Chapter VI (1)

Lord L'Estrange threw himself on a sofa, and leant his cheek on his hand thoughtfully. Audley Egerton sate near him, with his arms folded, and gazed on his friend's face with a soft expression of aspect, which was very unusual to the firm outline of his handsome features. The two men were as dissimilar in person as the reader will have divined that they were in character. All about Egerton was so rigid, all about L'Estrange so easy. In every posture of Harley's there was the unconscious grace of a child. The very fashion of his garments showed his abhorrence of restraint. His clothes were wide and loose; his neckcloth, tied carelessly, left his throat half bare. You could see that he had lived much in warm and southern lands, and contracted a contempt for conventionalities; there was as little in his dress as in his talk of the formal precision of the north. He was three or four years younger than Audley, but he looked at least twelve years younger. In fact, he was one of those men to whom old age seems impossible--voice, look, figure, had all the charm of youth; and, perhaps it was from this gracious youthfulness--at all events, it was characteristic of the kind of love he inspired--that neither his parents, nor the few friends admitted into his intimacy, ever called him, in their habitual intercourse, by the name of his title. He was not L'Estrange with them, he was Harley; and by that familiar baptismal I will usually designate him. He was not one of those men whom author or reader wish to view at a distance, and remember as "my Lord"--it was so rarely that he remembered it himself. For the rest, it had been said of him by a shrewd wit--"He is so natural that every one calls him affected." Harley L'Estrange was not so critically handsome as Audley Egerton; to a commonplace observer he was, at best, rather goodlooking than otherwise. But women said that he had "a beautiful countenance," and they were not wrong. He wore his hair, which was of a fair chestnut, long, and in loose curls; and instead of the Englishman's whiskers, indulged in the foreigner's moustache. His complexion was delicate, though not effeminate: it was rather the delicacy of a student, than of a woman. But in his clear grey eye there was wonderful vigour of life. A skilful physiologist, looking only into that eye, would have recognised rare stamina of constitution--a nature so rich that, while easily disturbed, it would require all the effects of time, or all the fell combinations of passion and grief, to exhaust it. Even now, though so thoughtful, and even so sad, the rays of that eye were as concentred and steadfast as the light of the diamond.

"You were only, then, in jest," said Audley, after a long silence, "when you spoke of this mission to Florence. You have still no idea of entering into public life."

"None."

"I had hoped better things when I got your promise to pass one season in London. But, indeed, you have kept your promise to the ear to break it to the spirit. I could not presuppose that you would shun all society, and be as much of a hermit here as under the vines of Como."

"I have sate in the Strangers' Gallery, and heard your great speakers; I have been in the pit of the opera, and seen your fine ladies; I have walked your streets, I have lounged in your parks, and I say that I can't fall in love with a faded dowager, because she fills up her wrinkles with rouge."

"Of what dowager do you speak?" asked the matter-of-fact Audley.

"She has a great many titles. Some people call her fashion, you busy men, politics: it is all one--tricked out and artificial. I mean London life. No, I can't fall in love with her, fawning old harridan!"

"I wish you could fall in love with something."

"I wish I could, with all my heart."

"But you are so _blasé_."

"On the contrary, I am so fresh. Look out of the window--what do you see?"

"Nothing!"

"Nothing--"

"Nothing but houses and dusty lilacs, my coachman dozing on his box, and two women in pattens crossing the kennel."

"I see none of that where I lie on the sofa. I see but the stars. And I feel for them as I did when I was a schoolboy at Eton. It is you who are _blasé_, not I--enough of this. You do not forget my commission, with respect to the exile who has married into your brother's family?"

"No; but here you set me a task more difficult than that of saddling your cornet on the War Office."

"I know it is difficult, for the counter influence is vigilant and strong; but, on the other hand, the enemy is so damnable a traitor that one must have the Fates and the household gods on one's side."

"Nevertheless," said the practical Audley, bending over a book on the table, "I think that the best plan would be to attempt a compromise with the traitor."

"To judge of others by myself," answered Harley with spirit, "it were less bitter to put up with wrong than to palter with it for compensation. And such wrong! Compromise with the open foe--that may be done with honour; but with the perjured friend--that were to forgive the perjury!"

"You are too vindictive," said Egerton; "there may be excuses for the friend, which palliate even"--

"Hush! Audley, hush! or I shall think the world has indeed corrupted you. Excuse for the friend who deceives, who betrays! No, such is the true outlaw of Humanity; and the Furies surround him even while he sleeps in the temple."

The man of the world lifted his eyes slowly on the animated face of one still natural enough for the passions. He then once more returned to his book, and said, after a pause, "It is time you should marry, Harley."

"No," answered L'Estrange, with a smile at this sudden turn in the conversation--"not time yet; for my chief objection to that change in life is, that all the women now-a-days are too old for me, or I am too young for them. A few, indeed are so infantine that one is ashamed to be their toy; but most are so knowing that one is a fool to be their dupe. The first, if they condescend to love you, love you as the biggest doll they have yet dandled, and for a doll's good qualities--your pretty blue eyes, and your exquisite millinery. The last, if they prudently accept you, do so on algebraical principles; you are but the X or the Y that represents a certain aggregate of goods matrimonial--pedigree, title, rent-roll, diamonds, pin-money, opera-box. They cast you up with the help of mamma, and you wake some morning to find that _plus_ wife _minus_ affection equals--the Devil!"

