Domestic Manners of the Americans Part 22

'"Very."

'"A pleasant lane, this, to walk in, if one's company were agreeable."

'"Does Mr. Skefton stay long?" asked Philip, abruptly.

'"No one knows,"

'"Indeed! are you so ignorant?"

'"And why does your wisdom ask that question?"'

In no society in the world can the advantage of travel be so conspicuous as in America, in other countries a tone of unpretending simplicity can more than compensate for the absence of enlarged views or accurate observation; but this tone is not to be found in America, or if it be, it is only among those who, having looked at that insignificant portion of the world not included in the Union, have learnt to know how much is still unknown within the mighty part which is. For the rest, they all declare, and do in truth believe, that they only, among the sons of men, have wit and wisdom, and that one of their exclusive privileges is that of speaking English _elegantly_. There are two reasons for this latter persuasion; the one is, that the great majority have never heard any English but their own, except from the very lowest of the Irish; and the other, that those who have chanced to find themselves in the society of the few educated English who have visited America, have discovered that there is a marked difference between their phrases and accents and those to which they have been accustomed, whereupon they have, of course, decided that no Englishman can speak English.

The reviews of America contain some good clear-headed articles; but I sought in vain for the playful vivacity and the keenly-cutting satire, whose sharp edge, however painful to the patient, is of such high utility in lopping off the excrescences of bad taste, and levelling to its native clay the heavy growth of dulness. Still less could I find any trace of that graceful familiarity of learned allusion and general knowledge which mark the best European reviews, and which make one feel in such perfectly good company while perusing them. But this is a tone not to be found either in the writings or conversation of Americans; as distant from pedantry as from ignorance, it is not learning itself, but the effect of it; and so pervading and subtle is its influence that it may be traced in the festive halls and gay drawing-rooms of Europe as certainly as in the cloistered library or student's closet; it is, perhaps, the last finish of highly-finished society.

A late American Quarterly has an article on a work of Dr. Von Schmidt Phiseldek, from which I made an extract, as a curious sample of the dreams they love to batten on.

Dr. Von Phiseldek (not Fiddlestick), who is not only a doctor of philosophy, but a knight of Dannebrog to boot, has never been in America, but he has written a prophecy, showing that the United States must and will govern the whole world, because they are so very big, and have so much uncultivated territory; he prophesies that an union will take place between North and South America, which will give a death-blow to Europe, at no distant period; though he modestly adds that he does not pretend to designate the precise period at which this will take place. This Danish prophecy, as may be imagined, enchants the reviewer. He exhorts all people to read Dr. Phiseldek's book, because "nothing but good can come of such contemplations of the future, and because it is eminently calculated to awaken the most lofty antic.i.p.ations of the destiny which awaits them, and will serve to impress upon the nation the necessity of being prepared for such high destiny." In another place the reviewer bursts out, "America, young as she is, has become already the beacon, the patriarch of the struggling nations of the world;" and afterwards adds, It would be departing from the natural order of things, and the ordinary operations of the great scheme of Providence, it would be shutting our ears to the voice of experience, and our eyes to the inevitable connexion of causes and their effects, were we to reject the extreme probability, not to say _moral certainty_, that the old world is destined to receive its influences in future from the new." There are twenty pages of this article, but I will only give one pa.s.sage more; it is an instance of the sort of reasoning by which American citizens persuade themselves that the glory of Europe is, in reality, her reproach. "Wrapped up in a sense of his superiority, the European reclines at home, shining in his borrowed plumes, derived from the product of every corner of the earth, and the industry of every portion of its inhabitants, with which his own natural resources would never have invested him, he continues revelling in enjoyments which nature has denied him."

The American Quarterly deservedly holds the highest place in their periodical literature, and, therefore, may be fairly quoted as striking the keynote for the chorus of public opinion. Surely it is nationality rather than patriotism which leads it thus to speak in scorn of the successful efforts of enlightened nations to win from every corner of the earth the riches which nature has scattered over it.

The incorrectness of the press is very great; they make strange work in the reprints of French and Italian; and the Latin, I suspect, does not fare much better: I believe they do not often meddle with Greek.

