and soon hill and town and lake-like bay were bathed in the cold glow of a winter sunrise. It was now half-past seven. The morning gun had boomed from the citadel, and in honour of such an important event as the arrival of the European steamer, it might have been supposed that the inhabitants of the quiet town of Halifax would have been a stirrer. In this idea a Scotch friend and I stepped ashore with the intention of visiting an Indian curiosity shop. In dismal contrast to the early habits which prevail in the American cities, where sleep is yielded to as a necessity, instead of being indulged in as a luxury, we found the shops closed, and except the people immediately connected with the steamer, none were stirring in the streets but ragged negroes and squalid-looking Indians. A few cute, enterprising Yankees would soon metamorphose the aspect of the city. As an arrogant American once observed to me, it would take a blue nose, a Nova Scotian, as long to put on his hat as for one of our free and enlightened citizens to go from Boston to New Orleans. The appearance of the town was very repulsive. A fall of snow had melted, and mixing with the dust, store-sweepings, cabbage stalks, oyster shells, and other rubbish, had formed a soft and peculiarly penetrating mixture from three to seven inches deep. Eighteen passengers joined the America at Halifax, and among them I was delighted to welcome my cousins, a party of seven, and route from Prince Edward Island to England. The two babies which accompanied them were rather dreaded in prospect, but I believe that their behavior gained them a general approbation. As dogs are not allowed on the poop or in the saloon, a well- conditioned baby is rather a favorite in a ship. Gentlemen of amiable dispositions give it plenty of nursing and tossing, and stewards regard it with benign and smiles, and occasionally offer it tidbits, perloined from dinner. Among the passengers who joined us at Halifax were Captain Leitch, and three of the wrecked officers of the steamship city of Philadelphia, which was lost on Cape Race three months before. Captain Leitch is a remarkable-looking man, very like the portraits of the Count of Monte Cristo. His heroism and presence of mind on the occasion of that terrible disaster were the means of saving the lives of six hundred people, many of whom were women and children. When the ship struck, the panic among this large number of persons was of course awful, but so perfect was the discipline of the crew and so great their attachment to their commander that not a cabin boy left the ship in that season of apprehension without his permission. Captain Leitch said that he would be the last man to quit the ship, and he kept his word, but the excitement, anxiety, and subsequent exposure to cold and fatigue, more especially in his search after the survivors of the ill-fated Arctic, brought on a malady from which he was severely suffering. We had only sixty passengers on board, and the party was a remarkably quiet one. There was a gentleman going to Paris as American consul, a daily animated and untiring advocate of slavery, a Jesuit missionary of agreeable manners and cultivated mind on his way to Rome to receive an Episcopal hat, two Jesuit brethren, five lively French people, and the usual number of commercial travelers, agents, and storekeepers, principally from Canada. There were very few ladies, and only three besides our own party appeared in the saloon. For a few days after leaving Halifax we had a calm sea and fair winds, accompanied with rain, and with the exception of six unhappy passengers who never came upstairs during the whole voyage, all seemed well enough to make the best of things. A brief description of the daily routine on board these ships may serve to amuse those who have never crossed the Atlantic, and may recall agreeable or disagreeable recollections as the case may be to those who have. During the first day or two those who are seasick generally remain downstairs, and those who are well looked sentimentally at the receding land and make acquaintances with whom they walk five or six in a row, bearing down isolated individuals of antisocial habits. After two or three days have elapsed, people generally lose all interest in the novelty and settle down to such pursuits as suit them best. At eight in the morning the dressing-bell rings, and a very few admirable people get up, take a walk on deck, and appear at breakfast at half-past eight. But to most this meal is rendered a superfluity by the supper of the night before, that condemned meal which everybody declaims against, and everybody partakes of. However, if only two or three people appear, the long tables are adorned profusely with cold tongue, ham, Irish stew, mutton chops, broiled salmon, crimped cod, eggs, tea, coffee, chocolate, toast, hot rolls, etc. These vians remain on the table till half-past nine. After breakfast some of the idle ones come up and take a promenade on deck, watch the wind, suggest that it has changed a little, look at the course, ask the captain for the fifteenth time when he expects to be in port, and