"Nonsense," said Audley, with his quiet grave laugh. "I grant that it is often the misfortune of a man in your station to be married rather for what he has, than for what he is; but you are tolerably penetrating, and not likely to be deceived in the character of the woman you court."

"Of the woman I _court_?--No! But of the woman I _marry_, very likely indeed. Woman is a changeable thing, as our Virgil informed us at school; but her change _par excellence_ is from the fairy you woo to the brownie you wed. It is not that she has been a hypocrite, it is that she is a transmigration. You marry a girl for her accomplishments. She paints charmingly, or plays like St Cecilia. Clap a ring on her finger, and she never draws again--except perhaps your caricature on the back of a letter, and never opens a piano after the honeymoon. You marry her for her sweet temper; and next year, her nerves are so shattered that you can't contradict her but you are whirled into a storm of hysterics. You marry her because she declares she hates balls and likes quiet; and ten to one but what she becomes a patroness at Almacks, or a lady in waiting."

"Yet most men marry, and most men survive the operation."

"If it were only necessary to live, that would be a consolatory and encouraging reflection. But to live with peace, to live with dignity, to live with freedom, to live in harmony with your thoughts, your habits, your aspirations--and this in the perpetual companionship of a person to whom you have given the power to wound your peace, to assail your dignity, to cripple your freedom, to jar on each thought and each habit, and bring you down to the meanest details of earth, when you invite her, poor soul, to soar to the spheres--that makes the to be, or not to be, which is the question."

"If I were you, Harley, I would do as I have heard the author of _Sandford and Merton_ did--choose out a child and educate her yourself after your own heart."

"You have hit it," answered Harley seriously. "That has long been my idea--a very vague one, I confess. But I fear I shall be an old man before I find even the child.

"Ah!" he continued, yet more earnestly, while the whole character of his varying countenance changed again--"ah! if indeed I could discover what I seek--one who with the heart of a child has the mind of a woman; one who beholds in nature the variety, the charm, the never feverish, ever healthful excitement that others vainly seek in the bastard sentimentalities of a life false with artificial forms; one who can comprehend, as by intuition, the rich poetry with which creation is clothed--poetry so clear to the child when enraptured with the flower, or when wondering at the star! If on me such exquisite companionship were bestowed--why, then"--He paused, sighed deeply, and, covering his face with his hand, resumed, in faltering accents,--

"But once--but once only, did such vision of the Beautiful made human rise before me--rise amidst 'golden exhalations of the dawn.' It beggared my life in vanishing. You know only--you only--how--how"--

He bowed his head, and the tears forced themselves through his clenched fingers.

"So long ago!" said Audley, sharing his friend's emotion. "Years so long and so weary, yet still thus tenacious of a mere boyish memory."

"Away with it, then!" cried Harley, springing to his feet, and with a laugh of strange merriment. "Your carriage still waits: set me home before you go to the House."

Then laying his hand lightly on his friend's shoulder, he said, "Is it for you, Audley Egerton, to speak sneeringly of boyish memories? What else is it that binds us together? What else warms my heart when I meet you? What else draws your thoughts from blue-books and beer-bills, to waste them on a vagrant like me? Shake hands. Oh, friend of my boyhood! recollect the oars that we plied and the bats that we wielded in the old time, or the murmured talk on the moss-grown bank, as we sate together, building in the summer air castles mightier than Windsor. Ah! they are strong ties, those boyish memories, believe me! I remember as if it were yesterday my translation of that lovely passage in Persius, beginning--let me see--ah!--

"Quum primum pavido custos mihi purpura cessit,"

that passage on friendship which gushes out so livingly from the stern heart of the satirist. And when old ---- complimented me on my verses, my eye sought yours. Verily, I now say as then,

"Nescio quod, certe est quod me tibi temperet astrum."[2]

[2] "What was the star I know not, but certainly some star it was that attuned me unto thee."

Audley turned away his head as he returned the grasp of his friend's hand; and while Harley, with his light elastic footstep, descended the stairs, Egerton lingered behind, and there was no trace of the worldly man upon his countenance when he took his place in the carriage by his companion's side.

Two hours afterwards, weary cries of "Question, question!" "Divide, divide!" sank into reluctant silence as Audley Egerton rose to conclude the debate--the man of men to speak late at night, and to impatient benches: a man who would be heard; whom a Bedlam broke loose would not have roared down; with voice clear and sound as a bell, and form as firmly set on the ground as church-tower. And while, on the dullest of dull questions, Audley Egerton thus, not too lively himself, enforced attention, where was Harley L'Estrange? Standing alone by the river at Richmond, and murmuring low fantastic thoughts as he gazed on the moonlit tide.

When Audley left him at home, he had joined his parents, made them gay with his careless gaiety, seen the old-fashioned folks retire to rest, and then--while they, perhaps, deemed him once more the hero of ball-rooms and the cynosure of clubs--he drove slowly through the soft summer night, amidst the perfumes of many a garden and many a gleaming chestnut grove, with no other aim before him than to reach the loveliest margin of England's loveliest river, at the hour the moon was fullest and the song of the nightingale most sweet. And so eccentric a humourist was this man, that I believe, as he there loitered--no one near to cry "How affected!" or "How romantic!"--he enjoyed himself more than if he had been exchanging the politest "how-d'ye-do's" in the hottest of London drawing-rooms, or betting his hundreds on the odd trick with Lord De R---- for his partner.

TRANSATLANTIC TOURISTS.[3]

[3] _Lettres sur l'Amérique._ Par X. MARMIER. 2 volumes. Paris, 1851. _The United States and Cuba._ By JOHN GLANVILLE TAYLOR. London, 1851.

