Thy presence well shall dignify our state; оттенков But first, instructed by thy brother, went bien Das The figured arras of your rock would see Come to your cave; there night shall o'er usanisub badeilduq ai 19hOur tents shall wait us in the vale Below" sd Her grateful eyes upraised, Bathsheba saw His form majestic, and his head of awesbavol siqms asdsabaisสอง 54.1191 With manlier gifts of tenderness and grace try to bisit nosd bue el He led the damsel to her dwelling place in a visitas 1619dil Her brother near walked softly in his joy, ev alqooq gaitestsimi As if he fear'd some glad dream to destroy alive тэм/ 10 A Berg With scented lights, the maiden round her cave nedsats. To Cyrus' eyes the pictured prophets gave; tow Forbearing not, at his command, to tellidh to taom of busy91 ui Their words commissioned unto Israel.de to aroido astroqші чот 15 With holy hope, she, eloquently bold, ban dayπρας μα Jehovah's doings for his people toldi aut isdi bas batterens ove Early he chose them his peculiar care sinqoso ing not raseэта тэм 10 From Egypt bore them with his arm made bared dded полве weiCame down on Sinai with devouring fire, Yowaleidt IIA 1847 And thundered o'er them in preventive ire 701 59สม០១១៩ ed The nations melted in his wrath away, it songs 898 That stablished Judah in their land might stay, ind satqisins bas Tily sim-provoked, despised his day of grace, 10 9 8 of 199 20 He drove her forth a captive from her places bio ads doide Dosot. Now smiles the monarch, as Bathsheba shews-paolevad eqor bi Himself prepared to end that captive's woes.o Jasod of sinil svad But he with awful dignity demands to gnion (some 10 sull Isaiah's book, when mentioned, from her hands, apice 10 och door Till, pointed out, he saw his name ordaineddons позпізна 2090 His power, for Zion's sake, by God sustainedsa believito 10 amet Whence came this book? She told: He, pleased, declared on Twas rightly writ, with Daniel's scrolls compared nog ni Great Sovereign! thus the Jewess of the cave wat teiza vid Thy grace has given me leave a boon to cravers lonesouh Approved by thee, these hangings worthy are bus neizsubs To deck thy palace or thy tent of wards out as esta12 batial sdt 01 Deign, let thy handmaid in thy kingly sightinoinavusado sist 1. Keep long memorial of this honoured nightmoods zo Wise virgin dignified! it shall be so; 918 saalievant to sosia They with us hence to Babylon shall go id: Jasiansh ed of The Queens of earth shall see the fair design;;eidssteb vibes-st Shall imitate thy needle-work divine Dadeiadno bas donor atid This greater hope to thy exalted heart oor eqadre vosroomsh to 'Tis mine this moment freely to impartida bae amareduxe Las God-given to me the kingdoms, I to hiraits bus aynid 101 Will build a house in his Jerusalem. anubseasicks vigogo stom His people lifted from their exiled woeldatined a dist Thou up with them a princely one shalt go. Retire, till with Manasseh here we tracenotipsanoo 901 The planned redemption of your ancient racewaled and He said. But she glad nature could not check bezlary 978 83 위치: She rushed, she sobbed upon her brother's needs wat ad te bas Abashed she turned. But her the King of menos ou fiel sa 15:Supported trembling from that inner den.grilliwan gared anoia по паil to setio parvi 10.9dt wi to a people of whose hospitality they entertain a grateful sense, and to whose morbid sensibility to censure there can be found no parallel in other nations. The great body of our information, therefore, has been derived from persons of narrow minds and limited acquirements, who have generally visited the United States, with views rather connected with pecuniary profit, than the gratification of liberal curiosity. It has thus happened, that men, whose opinions on the condition, moral, literary, or political, of any European nation, would be treated with merited contempt, have yet been greedily listened to, when discoursing of a country, in no point of view less interesting, and with which our commercial relations are even more widely extended. The result of this has been, a vast mass of exaggerated and inconsistent statement-of truth answered by denial-falsehood exposed by blunder prejudice on one side accusing prejudice on the other-of conclusions without premises, and premises that admit of no conclusion, in short, such a jumble of folly, ignorance, stupidity, and perversion, as makes it very clear, whatever may be the case with counsellors, that in the multitude of such travellers there is not wisdom. WERE any one to regard the mere quantity of matter which has been published during the last quarter of a century concerning the United, States, he might be led hastily to conclude, that ample foundation had, been laid for the gratification of all liberal curiosity in relation to that interesting people. Verily the name of American travellers is Legion, for they are many; but looking rather to the value than the volume of their works, we are forced rced to confess, that in regard to most of the higher and more important objects of