With regard to the fine arts, their paintings, I think, are quite as good, or rather better, than might be expected from the patronage they receive; the wonder is that any man can be found with courage enough to devote himself to a profession in which he has so little chance of finding a maintenance. The trade of a carpenter opens an infinitely better prospect; and this is so well known, that nothing but a genuine pa.s.sion for the art could beguile any one to pursue it. The entire absence of every means of improvement, and effectual study, is unquestionably the cause why those who manifest this devotion cannot advance farther. I heard of one young artist, whose circ.u.mstances did not permit his going to Europe, but who being nevertheless determined that his studies should, as nearly as possible, resemble those of the European academies, was about to commence drawing the human figure, for which purpose he had provided himself with a thin silk dress, in which to clothe his models, as no one of any station, he said, could be found who would submit to sit as a model without clothing.

It was at Alexandria that I saw what I consider as the best picture by an American artist that I met with. The subject was Hagar and Ishmael. It had recently arrived from Rome, where the painter, a young man of the name of Chapman, had been studying for three years. His mother told me that he was twenty-two years of age, and pa.s.sionately devoted to the art; should he, on returning to his country, receive sufficient encouragement to keep his ardour and his industry alive, I think I shall hear of him again.

Much is said about the universal diffusion of education in America, and a vast deal of genuine admiration is felt and expressed at the progress of mind throughout the Union. They believe themselves in all sincerity to have surpa.s.sed, to be surpa.s.sing, and to be about to surpa.s.s, the whole earth in the intellectual race. I am aware that not a single word can be said, hinting a different opinion, which will not bring down a transatlantic anathema on my head; yet the subject is too interesting to be omitted. Before I left England I remember listening, with much admiration, to an eloquent friend, who deprecated our system of public education, as confining the various and excursive faculties of our children to one beaten path, paying little or no attention to the peculiar powers of the individual.

This objection is extremely plausible, but doubts of its intrinsic value must, I think, occur to every one who has marked the result of a different system throughout the United States.

From every enquiry I could make, and I took much pains to obtain accurate information, it appeared that much is attempted, but very little beyond reading, writing, and bookkeeping, is thoroughly acquired. Were we to read a prospectus of the system pursued in any of our public schools and that of a first-rate seminary in America, we should be struck by the confined scholastic routine of the former, when compared to the varied and expansive scope of the latter; but let the examination go a little farther, and I believe it will be found that the old fashioned school discipline of England has produced something higher, and deeper too, than that which roars so loud, and thunders in the index.

They will not afford to let their young men study till two or three and twenty, and it is therefore declared, _ex cathedra Americana_, to be unnecessary. At sixteen, often much earlier, education ends, and money-making begins; the idea that more learning is necessary than can be acquired by that time, is generally ridiculed as obsolete monkish bigotry; added to which, if the seniors willed a more prolonged discipline, the juniors would refuse submission. When the money-getting begins, leisure ceases, and all of lore which can be acquired afterwards, is picked up from novels, magazines, and newspapers.

At what time can the taste be formed? How can a correct and polished style, even of speaking, be acquired? or when can the fruit of the two thousand years of past thinking be added to the native growth of American intellect? These are the tools, if I may so express myself, which our elaborate system of school discipline puts into the hands of our scholars; possessed of these, they may use them in whatever direction they please afterwards, they can never be an inc.u.mbrance.

No people appear more anxious to excite admiration and receive applause than the Americans, yet none take so little trouble, or make so few sacrifices to obtain it. This may answer among themselves, but it will not with the rest of the world; individual sacrifices must be made, and national economy enlarged, before America can compete with the old world in taste, learning, and liberality.

The reception of General Lafayette is the one single instance in which the national pride has overcome the national thrift; and this was clearly referrible to the one single feeling of enthusiasm of which they appear capable, namely, the triumph of their successful struggle for national independence. But though this feeling will be universally acknowledged as a worthy and lawful source of triumph and of pride, it will not serve to trade upon for ever, as a fund of glory and high station among the nations. Their fathers were colonists; they fought stoutly, and became an independent people. Success and admiration, even the admiration of those whose yoke they had broken, cheered them while living, still sheds a glory round their remote and unt.i.tled sepulchres, and will illumine the page of their history for ever.

Their children inherit the independence; they inherit too the honour of being the sons of brave fathers; but this will not give them the reputation at which they aim, of being scholars and gentlemen, nor will it enable them to sit down for evermore to talk of their glory, while they drink mint julap and chew tobacco, swearing by the beard of Jupiter (or some other oath) that they are very graceful, and agreeable, and, moreover abusing every body who does not cry out Amen!