Books of European travel beyond the Atlantic, of rare appearance only a few years ago, bid fair to become plentiful as snags in the Mississippi or buffaloes on the prairies of the West. Emigration, Californian gold, and the perfection of steam-navigation, have brought America to our door. The falls of Niagara now behold as many European visitors as did those of Schaffhausen half a century since; and Broadway is as familiar a word as were the Boulevards before the Peace. Even amidst her own revolutions, embroilments, and alarms, the eyes of Europe have of late been fixed with unusual attention upon the New World. Mexico, California, Cuba--aggrandising wars, treasure-seeking enterprise, piratical aggression--in turn have filled the columns of our newspapers and occupied a large share of our thoughts.

Mr X. Marmier is a French gentleman who has devoted his life to wandering in foreign lands, and writing narratives of his peregrinations. North and south, east and west, nothing is too hot or too cold for him. To-day, in frozen Iceland, he studies Scandinavian history; to-morrow, on Algerine sands, he rambles in the footsteps of Bugeaud. Behold him, in the sweet springtime, strolling beneath blossoms on the sunny banks of Rhine: autumn comes, and he pensively roams by the mystical waters of Nile. Russia, Sweden and Holland, Lapland and Poland, have in turn had the happiness to possess him. Europe, to him, is thrice-trodden ground, and Asia bears the print of his foot. His travels are reckoned by thousands of leagues, his writings by dozens of volumes. No wonder that his erratic tastes have at last driven him across the Atlantic. There he adheres to his magnificent contempt of space. His is no limited excursion to Boston and New York, Washington and New Orleans: the St Lawrence and the Mississippi are boundaries too narrow for his aspiring soul and many-leagued boots. One vast continent is insufficient to satisfy his craving after locomotion. North America explored, Cuba visited, he pauses and hesitates. The quay of the Havana is the last place where a professed wanderer can be expected to cut short his rambles and go home. There sea and sky are both so bright and calm, that recollections of past tempests and less hospitable shores fade into indistinctness. There, too, are facilities of departure for almost any part of the globe. "Thence," says M. Marmier, in an ecstasy of perplexity, "sail the English packets which coast, in their rapid course, the whole emerald chain of the Antilles; thence, the American steamers, transporting to Chagres the legions of pilgrims attracted by the worship of gold to the Californian shrine; thence, French and English vessels, which in a few weeks convey their passengers to the noble city of Nantes or the spacious harbour of Cadiz." Beset by so many seductions, M. Marmier could not be expected to choose the nearest way to Paris. Nor did he; and therefore is it that, upon the title-page of his book, Rio de la Plata succeeds the names of Canada, United States, Havana.

Mr John Glanville Taylor is a traveller of a very different stamp. No amateur wanderer, in quest of novelty or with a view to a book, he crossed the Atlantic (in the spring of 1841) when a lad of eighteen, to seek his fortune--as appears from his own account of the matter--but with mining more particularly in view. Finding nothing to do in the States, he proceeded, after a short sojourn, to Cuba, to investigate the prospects of a newly-discovered gold-vein. This proving unproductive, he entered into partnership with a planter and slave-owner, was ruined by the drought and famine of 1843-4, served as overseer of a sugar plantation, and, finally, after upwards of three years' residence in the island, returned to England _via_ New York. The volume containing such portions of his adventures and observations, during his absence from this country, as he has deemed worth recording, is manly in tone, tolerably interesting in substance, and contains, here and there, scraps of useful information, although the author's opinions are sometimes crude and hastily formed--the fault of a young writer, and yet younger traveller. His downright matter-of-fact views often contrast amusingly with those of the more experienced and literary Frenchman. As a traveller sentimental rather than adventurous--as a writer we have usually found M. Marmier facile rather than fascinating, and oftener insipid than graphic. In his books of European travel there is a lack of the vivid and lively; and his style, correct and not ungraceful, has yet a monotony that acts somniferously on the reader. His work on America is an improvement on his previous publications. The nine hundred pages might perhaps have been compressed, with advantage, into two-thirds of the space; but still, amidst a superabundance of words, we find pointed and interesting passages, and occasionally an original view of men and things Transatlantic.

Frenchmen are very apt to express great sympathy with, and admiration of, the people of the United States. This arises from various causes. Some are smitten with their democratic institutions; some exult in American independence as a triumph over England; others assume a share in that triumph, on account of French auxiliaries in the American War; whilst others, again, suffer their imaginations to be captivated by the wonderfully rapid rise and prodigious development of American wealth and power. It does not require any great amount of sentiment and fancy to get up this kind of love-at-a-distance. Many of our readers remember Miss Edgeworth's clever tale of _L'Amie Inconnue_, where a romantic young lady conceives a violent attachment for the authoress of a sentimental novel, corresponds with her under the name of Araminta, makes a pilgrimage to Wales to seek her in a cottage amidst honeysuckles, and finally has her illusions destroyed by discovering her in a two-pair-back at Bristol, putting brandy in her tea, and bullying a lover named Nathaniel. This is exactly the sort of disenchantment in store for those Frenchmen who, after picturing to themselves the United States as a democratic Utopia, the very paradise of the worshippers of Liberty, have occasion to visit the unseen land of their affections. On arrival in the States, nineteen out of twenty of them find themselves about as comfortable as a cat in a kennel of terriers. They are not spitefully worried, certainly, but unintentionally they are most awfully annoyed. In fact, no two characters can be more antagonistic than those of the Frenchman and American. However strong his predetermination, the former finds it impossible to be pleased in the country where he had fondly anticipated so much gratification. The most he can do is to laud Yankee energy and enterprise, and to pass lightly over the details of manners and customs that jar with all his notions of propriety and enjoyment of life.

