matters, and speak their minds more openly, than is possible for men living in our close-crammed, artificial, and highly polished world. Personally, I am not partial to political or metaphysical discussions, but still I think there is something wrong in a social system like ours, where a man can hardly express a deep conviction or a grave opinion, or make a thoughtful remark, in promiscuous society, without finding that people consider him to have been guilty of a breach of etiquette. Englishmen, who have lived much away from home, must, I fancy, be often astonished at their return to find how people are still talking on about the same petty gossip, the same local scandal, and the same trifling subjects as they were when they themselves dropped from out the circle No doubt the great civil war which is now raging in America, had enlarged the popular mind, and had given a deeper tone to the national thoughts; but still the difference is a normal, not an exceptional one. A friend of mine, himself the most patriotic of Englishmen, who returned the other day from the States, remarked to me, that in coming back, he experienced much the same feeling as he did whenever he went from England to Germany. He felt that he had passed into a narrower sphere, into a society whose range of thought was less active and more limited. The impression is one very difficult to convey in words. People over here are, as a class, cleverer, more refined, and more educated, but in the New World there is something of a "larger freer life," which is unknown to us. This width in the range of conversation is a great advantage to a stranger. It is true that you are liable to be bored, but it is a less infliction to be bored on general subjects about which you know and care something, than to be bored about local gossip which is at once uninteresting and unintelligible, except to those who form part of a particular set.

In these remarks, I would not have it understood that I mean to imply, that you do not hear gossip in American society, or that everybody you dine with engages you in intellectual or political converse. I am only endeavouring to give an impression of a tone of thought which pervades Northern society. There is one feature, however, which is common to every American household that it was my fortune to enter. And that is the cordiality of your welcome. Not only does everybody seem glad to see you, but I candidly believe that everybody is glad to see you. We are apt to talk a good deal about English hospitality. And yet I think that if we were put in the confessional, we should all own that when we find a stranger has brought letters of introduction to us, we cannot avoid a wish that he had stopped at home. Our houses are small; our means are limited; we most of us find it rather a difficult matter to make both ends meet at the close of the year; we don't exactly care about giving exceptional entertainments. We are not clear whom we can ask to meet our new acquaintance; we fancy we

shall bore him; and we feel pretty certain that he will bore us. But in America a kindred feeling has no existence. Even in the oldest portions of the country, a good deal of the colonial, squatter feeling still hangs about society. Hospitality is a duty recognised by all. The idea that a stranger from the old country, who brings letters of recommendation, should find no civility shown him, is unwelcome to a people proud of their new home and anxious to display it to the best advantage. Then too Americans are more free with their money than Englishmen. Provisions are cheap, and dinner-giving costs little; and a stranger, however unknown, is still something of a lion, and can give news of the old mother country, in which Americans, even if they will not confess it, take so keen an interest.

Supposing you have got your introduction and are once inside an American household, it will be your own fault, if you do not feel yourself at home. There is a kind of simplicity, of absence of formality about the life, which I found very charming. As far as society went, I own New York was the least attractive town to me in the Union. There was too much imitation of European customs; and the imitation was not eminently successful. I remember a young and ardent American lady asking me if I was not struck with the republican simplicity of the "Empire" city. Now that three thousand miles divide me from my fair questioner, I dare confess that I was not. On the contrary, New York was the only town in the States, where I saw much of that affectation so common in English middle class society, which induces people to try and seem something different from what they are. rule, the Americans one meets abroad are not favourable specimens of their countrymen; or, at any rate, they are not seen under favourable circumstances; and the fashionable New York world of the Fifth Avenue and Washington Square impressed me as resembling, on a larger scale, the society of the would-be French Americans, who congregate about Meurice's and the Hotel du Louvre at Paris. But, in the inland towns, and throughout the country, there was little, if anything, of this affectation visible. There is no style about ordinary American social life, servants and equipages and rich plate are rare; but everything is wonderfully comfortable. The meat is not so good as English; but there is a luxury and profusion about the meals, which makes up in quantity for what you lose in quality. Persons who, like myself, would sooner be waited on by clean-looking women, than by the tallest of footmen, who think that the best dinner is spoilt if you cannot have a cigar after it, who plead guilty to a vulgar taste for seeing grog brought in before you go to bed at night, and who also have no objection to dining at four or five o'clock, will consider that the advantages of American social entertainments counterbalance the disadvantages.

And then, the women are very charming. This much the most bitter

hater of Yankeedom must admit. Take any American evening party, and you will see a greater proportion of interesting looking girls than in any part of the world I know of. Regular beauty is rarer than with us; that beauty which the French, why or wherefore, I know not, have assigned to the devil-certainly so. But the faces are so bright and animated, the features are so delicate, the eyes so full of spirit, that it would be hypercritical to complain because the complexion always foretells a future sallowness, and the hair has an invincible. repugnance to curl. The manner, too, to my mind constitutes the chief charm of American female society. You never experience in the States the torture of being introduced to a woman who has nothing to say for herself. As a rule the women are better educated, or, at any rate, more widely read, than the men, and there is a frankness and openness in their conversation which one misses sadly in our own more guarded intercourse. To our conventional English prejudices, it is, I admit, somewhat startling, when a young lady whom you have met for the first time, whose name you have not caught, and who is obviously equally uncertain about your own, tells you that her parents will be very glad to see you, if you like to call. But even if your own good taste does not teach you so, experience will soon show you that this freedom of manner implies no want of delicacy. I recollect once, by the way, being present at an incident, which strangely illustrated. the latitude allowed to the independence of American young ladies. had been asked to join a large picnic whose whereabouts I purposely avoid mentioning, for fear that these lines should find their way across the ocean. The daughters of the giver of the entertainment were two handsome and rather spoilt girls, very goodnatured and not over wise. Ten o'clock was the hour fixed for starting, and the party was assembled in due course by the time appointed. We had a long journey to take, and it was an object to start punctually; but when everything was ready, it was found that the two young ladies in question, who had been among the earliest comers, were not forthcoming. Enquiry was made, and gradually it oozed out, that a certain interesting soi-disant Italian Count (who, by the way, turned out afterwards to be an impostor) had failed to keep his appointment, and that the two girls had driven off alone without asking leave, to rout him up at his hotel. Papa was furious, and would have insisted on starting had it not been for the entreaties of Mamma, and the representations of the guests. At last, after half an hour's delay the truants reappeared, bringing back the Count,-of whom I should add they knew next to nothing,-as a captive. The party was a mixed one, and I heard numbers of complaints about the ill-breeding of these young ladies in keeping so many people waiting in order to get a cavalier for themselves. But I did not hear a suspicion breathed-even by members of their own sex- -that they had done