watch the heaving of the log, Then the officer of the watch invariably tells them that the ship is running a knot or two faster than her real speed, giving a glance of intelligence at the same time to some knowing person near. Many persons, who are in the habit of crossing twice a year, begin cards directly after breakfast, and with only the interruption of meals play until eleven at night. Others are equally devoted to chess, and the commercial travelers produce small square books with columns for dollars and cents, cast up their accounts, and bite the ends of their pens. Abel at twelve calls the passengers to lunch from their various lurking places, and, though dinner shortly succeeds this meal, few disobey the summons. There is a large consumption of pale ale, hotch-potch, cold beef, potatoes, and pickles. These pickles are of a peculiarly brilliant green, but as the forks used are of electro-plate, the daily consumption of copper cannot be ascertained. At four all the tables are spread, Abel rings that toxin of the soul, as Byron has sarcastically, but truthfully termed the dinner-bell, and all the passengers rush in from every quarter of the ship, and seat themselves with an air of expectation till the covers are raised. Grievous disappointments are often disclosed by the uplifted dish-covers, for it must be confessed that to many people dinner is the great event of the day to be speculated upon before and criticized afterwards. There is a terrine of soup at the head of each table, and as soon as the captain takes his seat twelve waders appear in blue jackets, who have been previously standing in a row, dart upon the covers, and after a few minutes of intense clatter the serious business of eating begins. The stewards serve with civility and alacrity, and seem to divine your wishes, their good offices no doubt being slightly stimulated by the vision of a dossure at the end of the voyage. Long bills of fare are laid on the tables, and good water, plentifully iced, is served with each meal. Wine, spirits, liqueurs, and ale are consumed in large quantities, as also soups, fish, game, venison, meat, and poultry of all kinds, with French side dishes, a profusion of jellies, puddings, and pastry, and a plentiful dessert of fresh and preserved fruits. Many people complain of a want of appetite at sea, and the number of bottles of parin's sauce used in the Cunard steamers must almost make the fortune of the maker. At seven o'clock the tea bell rings, but the tables are comparatively deserted, for from half-past nine to half-past ten people can order whatever they please in the way of supper. In the America, as it was a winter passage, few persons choose to walk on deck after dinner. Consequently the saloon, from eight till eleven, presented the appearance of a room at a fashionable hotel. There were two regularly organized whisked parties, which played rubbers ad infinitum. Cards, indeed, were played at most of the tables, some played bat-gammon, a few would doze over odd volumes of old novels, while three chess boards would be employed at a time, for there were ten persons perfectly devoted to this noble game. The varied employments of the occupants of the saloon produced a strange mixture of conversations. One evening, while waiting the slow movements of an opponent at chess, the following remarks in slightly raised tones were audible above the rest. Do you really think me pretty? Oh, flattering man! Deuce, ace, treble, double, and rub! That's a good hand! Check! It's your play! You've gammoned me! Yes, sir. Parble, holla, steward, whisky toddy for four. I despise of conventionalisms. Checkmate! Brandy punch for six. You've thrown away all your hearts, and a hundred others, many of them demands for something from the culinary department. Occasionally, a four-lorn white, who neither played chess nor cards, would venture on deck till kill time, and return into the saloon panting and shivering in rough surtoot and fur cap, bringing a chilly atmosphere with him, voted a boar for leaving the door open and totally unable to induce people to sympathize with him in his complaints of rain, cold, or the ugly night. By eleven the saloon used to become almost unbearable from the combined odors of roast onions, pickles, and punch, and at half past the lights were put out, and the company dispersed, most to their births, but some to smoke cigars on deck. Though the Cunard steamers are said by English people to be as near perfection as steamers can be, I was not sorry to return in a clipper. There is something so exhilarating in the motion of a sailing vessel, always provided she is neither rolling about in a calm, lying to in a gale, or beating against a headwind. She seems to belong to the sea, with her tall, tapering mass, her cloud of moving canvas, and her buoyant motion over the rolling waves. Her movements are all comprehensible, and aboveboard she is invariably clean, and her crew are connected in one's mind with nautical stories which charmed one in the long past days of youth. A steamer is very much the reverse. Slick Sam, with his usual force and aptitude of