"Before I put foot on shore," says M. Marmier, "I felt disposed to love that American land whose mere aspect makes so many hearts beat, and gives birth to so many hopes." He may love the land, but he very soon lets us see that he does not much like the dwellers upon it. After sketching their busy habits and feverish activity, their unremitting pursuit of lucre and contempt of an intellectual _far niente_, he thus continues his epistle to the unknown lady-correspondent to whom all the _Lettres sur l'Amérique_ are addressed:

"It would be false to say that such vigorous commercial
faculties, and such habits, constitute an amiable people;
and truly I would not wish you to live amongst them, nor do
I imagine that they will ever leave in my heart one of those
tender memories which I still retain of the dear natives of
Germany and Scandinavia, and even of the Turks, who are such
worthy people."

M. Marmier, we may here observe, is constitutionally tender. A pensive softness is the general characteristic of his writings. He is addicted to moonlight; the sight of a wooden hut in a sunny nook of the Hudson sets him dreaming about love in a cottage, and quoting Tom Moore with indifferent orthography; in his moments of melancholy he loves to muse by the river-side, and repeat to himself a certain ditty about roses, rivulets, and nightingales, which he picked up in Canada. With such gentle tastes, something more than a trifle is needed to betray him into wrath and sarcasm. On the other hand, the delicacy of his organisation evidently makes him peculiarly liable to be shocked by certain Yankee qualities and habits. One of the first annoyances he experiences is from the curiosity of his fellow-passengers on board a Hudson steamboat. He feels it the more that he has just suffered from their taciturnity, and found it impossible to obtain from them other than monosyllabic replies to his questions concerning the places they pass.

"With a phlegm, compared to which British phlegm is jovial
vivacity, the American combines an inquisitiveness worthy of
a savage; and the attention which was denied me when I sought
a few details concerning the scenes we traversed, was soon
fixed upon me, to my great discomfort, by various parts of my
dress. One of them took hold of my watch-chain, without the
least ceremony, turned and twisted it about between his dirty
fingers, then, satisfied with the examination, walked away
without uttering a word. Another, seated beside me, suddenly
exclaimed--'_You have got a Paris hat_,' and forthwith took it
off my head, closed and opened the springs, showed it to one
of his neighbours, and, when they had both looked at it inside
and out, gave it back into my hands. A moment later, having to
pay my bill to the steward, I was so unfortunate as to open my
purse--a beautiful little purse of cherry-coloured silk and
gold. Forthwith an American fell violently in love with it,
pulled out a horrible knitted bag, and proposed a barter. I
laughed in his face. I hid my purse, but he still persecuted
me. At last I ground between my teeth, Yankee fashion, a d----,
which made him step back a pace or two. To avoid being thus
beset, I put my hat into its box, and covered my head with a
cap; I put my watch-chain into my pocket, buttoned my waistcoat
over my breast-pin, and, thanks to these precautions, I could
at last walk about and sit on deck without being exposed to
stupid importunity."

It may be said that M. Marmier is hardly indulgent enough to the honest Yankees, to whose curiosity the sight of a live Frenchman, in trinkets and a Gibus hat, and 'fresh as imported,' was doubtless a strong stimulant. A countrywoman of his (by connections, habits, and residence, although not by birth) has described, in a very charming work,[4] similar traits in a more tolerant tone. She also was in a steamboat on the Hudson, when she suddenly found herself surrounded, or rather assailed, by a crowd of women, who wonderingly contemplated an embroidery in brilliant colours with which she was occupied.

[4] _La Havane._ Par Madame la Comtesse MERLIN.

"After an examination of some minutes' duration," says Madame
de Merlin, "they seized upon the tapestry without looking at
me or making the least apology, as if the knees on which it
rested had been the tray of a work-box; then alternately taking
possession of wools, scissors, thimble, they passed them from
hand to hand without taking the slightest heed of the person to
whom they belonged. At last the boldest amongst them carried
off the embroidery and disappeared. I begged my companion to
follow her, and ascertain what she meant to do with it. In
a few minutes she brought it back, after showing it to her
friends, who were below in the cabin. Soon a second group of
women accosted me; one of them, without the slightest preamble
or polite preface, asked me if I were French. On my reply in
the affirmative,--'We never see your countrywomen in these
parts,' said she; 'you please us. Do all Frenchwomen resemble
you?' Then she ran to fetch her husband, and planted him before
me like a sentry, showing me to him as she might have done
a curious bird. What think you of this savage curiosity of
the women of the West, of these strange manners and artless
avowals? They have something confiding and primitive which
pleases me."