anything discreditable, or had committed any outrage on social rules. I do not mean to say that the trait was a common one of American ladies. It is indeed the only instance of the kind that I witnessed. But I mention it to show the extreme freedom which young girls can, if they like, avail themselves of in the States, without running the risk of damaging their reputation. How far the system works altogether favourably may be a matter of question. Two facts, however, are certain, American women make very good and very domestic wives, and married life is wonderfully free from scandal in the States. The truth is that the abstract woman occupies a position in America, dissimilar to that held by her in any other country. I recollect talking to my friend N. P. Willis on this point, and his telling me that a Mrs. W., a very pretty and fashionable New York lady, complained to him, that she quite dreaded having to return to Europe, where her husband was obliged to live, because she should miss so much the attention she had got used to in America. Mixed up with a good deal of affectation, there was some truth in this remark. Throughout the States, there is a respect paid to women, which I never saw equalled elsewhere. A young girl might travel alone from Maine to Missouri with the absolute certainty that not only would she meet with no annoyance, but that on the contrary she might reckon on the assistance of any stranger she met. At times, undoubtedly, the manifestations of this sentiment are exaggerated. It never seemed correct, according to my notions of the eternal fitness of things, that an old man should be expected, as a matter of course, to give up his seat in the cars to a strapping young woman, as well able to stand as any gentleman in the carriage. Still there is a grace about the custom. No matter whether a woman is old or young, beautiful as Venus, or as ugly as Medusa, she is a woman, and as such, has a right to a kind of deference not awarded to her in older countries. So it is in conversation. An American lady would be insulted if any man showed that he did not consider it worth his while to argue seriously with her; and in consequence, though the intellectual ability of women is probably much the same in both countries, yet the average intellectual culture is greater in America than in England. The result of such a state of things is to increase the direct political and social importance of the female sex. I remember an abolitionist of some little note, telling me that as soon as the negroes were emancipated, the next reform would be the emancipation of women; and though my informant was one of those enthusiastic and indiscreet zealots, who do more harm than good to any cause to which they attach themselves, yet I have no doubt he expressed an idea not unlikely to bear fruit in the future.

In most respects the ordinary social life of an American household is very like that of an English one.

Every man, almost without an ex

ception, is in business in some form or another, so that the male members of the family are away from home during the day. The difficulty of obtaining servants, causes the ladies to look after the cares of the house perhaps more than they would do in a similar position here. But otherwise they appeared to do very much what they would have done in England. Every American woman is a politician, and reads the papers regularly, an occupation which takes up a good deal of time. Then too, there is a popular passion for attending lectures and meetings, which creates in itself a number of sources of interest for women; and finally, calling in America is a custom enforced with the strictest regularity. Moreover the rocking chair is like smoking, at once an amusement and an employment. The extent to which American families live in hotels, appears to me to have been much exaggerated. The practice undoubtedly offers great attractions to persons with small incomes and without children. Still of all the people I was introduced to, I only found one gentleman living with his wife at an hotel, and that was at Washington, where my friend was himself only a visitor for a few months. Of course for one family who lives at an hotel in England, you have a hundred who do so in America; and, as far as I could learn, it was very common for a newly married couple to board at an hotel during the first year or so after marriage. But in no sense is hotel life the habitual or ordinary one of well-to-do Americans. The social amusements of the people are, like our own, mostly home ones. In almost all the Northern States the climate is too cold in winter and too hot in summer for out-of-door amusements to be much in fashion. In the winter there are the sleighing carnivals, which are doubtless very enjoyable to people who have no objection to having their fingers frost bitten, and in the early summer there are the strawberry feasts, which are a sort of gigantic picnics got up by the members of some class or congregation. Dancing is said to be the great passion of the young people in America. Personally I saw very little of it, for since the war there has been a strong popular feeling against balls or festive meetings of any kind. The few dances I saw anything of, were very like ordinary London parties, except perhaps, that supper was a more substantial meal than it is in London. The most striking feature, however, about them was the extreme youth of the company. As a rule, all American women marry, and marry young; and after marriage they go out very little to balls. The great majority become "Church members," and most of the Churches, with the exception of the Episcopalian, look unfavourably, to say the least, on dancing. Card playing seemed to me as rare in families as it is in England, and indeed, from what I saw, I should say that gambling in games of chance was not a natural vice of the Northerners. The chief patrons of the Faro rooms were the wealthy Southerners, and since the outbreak of the war, most of these saloons