illustration, says that she goes through the water like a subsoil plow with an eight-horse team. There is so much noise and groaning and smoke and dirt, so much mystery also, and the ship leaves so much commotion in the water behind her. There do not seem to be any regular sailors, and in their stead a collection of individuals remarkably greasy in their appearance, who may be cooks or stokers or possibly both. Then you cannot go on the poop without being saluted by a whiff of hot air from the grim furnaces below. Men are always shoveling in coal or throwing cinders overboard, and the rig does not seem to belong to any ship in particular. The mass are low and small, and the canvas, which is always spread in fair weather, looks as if it had been trailed along cheap side on a wet day. In the America it was not such a very material assistance either, for on one occasion, when we were running before a splendid breeze under a crowd of sail, the engines were stopped and the log heaved, which only gave our speed three miles an hour. One lady passenger had been feeding her mind with stories of steamboat explosions in the States, and spent her time in a morbid state of terror by no means lessened by the close proximity of her state room to the dreaded engine. On the sixth day after leaving Halifax the wind, which everybody had been hoping for or fearing, came upon us at last, and continued increasing for three days, when, if we had been beating against it, we should have called it a hurricane. It was, however, almost directly aft, and we ran before it under sail. The sky during the two days which it lasted was perfectly cloudless, and the sea had that peculiar deep, clear, greenish blue tint only to be met with far from land. There was a majesty, a sublimity about the prospect from the poop exceeding everything which I had ever seen. There was the mighty ocean showing his power, and here were we poor insignificant creatures overcoming him by virtue of those heaven-scent arts by which man has made fire, flood, and earth the vassals of his will. I had often read of mountain waves, but believed the comparison to be a mere figure of speech until I saw them here, all glorious in their beauty under the clear blue of a December sky. Two or three long, high hills of water seemed to fill up the whole horizon, themselves an aggregate of a countless number of leaping, foam-capped waves, each apparently large enough to overwhelm a ship. Huge green waves seemed to chase us when just as they reached the stern the ship would lift and they would pass under her. She showed special capabilities for rolling. She would roll down on one side, the billows seemingly ready to burst and foam over her, while the opposite bulwark was fifteen or eighteen feet above the water, displaying her bright green copper. The nights were more glorious than the days when the broad full moon would shed her light upon the water with a brilliancy unknown in our foggy climb. It did not look like a wan, flat surface, placed flat upon a watery sky, but like a large radiant sphere hanging in space. The view from the wheel-house was magnificent. The towering waves which came up behind us heaped together by mighty winds looked like hills of green glass and the phosphorescent light like fiery lamps within. The moonlight glittered upon our broad, foamy wake. Our masks and spars and rigging stood out in sharp relief against the sky, while for once our canvas looked white. Far in the distance the sharp bow would plunge down into the foam, and then our good ship, rising, would shake her shiny sides as if in joy at her own buoyancy. The busy hum of men marred not the solitary sacredness of midnight on the Atlantic. The moon walked in brightness, auroras flashed and meteors flamed, and a sensible presence of deity seemed to purvey the transparent atmosphere in which we were viewing the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep. I could scarcely understand how this conjunction of circumstances could produce any but agreeable sensations, but it is a melancholy fact that the saloon emptied and the staterooms filled, and the number of promenaders daily diminished. People began to find the sea an unpleasant fact. I heard no more bironic quotations about its glad waters or comments on the splendid run. These were changed into anxious questions as to when we should reach Liverpool. And if we were in danger. People quarellously campaigned of the ale, hitherto their delight, abused the meat, thought the mulligatani, horrid stuff, and wondered how they could ever have thought plum puddings fit for anything but pigs. Mysterious disappearances were very common, diligent parapetetics were seen extended on sofas or feebly promenading under shelter of the bulwarks, while persons who prided themselves on their dignity sustained ignomious falls or clung to the railings in a state of tottering decrepitude, in an attempt progress down to the saloon. Though we had four ledges on the table, crouettes, bottles of claret, and pickles became locomotive, and jumped upon people's lap, almost everything higher than a plate was