Lenient to the deficiencies of American women, the amiable and accomplished Countess Merlin expresses plainly and forcibly her disgust at the manners of the men. M. Marmier echoes her complaints. Not so Mr Taylor, who visited America at an age when all that is novel pleases, and who can see no fault in the natives. He reluctantly admits their dress to be a little precise, and their manners rather graver than he likes; in their cities and societies he complains of a lack of cordiality, and of the scarcity of dinner-parties. He thinks tobacco-chewing a nasty habit, although he doubts not that to others it may seem just the reverse. But he totally denies that Americans are at all inquisitive, and refutes, quite to his own satisfaction, the rash assertions of those European travellers who have declared the bulk of them to be coarse and gluttonous feeders. In the enthusiasm of his vindication, he says that, "far from being guilty of gluttony, they appear to eat _merely_ to live, and may be blamed rather for seeming to care _too little_ for the good things of this life." The Englishman, according to Mr Taylor, is the exact opposite of the American in this respect, and the Spaniard has hit the happy medium. Here is what M. Marmier says upon the subject:--

"Whilst I thus gossip with you, as if I were seated in an
arm-chair at your chimney corner, I forget the dining-room
already noted, the bill of fare printed on vellum paper, the
smart waiters in round jackets and white aprons, exactly like
those at Vefour's. My fellow-travellers, are far from a similar
forgetfulness of one of the chief enjoyments of the steamer.
Some of them, as soon as they came on board, paid it a long
visit, and soon returned thither for the second time. Is it
not Brillat-Savarin who has said--'Elsewhere men eat, at Paris
only do they know how to dine.' Had he seen this country, he
would have said--'Here men do not eat, they devour.' The word
is hardly expressive enough. Better to understand the full
force I wish to give it, please to refer to Buffon under the
heading _Pike and Shark_. You will then, perhaps, have some
idea of American voracity. Here is the usual order of the daily
meals in the United States:--Between seven and eight o'clock in
the morning, a bell, a gong, or some other noisy instrument,
announces breakfast. This consists of joints of roast-beef,
ox-tongues, ducks, and fowls, accompanied with potatoes, bread
and butter, and other light dishes. The Americans rush to
table like starving animals. It is really the only suitable
comparison. Heedless of his neighbours, careless of the most
ordinary rules of European politeness, each man draws towards
himself every dish within his reach, and piles upon one or two
plates enormous pyramids of meat, butter, and vegetables. Then
he works away with hands and teeth, as if his moments were
numbered, without speaking, almost without drawing breath, but
following with haggard eyes the dishes that travel away from
him, and harpooning them as soon as they come within reach, to
seize upon a fresh supply.

This first operation finished, the American lights a cigar;
goes to the place where spirits are sold, which is here
called the bar-room; tosses off a glass of whisky or Madeira,
and sets himself to ruminate till the hour of noon. Noon is
very far off, and many are unable to get through this mortal
interval of four hours without a second and third visit to
the dear bar-room, after which they ruminate again. The bell
announces luncheon, consisting of soup, a box of sardines,
cold meat, butter, and a lump of cheese. At three o'clock,
another tap on the tom-tom--the best, the most desired of all;
it proclaims dinner, of which the two preceding repasts were
but the modest preface. This time the table is covered from
one end to the other with vast dishes, containing enormous
roasted joints, highly-spiced sauces, prodigious puddings. The
same appetite as at breakfast, the same universal silence. No
sounds but the clatter of knife and fork, and the crunching of
bones between impatient jaws. So great is the hurry in which
this third repast is got through, that the diners do not even
think of wiping their knives before plunging them into the
salt or butter, and napkins are habitually thrown aside, for
the manifest reason that the use of the napkin entails a loss
of time. Yet these people laugh at Turks for using neither
spoons nor forks at their meals. I remember to have eaten a
few dinners with Turks, and I declare that they were models of
cleanliness compared to those at which I have been compelled to
assist in American hotels and steamers.

Dinner over, the rest of the day is long to get through.
Accordingly, towards seven o'clock, you hear, for the fourth
time, the blessed bell inviting the inmates of the building
to a cup of tea or coffee, accompanied by cold game or salted
meats, after which visits to the bar-room may be recommenced
_ad libitum_.

To see these men of business thus rush to table, and stow
away a whole cargo of miscellaneous viands in less time
than a Spaniard takes to imbibe a single cup of chocolate,
one might imagine that they consider every minute passed in
the dining-room as so much time lost, and that they are in
desperate haste to return to their counting-house, and bury
themselves in ledgers and day-books. Unfortunately, as on
leaving the eating-room I have almost invariably found every
man of them with his body on one chair, and his feet, raised to
a level with his head, on the back of another, I am bound to
conclude that it is not business, but an unparalleled voracity,
which induces them to feed at steeple-chase pace.

Many travellers who here, in the States, are considered very
impertinent, but who nevertheless write with the most amiable
intentions, attribute the cold taciturnity of Americans to
their preoccupation with commercial combinations or political
affairs. I believe that, without doing them injustice, one
might very often attribute it to the labour of the digestive
organs, put four times a-day to a severe task, and which
frequently, in their fatigue, require the employment of
soda-water, and almost continually the acrid and hideous
mastication of a roll of tobacco. The fact is, that in general
the American is much more silent than the Turk. There is also
this difference between them--the Turk, seated on a carpet,
with his silken vest, his long beard, his large turban, appears
nobly indolent or gently meditative, and the stranger's eye may
rest with pleasure on his calm and benevolent physiognomy; the
silence of the American, on the contrary, is gloomy and uneasy,
dry and hard, (_sec et dur_.) His countenance is _pointed_, his
movements are stiff and angular. His repose is not the happy
placidity of the Oriental, or of the southern European--the
enjoyment of _kief_, the pleasure of the siesta; it is a sort
of prostration, agitated from time to time by a feverish
movement."