To doubt that talent and mental power of every kind exist in America would be absurd; why should it not? But in taste and learning they are woefully deficient; and it is this which renders them incapable of graduating a scale by which to measure themselves. Hence arises that over weening complacency and self-esteem, both national and individual, which at once renders them so extremely obnoxious to ridicule, and so peculiarly restive under it.

If they will scorn the process by which other nations have become what they avowedly intend to be, they must rest satisfied with the praise and admiration they receive from each other; and turning a deaf ear to the criticism of the old world, consent to be their own prodigious great reward."

Alexandria has its churches, chapels, and conventicles as abundantly, in proportion to its size, as any city in the Union.

I visited most of them, and in the Episcopal and Catholic heard the services performed quietly and reverently.

The best sermon, however, that I listened to, was in a Methodist church, from the mouth of a Piquot Indian. It was impossible not be touched by the simple sincerity of this poor man. He gave a picture frightfully eloquent of the decay of his people under the united influence of the avarice and intemperance of the white men. He described the effect of the religious feeling which had recently found its way among them as most salutary. The purity of his moral feeling, and the sincerity of his sympathy with his forest brethren, made it unquestionable that he must be the most valuable priest who could officiate for them. His English was very correct, and his p.r.o.nunciation but slightly tinctured by native accent.

While we were still in the neighbourhood of Washington, a most violent and unprecedented schism occurred in the cabinet. The four secretaries of State all resigned, leaving General Jackson to manage the queer little state barge alone.

Innumerable contradictory statements appeared upon this occasion in the papers, and many a cigar was thrown aside, ere half consumed, that the disinterested politician might give breath to his cogitations on this extraordinary event; but not all the eloquence of all the smokers, nor even the ultradiplomatic expositions which appeared from the seceding secretaries themselves, could throw any light on the mysterious business.

It produced, however, the only tolerable caricature I ever saw in the country. It represents the President seated alone in his cabinet, wearing a look of much discomfiture, and making great exertions to detain one of four rats, who are running off, by placing his foot on the tail. The rats' heads bear a very sufficient resemblance to the four ex-ministers. General Jackson, it seems, had requested Mr. Van Buren, the Secretary of State, to remain in office till his place was supplied; this gave occasion to a _bon mot_ from his son, who, being asked when his father would be in New York, replied, "When the President takes off his foot."

CHAPTER 30

Journey to New York--Delaware River--Stagecoach-- City of New York--Collegiate Inst.i.tute for Young Ladies-- Theatres--Public Garden--Churches--Morris Ca.n.a.l-- Fashions--Carriages

At length, in spite of the lingering pace necessarily attending consultations, and arrangements across the Atlantic, our plans were finally settled; the coming spring was to show us New York, and Niagara, and the early summer was to convey us home.

No sooner did the letter arrive which decided this, than we began our preparations for departure. We took our last voyage on the Potomac, we bade a last farewell to Virginia, and gave a last day to some of our kind friends near Washington.

The spring, though slow and backward, was sufficiently advanced to render the journey pleasant; and though the road from Washington to Baltimore was less brilliant in foliage than when I had seen it before, it still had much of beauty. The azalias were in full bloom, and the delicate yellow blossom of the sa.s.safras almost rivalled its fruit in beauty.

At Baltimore we again embarked on a gigantic steam-boat, and reached Philadelphia in the middle of the night. Here we changed our boat and found time, before starting in the morning, to take a last look at the Doric and Corinthian porticos of the two celebrated temples dedicated to Mammon.

The Delaware river, above Philadelphia, still flows through a landscape too level for beauty, but it is rendered interesting by a succession of gentlemen's seats, which, if less elaborately finished in architecture, and garden grounds, than the lovely villas on the Thames, are still beautiful objects to gaze upon as you float rapidly past on the broad silvery stream that washes their lawns They present a picture of wealth and enjoyment that accords well with the n.o.ble city to which they are an appendage.

One mansion arrested our attention, not only from its being more than usually large and splendid, but from its having the monument which marked the family resting-place, rearing itself in all the gloomy grandeur of black and white marble, exactly opposite the door of entrance.