upset, pickles, wine, ale, and oil forming a most odiferous mixture, but these occurrences became too common to be considered amusing. Two days before reaching England the gale died away, and we sighted Cape Clear at eight o'clock on the evening of the eleventh day out. A cold chill came off from the land, we were enveloped in damp fog, and the inclemancy of the air reminded us of what we had nearly forgotten, namely that we were close upon Christmas. The greater part of Sunday we were steaming along in calm water, within sight of the coast of Ireland, and extensive preparations were being made for going ashore. Some people of sanguine dispositions had even decided what they would order for dinner at the Adelphi. Everything service was very fully attended, and it was interesting to hear the voices of people of so many different creeds and countries joining in that divinely taught prayer which proclaims the universal brotherhood of the human race, knowing that in a few hours those who then met in adoration would be separated to meet no more till summoned by the sound of the last trumpet. Those who expected to spend Sunday night on shore were disappointed. A gale came suddenly on us about four o'clock, sails were hastily taken in, orders were given, and executed, the stewards were in despair, when a heavy lurch of the ship threw most of the things off the table before dinner, mingling cutlery, pickles and broken glass and china in one chaotic heap on the floor. As darkness came on, the gale rose higher, the moon was obscured, the rack in heavy masses was driving across the stormy sky, and scuds of sleet and spray made the few venturous persons on deck cower under the nearest shelter to cogitate the lines, nights like these, when the rough winds take western seas, brook not of glee. I might dwell upon the fury of that night, upon the awful blast which seemed to sweep the seas of every human work, upon our unanswered signals, upon the length of time while we were drifting, drifting, drifting, on the shifting currents of the restless Maine, upon the difficulty of getting the pilot on board, and the heavy seas through which our storm-tossed boat-bark entered the calmer waters of the mercy, but I must hasten on. Night after night had the French and English passengers joined in drinking with enthusiasm the toast, la prise de la Sebastopol, night after night had the national pride of the representatives of the allied nations increased, till we almost thought, in our ignorant arrogance, that at the first thunder of our guns the defences of Sebastopol would fall, as did those of Jericho at the sound of the trumpets of Joshua. Consequently, when the pilot came on board with the newspaper, most of the gentlemen crowded to the gangway, prepared to give three cheers for the fall of Sebastopol. The pilot brought news of victory, but it was of the barren victory of Inckermann. A gloom fell over the souls of many, as they read of our seried ranks moaned down by the Russian fire of heroic valor and heroic death. The saloon was crowded with eager auditors as the bloody tidings were made audible above the roar of winds and waters. I could scarcely realize the gloomy fact that many of those whom I had seen sail forth in hope and pride only ten months before were now sleeping under the cold clay of the Crimea. Three cheers for the victors of Inckermann, and three for our allies, were then heartily given, though many doubted whether the heroic and successful resistance of our troops deserved the name of victory. Soon after midnight we anchored in the mercy, but could not land till morning, and were compelled frequently to steam up to our anchors, in consequence of the fury of the Gale. I felt some regret at leaving the good old steam ship America, which had borne us so safely across the vex at Atlantic, although she rolls terribly, and is, in her admirable captain's own words, an old tub, but slow and sure. She has since undergone extensive repairs, and I hope that the numerous passengers who made many voyages in her in the shape of rats have been permanently dislodged. Those were sacred feelings with which I landed upon the shores of England, although there appeared little of confidence in the present and much of apprehension for the future, I loved her better when a shadow was upon her than in the palmy days of her peace and prosperity. I had seen in other lands much to admire and much to imitate, but it must not be forgotten that England is the source from which these streams of liberty and enlightenment have flowed, which have fertilized the western continent. Other lands may have their charms, and the sunny skies of other climes may be regretted, but it is with pride and gladness that the wanderer sets foot again on British soil, thanking God for the religion and the liberty which have made this weather-beaten island in a northern sea to be the light and glory of the world. End of Chapter 20. End of The English Woman in America by Isabella Lucy Byrd. Read by Sibylla Denton for LibriVox.org in Carrollton, Georgia, in April 2008. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org.