The following sketch is certainly not very flattering. After laying down the rather novel proposition, that man is one of the ugliest of created animals, M. Marmier proceeds to prove the American the ugliest of all civilised races of men:--

"Picture to yourself, if you please, a lean figure with bony
wrists, feet of dimensions that would for ever tarnish the
scutcheon of a gentleman, a hat stuck upon the back of the
head, straight hair; a cheek swollen, not by an accidental
cold, but from morning till night by a lump of tobacco;
lips stained yellow by the juice of the same plant; a black
coat with narrow skirts, a tumbled shirt, the gloves of
a gendarme,[5] trousers in harmony with the rest of the
equipment, and you will have before you the exact portrait of a
thoroughbred Yankee."

[5] Thick clumsy buckskin gloves.

All this would shock Mr Taylor. Substantially, however, it is true enough. Sealsfield, himself a naturalised American, and a warm admirer of the institutions of his adopted country, has sketched scenes very similar to M. Marmier's delineations of hotel and steamboat life--life in those places of resort being pretty equally divided between the dining-table, the bar, and the spittoon. Hamilton, Marryat, Mrs Trollope, and other keen observers and able writers,[6] have enabled us to dispense with the accounts of foreign travellers in the States. But still the verdict passed upon the citizens of the Great Republic by an educated and intelligent Frenchman must always possess weight and interest. Were M. Marmier an irritable or grumbling traveller, one might think it right to receive his impressions with caution; but, on the contrary, in all his previous books that we have seen, he has shown himself so indulgent and easy to please, that it is impossible to refuse him credit when he adopts a different tone, and abandons his habitual suavity for such severity of sarcasm as he may have at command. We have seen him annoyed and disgusted on board the steamers; presently we find him put to the torture in an American stage:--

[6] Amongst these, Professor James Johnston now takes honourable rank. His valuable _Notes on North America_ reached us too late for notice in the present article--admitting even that they could with propriety have been included in a review of works of a lighter and more ephemeral character. His volumes, which address themselves particularly to the agriculturist and emigrant, are replete with useful information, and we shall take an early opportunity of drawing attention to their instructive and interesting contents.

"The railway left me at Cumberland, and handed me over to the
stage-coach. Probably you do not know what a stage-coach is in
this country. It is a wooden box placed on four wheels, and
intended to convey travellers along roads which the locomotive
has not yet favoured with its visits. But what a box, and
what a road! We were nine, packed together like herrings in
a barrel, jolting through the ruts and bounding over the
stones as if we had been afflicted with St Vitus's dance. Add
to these comforts the delightful society of seven graceful
Americans, chewing, spitting, and (in order to be more at their
ease) _taking off their boots_. A timid, delicate young girl,
seated in one of the corners of this infamous box, suffered in
silence, and the next morning we found her in a swoon. For my
part, I passed the night in tossing to one side or the other an
enormous dirty body which constantly fell back upon me, and two
enormous legs which seemed determined to crush mine. Assuredly,
if a severe penance can, according to expiatory dogmas, cleanse
us from our sins, my soul ought, after these twenty-four hours
of coaching, to be as pure as that of the newborn child; and
if ever I meet an Indian fakeer in quest of a new torture
wherewith to propitiate the goddess Siwa, I will send him to
America, to travel by the Cumberland stage."

Madame de Merlin, certainly a very amiable and hardy traveller, slow to feel small annoyances or to censure foreign habits, is unable to conceal her disgust at some of the practices which so shocked M. Marmier. She went out to New York in the same vessel with Fanny Elssler, and was present at her first appearance in that city.

"The enthusiasm," she says, "was immense; I thought myself
at Rome, and had difficulty in recognising the nation that
talks by measure and walks by springs. But soon these men,
with hat on head and coat off, lying down upon their seats,
and who, after placing their heavy-nailed shoes on the ground,
carelessly rested their woollen-stockinged feet on the back of
their neighbours' chairs, reminded me that I was in the United
States."

On entering the railway between New York and Philadelphia, the Countess found it--

"Full of men and newspapers, the former carrying the latter.
There were sixty-five travellers. When I went in, every place
seemed full, and no one stirred. I had a right to my place,
for which I had paid beforehand. The conductor addressed a
few words to one of the occupants of a bench intended for
four persons, but which was then occupied but by three. The
traveller continued to read, and paid not the least attention
to what was said to him. Second appeal, same insensibility.
Then the conductor pushed him. He yielded to this third and
energetic summons, but without raising his head from his
newspaper, and as if he had been displaced by a jolt of the
carriage. This passenger was the only one who wore gloves. One
must see this nation to form an idea of its manners. Here a
man lets himself be pushed, elbowed, hustled, and suffers his
toes to be trodden upon, without wincing; what is still more
astonishing, he sees people lean upon his wife before his eyes,
and endures all these insults with stoical tranquillity--the
contrary would appear absurd or ridiculous.... During the
journey, my neighbour thought proper to rest his back against
my shoulder. I gently told him of it. He took no heed, and
preserved his position--not with any impertinent intention,
but because he found himself comfortable. At sight of this, my
young companion, a Spaniard by blood, a Frenchman by education,
turned red and pale alternately; his lips were compressed, his
eyes flashed. I was frightened; but suddenly, assuming an air
of calmness, he extended his hands, placed them on the back of
my boorish neighbour, and pushed him quietly into his place.

'If I had put myself in a passion with him,' he afterwards
said to me, 'he would never have understood why.'

'And you would have been wrong,' added Mr W--n; 'how can one
be angry with people who would think it quite natural that you
should behave in the same way to their wives and daughters?'"