enlighten, ed enquiry, the United States are yet unvisited, and that the wide field they present for philosophical observation has hitherto yielded no harvest. All this, however, may easily be accounted for. The Americans are a young people, full of energy and enterprise, but necessarily subject to a variety of disadvantages, which the older communities of Europe have long since overcome. They have little to boast of native literature or science; nothing of splen dour or antiquity to captivate the imagination, and, bating a few objects of unrivalled natural grandeur, in a country the scenery of which is in general tame and monotonous, there exist few of the ordinary inducements of travel, to lead men of education and refinement to select the United States as the sphere of their observation. Then their appliances for the comfort and convend nve nience of travellers are understood to be deficient; their roads are con, fessedly detestable; their social habits rough and unfinished; their love of democracy perhaps too obtrusive and exuberant; and their contempt for kings and courtiers somewhat more openly expressed, than is quite consistent with a charitable regard to the prejudices of their European visitors. The consequence of this has been, that few English gentle men have visited the United States,lities for commerce, and other mat Merchants, Farmers, Manufacturers, Bagmen, Half-pay Officers, broken-down Radicals, impatient of the restraints of English morality and English law, have all visited the United States, and favoured the world with the result of their observations. Of these different classes, the three first have, perhaps, done all we were entitled to expect. They have communicated a great deal of valuable information relative to soil and climate, railroads and canals, steamboats and stagecoaches, wages of labour, prices of provisions, faci and of these few the greater portion have left no record of their impressions, being unwilling, perhaps, to incur the certainty of giving offence ters which, in a country situated like Great Britain, are very essential to be understood. The lucubrations of the Bagmen on manners, politics, * By Mrs Trollope. 2 vols. London, Whittaker, Treacher, and Co. 1832. and morals, have been less available. They are, perhaps, somewhat too indignant at the national deficiency of polish and refinement, to be considered altogether impartial in their reports. They cannot bring themselves to pardon the transatlantic innovation of picking teeth with a pocket-knife instead of a table-fork, according to ancient and recognised precedent in the hostelries of Leeds and Birmingham. Then English " commercial gentlemen" excrete in spit-boxes; those of America discharge their saliva on the carpet, or their neighbour's boot, or, in short, wherever it may happen to suit their convenience. Then in an American hotel, a Bagman of the most imposing aspect, with " a voice like Mars to threaten and command," may actually bellow for Boots and Chambermaid for an hour on end, without creating the smallest sensation in any one individual from the garret to the cellar. Should he at length lose patience, and go in search of the delinquents, ten to one he will find Boots lolling in a rocking chair, and coolly smoking a cigar, with his legs on the kitchen dresser; while the coffee-coloured chambermaid, taking advantage of the twilight, is in the back-yard arranging matters of importance with black Cæsar, jack-of-all-trades to Lycurgus F. Tompkins, storekeeper on t'other side of the street. Such differences of habit are no doubt quite sufficient to divert the whole current of human sympathies, and annihilate all charities, national and particular. ال Next come the Radicals, whose associations with the memory of their own country are those of jails and gibbets, and who, comparing the realities of the United States with their former anticipations of Botany Bay, are naturally well satisfied with their change of prospect. Believe these political philosophers, and America is a heaven upon earth, a region of flowers and fruits, and of sweet airs, where corruption is unknown, and man lives in a state of primeval innocence and unbroken happiness. The rulers of this delightful country are, of course, all virtue, wisdom, 'and strength, and the people by whose free voices they are elected, distinguished above all experience in degraded Europe, by honour, high prin ciple, sagacity, and talent. Your Tory travellers, on the other hand, who consider nothing good that is not founded on British precedent, deny altogether the justice of these praises. They tell you, and are ready to swear to it, that the United States are a mere Pandemonium of brutal manners and bad government; that the soil is barren and unfruitful, the climate sickly and detestable, the rulers time-serving and corrupt; and the people, made up of the sweepings and refuse of Europe, are fickle and turbulent in politics, mean and fraudulent in their dealings, ignorant, yet puffed up with the conceit of