In Virginia and Maryland we had remarked that almost every family mansion had its little grave yard, sheltered by locust and cypress trees; but this decorated dwelling of the dead seemed rather a melancholy ornament in the grounds.

We had, for a considerable distance, a view of the dwelling of Joseph Bonaparte, which is situated on the New Jersey sh.o.r.e, in the midst of an extensive tract of land, of which he is the proprietor.

Here the ex-monarch has built several houses, which are occupied by French tenants. The country is very flat, but a terrace of two sides has been raised, commanding a fine reach of the Delaware River; at the point where this terrace forms a right angle, a lofty chapel has been erected, which looks very much like an observatory; I admired the ingenuity with which the Catholic prince has united his religion and his love of a fine terrestrial prospect. The highest part of the building presents, in every direction, the appearance of an immense cross; the transept, if I may so express it, being formed by the projection of an ample balcony, which surrounds a tower. A Quaker gentleman, from Philadelphia, exclaimed, as he gazed on the mansion, "There we see a monument of fallen royalty! Strange!

that dethroned kings should seek and find their best strong-hold in a Republic."

There was more of philosophy than of scorn in his accent, and his countenance was the symbol of gentleness and benevolence; but I overheard many unquakerlike jokes from others, as to the comfortable a.s.surance a would-be king must feel of a faithful alliance between his head and shoulders.

At Trenton, the capital of New Jersey, we left our smoothly-gliding comfortable boat for the most detestable stage-coach that ever Christian built to dislocate the joints of his fellow men. Ten of these torturing machines were crammed full of the pa.s.sengers who left the boat with us. The change in our movement was not more remarkable than that which took place in the tempers and countenances of our fellow-travellers.

Gentlemen who had lounged on sofas, and balanced themselves in chairs, all the way from Philadelphia, with all the conscious fascinations of stiff stays and neck-cloths, which, while doing to death the rash beauties who ventured to gaze, seemed but a whalebone panoply to guard the wearer, these pretty youths so guarded from without, so sweetly at peace within, now crushed beneath their armour, looked more like victims on the wheel, than dandies armed for conquest; their whalebones seemed to enter into their souls, and every face grew grim and scowling. The pretty ladies too, with their expansive bonnets, any one of which might handsomely have filled the s.p.a.ce allotted to three,--how sad the change! I almost fancied they must have been of the race of Undine, and that it was only when they heard the splashing of water that they could smile. As I looked into the altered eyes of my companions, I was tempted to ask, "Look I as cross as you?"

Indeed, I believe that, if possible, I looked crosser still, for the roads and the vehicle together were quite too much for my philosophy.

At length, however, we found ourselves alive on board the boat which was to convey us down the Raraton River to New York.

We fully intended to have gone to bed, to heal our bones, on entering the steam-boat, but the sight of a table neatly spread determined us to go to dinner instead. Sin and shame would it have been, indeed, to have closed our eyes upon the scene which soon opened before us. I have never seen the bay of Naples, I can therefore make no comparison, but my imagination is incapable of conceiving any thing of the kind more beautiful than the harbour of New York. Various and lovely are the objects which meet the eye on every side, but the naming them would only be to give a list of words, without conveying the faintest idea of the scene. I doubt if ever the pencil of Turner could do it justice, bright and glorious as it rose upon us. We seemed to enter the harbour of New York upon waves of liquid gold, and as we darted past the green isles which rise from its bosom, like guardian centinels of the fair city, the setting sun stretched his horizontal beams farther and farther at each moment, as if to point out to us some new glory in the landscape.

New York, indeed, appeared to us, even when we saw it by a soberer light, a lovely and a n.o.ble city. To us who had been so long travelling through half-cleared forests, and sojourning among an "I'm-as-good-as-you" population, it seemed, perhaps, more beautiful, more splendid, and more refined than it might have done, had we arrived there directly from London; but making every allowance for this, I must still declare that I think New York one of the finest cities I ever saw, and as much superior to every other in the Union (Philadelphia not excepted), as London to Liverpool, or Paris to Rouen. Its advantages of position are, perhaps, unequalled any where. Situated on an island, which I think it will one day cover, it rises, like Venice, from the sea, and like that fairest of cities in the days of her glory, receives into its lap tribute of all the riches of the earth.