It is not surprising that Mr Taylor, at his age, and in his superficial glance at the United States, should have overlooked a point of American character which particularly strikes M. Marmier, the poet and dilettante, and Madame de Merlin, the high-bred and intellectual woman. This is, the general sacrifice, to the positively and materially useful, of those pursuits and refinements which are the grace, and embellishment of human existence. The neglect of the fine arts, the absence of feeling for the beautiful, are there the result of the ardour for speculation and the all-absorbing pursuit of dollars.

"The artist," says Madame de Merlin, "is assimilated to the
artisan, and art is measured by the yard, like merchandise.
They do not cultivate music or painting, or even flowers. Do
you wish to inhale the perfume of a flower? you must buy it
at a high price: it is an article of trade, and only to be
found at the nurseryman's. I am not aware of a single picture
in the United States, unless it be in the Pantheon, where
several memorable epochs of the American Revolution are rudely
represented upon some old panels of wall. In this country, all
that is beautiful is forbidden: the beautiful is not useful.
The grace of the human form, music, poetry, painting, flowers,
are blessings vouchsafed by Providence to man to soften the
bitterness of his days of mourning, to alleviate the burthen
of his chains; they are gleams of joy amidst long years of
struggle, brilliant flashes through the gloom of night; they
are the luxury of human life."

Less elegant and eloquent than Madame de Merlin, M. Marmier resumes in greater detail, but with equal force, nearly the same idea:--

"The Americans may say to me, 'We are not a polite people it is
true; we seek not to be affable or attentive, it must be owned;
and the foreigner who comes amongst us may well be shocked by
our coldness. But if we disdain, as frivolous, the elegant
habits of European society, we have an audacity of enterprise,
and a rapidity of action, which must astonish Europe. To start
from the spot where we now are (on the Hudson.) In less than
forty years, we have covered this desert river with steamers
and vessels of every kind, we have cleared and peopled its
banks, converted its hamlets into flourishing cities, dug
harbours and canals, laid down railroads, given life, movement,
and commercial prosperity to the whole district. Before us is
Albany, which, in the seventeenth century, was a mere fort, and
which now has a population of forty-two thousand souls; and
down yonder is the commercial metropolis of New York, the first
in the world after Liverpool. Nothing equals the spring of
our activity and the boldness of our conceptions. Things that
you in France take years to combine, and which you lengthily
discuss in the tribune and the newspapers, we accomplish in a
turn of the hand. In a couple of months we shall establish a
line of steamers to Havre, and another to England. Already we
have similar communication with Germany by the port of Bremen,
with the Antilles and the Pacific Ocean. Not a corner of the
globe is there where our flag does not wave. How many projects
have there not been elaborated in your old Europe for cutting
through the Isthmus of Panama? England and France sent thither
their engineers, who published long reports--reports which were
examined by councils of ministers, submitted to commissions,
and finally shelved in public offices. At New York, two or
three merchants formed an association, which decided, in two or
three days, that the Isthmus of Panama should be crossed by a
railroad. No sooner said than done. Already the workmen are on
the ground; another year, and the United States' steam-engine
will connect the two oceans.'

I recognise," says M. Marmier, "the justice of such reasoning,
and I bow my head before this power of human genius applied
to the wonders of industry. But, O worthy Yankees, Scripture
says that '_man shall not live by bread alone_,'--the heart and
the mind have other requirements. Unless our mind be absorbed
in the movements of a high-pressure steam-engine, and our
heart changed into a bank-note, there will always remain to us
pleasing reveries, thoughts of art and poetry, the enjoyments
of social life and of expansive affections, which all the
efforts of your courage and the success of your toil can never
replace."

Appositely to Madame de Merlin's slighting mention of the pictures of Revolutionary scenes, comes in a passage from M. Marmier's first volume, relating to the Americans' exaggerated estimate of their military glories.

"At Plattsburg, situated where the Saranac enters Lake
Champlain, there is a chance that the American, who has passed
whole hours without heeding you, and who has hitherto received
your advances like a dog in a bad humour, will suddenly
embellish his metallic physiognomy with a jovial smile, and
approach you with a complaisant air. For he longs to tell you
of the victory gained near this town by the Americans, in the
year 1814, commanded by Commodore Macdonough, over the English
troops; and he narrates the story with so many details, and
such an emphasis, that you at last wish he would relapse into
his habitual silence.

The Americans, like the Russians, have a national pride
surpassing all expression. They cannot, like the Russians,
talk of their old traditions; nor have they, like them,
ancient monuments of a venerable character, and modern ones
of grand aspect. They have not, like the soldiers of Suwarrow
and Alexander, conquered a valiant reputation upon the chief
battle-fields of Europe. Neither have they the literature of
Russia, so artless in its popular poetry, so original in the
compositions of Pushkin and Gogol. But little do they care
what exists in other countries. They have the happiness to
believe all other nations very inferior to them, and all the
imagination that the perpetual use of figures has left them is
agreeably employed in raising the airy edifice of their glory.
Their least success is an event which must occupy the thoughts
of the whole world. A battle in which they have taken a banner
And slain thirty men is a second Marengo. The name of their
General Scott is to be transmitted to posterity with the same
lustre as that of Alexander or Cæsar; and not a soldier who
served in the war against Mexico but is a Napoleon on a small
scale. When they talk of their country and of its progress, the
ordinary vocabulary is too weak for their enthusiasm. They are
fain to seek extraordinary epithets, words which the learned
Johnson never admitted into his dictionary. They remind me of
the Italian cicerone who exclaimed, when showing a picture of
Albano to a traveller, '_Ah, Signor! questo è un maestro, e un
grande pittore, e un pittorissimo!_'

I accordingly heard, from one end to the other, the story of
the battle of Plattsburg, after which my officious American,
satisfied probably with my attention, made me a bow--a rare
circumstance! I even believe--a still rarer event--that he made
a motion as if to raise his hand to his hat. Then, having no
other Homeric epic to narrate, he took himself off, and left me
opposite to the shores of the Champlain, at liberty to indulge
in meditation."