knowledge; and, in short, the most unfit possible depositaries of political power. While by the successive and opposite impulses of these contradictory statements, our wavering opinions are driven from pillar to post, to be reimpelled with equal vehemence and velocity from post to pillar, we are glad to call in the weight of female testimony, to give permanence to our convictions, and decide, if possible, whether the Americans are a nation of angels or of demons, something more than men, or less than brutes. Women, thank Heaven, are no politicians, or life would be unbearable. They are gifted, too, with a finer observation, and more delicate discrimination of character, than nature has thought proper to bestow on the coarser sex; and therefore their evidence, as to every thing connected with manners or domestic morals, is not only more likely to be unbiassed, but is intrinsically more valuable. It was with pleasing anticipation, therefore, that we directed our attention to the volume of Miss Frances Wright, a lady whose fame is already so widely spread on both sides of the Atlantic, as to be incapable of receiving additional ex. tension, even from emblazonment in the pages of this Magazine. Some dozen years ago, we believe, Miss Wright, having directed her talents to the stage, produced a tragedy, which the London managers had the bad taste to reject. This insult determined the offended damsel at once to repudiate her country; and she accordingly lost no time in crossing the Atlantic, to enrol her name among those of the fairest citizens of W Miss against Christianity in most of the cities, it is only justice to confess, she did her utmost to abate. this nobler, younger, freer, and more try, is, that the people are somewhat dirigiminating prepared to be pleas deliveriniopublic couling or hidhury too a failing which, by sed, and she naturally finds the people all that youthful poets fancy, when they visit a foreign country with a play in their pocket. Nor are the Americans on their part ungrateful. They act her tragedy, and, as in duty bound, admire its captivating author. Every thing goes on smoothly. The New York porters refuse to take money for carrying her portmanteaus, and we are consequently assured that these high-souled opera⚫tives toil in their laborious vocation, uninfluenced by vile thirst of lucre, and animated by the sole and disin⚫terested object of conferring obligation on their wealthier neighbours.* ■ Being a lady of considerable fortune, • Miss Wright finds suitors in every : city, and even receives offers in steamboats and stagecoaches; but having, as Leigh Hunt says, "stout notions on the marrying score," and 1 being in principle somewhat of a polygamist, and adverse to monopolies of all kinds, she consistently ✓ declines the unjust appropriation of a whole free-born American, for her own exclusive use and behoof. Like a timid speculator in the lottery, she has no objections to a sixteenth, but cannot be induced to venture "the whole hog." It becomes us not to say, whether, in spite of all the insinuating gallantries of her numerous and gifted admirers, this fair republi can "votaress pass'd on, In maiden meditation, fancy free." We only know that her virgin appellation remained unchanged, and that however individually cruel, her collective gratitude was assuredly very great. The men of the United States, she assures us, are noble, manly, generous, and intelligent; the women tender, elegant, beautiful, and accomplished. Of course, such a population require little government; but what they have, realizes all her ideas of perfection. Indeed, the only fault she can discover in the whole coun Thus far, then, the influence of female testimony was decidedly in favour of the angelic character of the Americans; and notwithstanding the weight of Captain Hall, who jumped very boldly into the opposite scale, there was every prospect of its kicking the beam, when out pops Mrs Trollope with her two very enter taining volumes, and produces as great and sudden a change on the aspect of events, as the appearance of old Blucher and his troops did on the field of Waterloo. We now learn that Mrs Trollope's own personal friends constitute the only portion of the population who can advance the smallest claim to the character of gentlemen. The rest are a mere set of brutal barbarians, filthy, immoral, and disgusting, and carrying the most sordid selfishness into all the relations of life. The United States, she informs us, is a country yet ignorant of the blessings of civilized society; and the European who would live there, must cast off the memory of all the delicacies, and even decencies, which he may previously have considered as forming part of the very condition of exist ence. Such is a short, though tolerably accurate précis, of the inconsistent and conflicting statements of British travellers, in regard to the condition, moral, social, and political, of the Americans. But the Americans themselves have not been backward in urging their own claims to admiration