Thus left to his reflections, M. Marmier grows pathetic--as is not unfrequently the case with him--and feels his heart oppressed with an unspeakable sadness, and gives us a French prose version of some German verses by Tieck, which he might just as well have omitted, as also some gossip about the moon and other analogous matters, which merely serves to swell his book, and will inevitably be passed unread by every sane reader. However, we must take the gentleman as we find him, and sift, as well as we can, the wheat from the chaff, when the latter occasionally predominates. Presently he relapses from the pathetic into the sarcastic, on occasion of a visit to the Legislative Assembly of the United States, which reminded him a good deal of that of France. There were certain points of difference, however. "The American deputies, he says, chewed tobacco very agreeably, and spat with remarkable dexterity to a distance of fifteen paces,"--through a keyhole at that distance, we have heard it asserted, but do not guarantee the fact. Even Mr Taylor but imperfectly conceals his disgust at the "antique vases, vulgarly called spittoons," placed beside the desk of each member of Congress. From the senate-house to the President's levee is but a step. It is taken by M. Marmier under the guidance and protection of a lady, to do honour to whose introduction he put on, he tells us, his whitest cravat and his blackest coat. But soon he perceived that this garb of ceremony formed a striking contrast with the motley costumes that thronged the White House at Washington. Frocks of every colour were there, and vests of every cut, but of coats very few.

"There was no servant at the door or in the antechamber. We
walked at once into the saloon, where the President was on his
legs, fulfilling the arduous duty imposed upon him, without
respect for his age and for the dignity of his military
services, by the arrogant republic. My amiable conductress
advanced towards him. He held out his hand and said, 'How do
you do?' She named me, he turned towards me, holding out his
hand, and saying 'How do you do?' A crowd of visitors came
up; he shook hands with them all, repeating 'How do you do?'
These amiable salutations bidding fair to be indefinitely
prolonged, my charming introductress thought I had enough of
it, and took me up to the President's daughter, who welcomed
me with the never-failing 'How do you do?' After which we went
to walk about another saloon with a crowd of individuals who
were parading it in pairs in silent procession; women, such
as exist nowhere but in Henri Monnier's comedies, and men to
whom you would fear to grant admittance into your anteroom. For
opening his marble palace once a-week to this plebeian crowd,
for courteously saluting all these ladies who keep stalls,
for shaking hands with some hundreds of unclean citizens, the
republic gives its President only one hundred and twenty-five
thousand francs a year. It is poor pay!"

The pittance certainly appears paltry, contrasted with the more ample allowance of a French president; but the two cases will hardly admit of a comparison, nor does M. Marmier draw one. There is evidently very little of the republican in his composition; we should rather take him for one of the class which M. Louis Blanc's followers designate, in picturesque abbreviation, as _aristos_; and indeed he makes no secret of his aversion to what he terms _demagoguery_--a word which is probably not to be found either in Boyer or Walker, but which some of our ballad-writing friends may possibly think no bad rhyme to roguery.

Soon after his visit to the President, we find our errant Frenchman steaming down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans. At Cincinnati, when about to embark on a steamer pompously advertised as "The splendid and fast-running John Hancock," he is somewhat startled by a conversation between two Americans, from which he gathers that the said "Hancock" is a worthless boat, whose boilers have been condemned by the inspector, and which the insurance companies refuse to take, but out of whose rotten hull and rickety engines the considerate proprietors propose to squeeze a little more passage-money at risk of the passengers' lives. So M. Marmier takes his place by the "Western World," also announced as "splendid and fast-running," but which, he flatters himself, is more sea, or at least river worthy, and devotes a few pages to the perils of the West, the recklessness of steamboat captains in America, and the unpaternal nature of a Government which imposes no check on the employment of damaged steamers. Explosions, conflagrations, inundations, snags, sawyers, and races--he makes out a terrible list of dangers, and estimates at thirty or forty per annum the number of steamers lost in the Western waters.

"The average existence of a boat is here about four years. In
four years it must have brought in its cost, with interest.
If it lasts longer, it is by unhoped-for good luck. But the
American does not trouble his head about difficulties or
perils. He _must_ travel, and he travels at all risks. You have
doubtless read the account of that terrible explosion of the
"Louisiana," which, about a month ago, discharged the fragments
of her boilers and some hundreds of corpses upon the quay of
New Orleans. Next day, not a steamer had a passenger the less.
_Go ahead_ is the American motto. Is there a new territory to
explore at three hundred leagues distance, a sale of goods to
be effected north or south--_go ahead!_ The weather may be bad,
the roads covered with snow, the journey long and difficult,
no matter--_go ahead_. The steamer by which they are to go is
of bad repute, is ill organised and worse commanded; there
is danger of its sinking at the very first casualty; never
mind--_go ahead_. Fatigue and danger are nothing--movement
before everything. I ought to admire such intrepidity; but,
with my old-fashioned European notions, I regret to think that
the seductions of fortune can inspire as great courage as the
chivalrous sentiments of glory, religion, and love."