and respect. In turning to their works, we can no longer complain of irreconcilable discrepancies of fact and opinion, which puzzle and distract the judgment. The unanimity of these gentlemen is really quite wonderful, and reading their pages is like listening to a concert of musical snuff-boxes of the same precise mechanism, an hundred of * We wish we could procure a cross of this breed of American porters, to improve that of our Edinburgh caddies, whose motives, we regret to say, are of the very basest description, but fear, from the silence of recent travellers, they must have become extinct. Such porters are evidently too good for this wicked world, which being wound up, start off with the same cuckoo tune, pitched in the same key, to the utter exhaustion of ear and patience. They are all loud in their praises of themselves, and their institutions, of their prowess by sea and land, of their achievements in science, literature, and philosophy, of the intelligence, high principle, and sagacity of their population, of the beauty and salubrity of their climate, and the unrivalled fertility of their soil. It is the fashion with these writers to speak of Europeans as men of pigmy stature and besotted minds; and, as a proof of their own incontestable superiority, they appeal to the magnitude of their lakes and rivers, and find cause of triumph in their exuberance of timber and fresh water. In short, whatever virtues may attach to the American character, it is abundantly clear that modesty is not of the number; and it is scarcely possible, we fear, to form a very high estimate of the good sense of a people, whose judgment of themselves and others is so egregiously at fault. But be the merits of American writers what they may, their works on politics and legislation have had little circulation in this country, and certainly have not at all contributed to direct the current of opinion with regard to the United States. It is not probable that English readers, who would assuredly be set asleep by any long-winded panegyric on their own institutions, could discover much attractive matter in a dull and dogmatical eulogium on those of a distant republic. Mr Cooper and Mr Walsh, therefore we mention these as the Coryphæi of the band-had the mortification of beholding their works drop still-born from the press, and John Bull had still the good fortune to escape from the unpleasant conviction, that another country was in any respect more happily situated than his own. From the tone of bluster and bravado, however, in which the American champions considered it becoming to indulge, it was abundantly evident that they had no overweening confidence in their own pretensions. The great and distinguishing mark of strength is tranquillity; its other attributes may be counterfeited, this cannot. Meaner animals may put on the skin of the lion, and imitate his roar, to the great terror of the forest, but the deception is soon found out. The impostors will inevitably make inordinate display of tusk and claw; there will be too much bristling of the mane, and brandishing of the tail; in short, an utter absence of that repose which can alone result from the security of conscious strength. This we doubt not is trite enough, but still we wish the Americans would remember it. They may rest assured, that should the day ever come, (and we are far from sneering at those who consider it to be approaching,) when the United States shall assume the leading station among the great powers of the world, her pretensions will be urged in a tone very different, from any which her advocates have yet felt strong enough to adopt. In exact proportion to the strength of her claims, will be their calmness in supporting them; and we venture to prophesy, that as their own conviction of superiority becomes more confident and assured, that fluttering sensibility to foreign censure, and that inordinate vanity which exposes them to present ridicule, will cease to tarnish the American character. Though the discrepancies of statement in the works of British travellers with regard to the United States, be confessedly irreconcilable with fair and impartial observation, still there exist few instances in which we feel disposed to attribute the blunders and inconsistencies of these writers to intentional misrepresentation. There is no other country in the world, perhaps, in which, to the eye of an Englishman, a little prejudice may so easily pervert the whole colouring and proportions of the picture which it presents. He finds in America so much that is admirable mingled with so much that is offensive, so much that contributes to the physical necessities of man, and so little that can be made to minister to his higher enjoyments, and is alternately shocked and gratified by so much arrogance, energy, intelligence, weakness, folly, wisdom, and impertinence, that the character of the impression produced by this apparently incongruous aggregate, must depend in a great measure on the peculiar temperament of the observer. By : |