the peer who sues for money from her seducer? The whole condition of female morality, affection, and influence, in Europe, may be more elegant, but is it more respectable or desirable than American? Some philosophical inquirer may explain a subject full of interest, if fairly treated, without prejudice.

Nothing about London is so impressive as its vastness; more people in one town than in the whole State of Pennsylvania; an immense solitude to an American at first; an uninhabited island cannot be more so. Millions of men, women, and children, talking, looking, and doing every thing much like us; yet utter strangers, exclusive, repulsive, and intolerant. It is a poignant lesson of one's littleness, an impression of loneliness that makes the bowels. yearn for home, with a heart-sickness in the very marrow of American bones. All fond anticipation vanishes at sombre reality. The most classic spots so begrimed with smoke they look like any thing but what their pictures represent; many of them hid in such narrow places that their exterior is not fully visible. The whole beau-ideal supplanted like a dream, by waking to gloomy truth. The public journals teem every day with occurrences, public and private, which, when an American reads at home, he supposes he must see, feel, and be present at in London, but when he gets there he is as far off from most transactions of that large metropolis as ever. When an American Minister, who had taken his impressions from books, first entered the paltry House of Commons, and saw a handful of plain-looking men instead of the magnificent multitude which Blackstone's Commentaries had taught him to expect, legislating for the British realms, his amazement was unutterable. Thirty years ago London was not handsome; the private dwellings small, the palaces few and mean, and the building materials unsightly. English pride and show do not dwell in London, or even in buildings, so much as in country life. A London artizan takes pride in avoiding show. Great-great-grandson of the inhabitant of the same shop-he is known by workmanship and wealth, disdains a fine window or attractive front; his display is the immense contents of a vast repository of costly things, into which the entrance is a poor door without a sign. Many of the best shops of London are less ostentatious now than those of Philadelphia or New York. English well born are well fed people, large and comely. Liberty and industry of their inferiors dress the upper classes better than any other nation. But operative John Bull is rather a stumpy, ill-favored specimen of mankind; pastoral John is better favored, and John the picked house-servant, in fine livery, is better still. English women generally, with ruddy complexions and handsome faces, are not equal to those of many other countries in many physical attractions. This perilous assertion, though posthumous, will not escape malediction. A royal favorite, formerly

and still justly celebrated for beauty, was, even thirty years ago, though a most lovely creature, yet a lump of loveliness; and a celebrated actress, while charming to hear, was a stupendous person to

I have actually shut my eyes to listen, without the disgust of sight, to her delightful voice and performance, and the enthusiastic applause it elicited.

Kensington gardens and Hyde Park of a Sunday are the great English show, and the finest ostentation in the world of large welldressed men and women, horses, dogs, and equipages of every imaginable description. English display is exterior, in pleasure grounds, parks, race courses, gardens, carriages, clothing, and, above all, horses and their equipments. French elegance ministers to the interior in furniture, theatres, mirrors, porcelain, and female dress, in which it excels. Italy is the preceptor of both in music, painting, statuary and architecture. French theatrical exhibitions are superior to English, not so much in any one thing as on the whole. The Italian opera is the model of all others. A notion predominates in England, that superior wealth begets the best taste and highest refinement; but has it or can it make the best opera, dinner, piece of music or painting?

Fashion is governed by the Salique law in London, where the tailor is a monarch. In Paris there is a queen mantua-maker and a king milliner, but no king tailor; and male dress is not a pure despotism. In London it is absolute; the monarch can do no wrong, as others of his trade can do no right. In Paris, the exquisite tribe is less numerous, but what there are, are more exquisite still than those of London, where it is a much larger race, no one of whom quite equals a very few inimitable French, but all of whom surpass most of the French beau-monde. Female Parisian dress is like the Parisian dialect-something inimitable by foreign or provincial attempts. English fashion is more exclusive than exquisite. It dwells, as probably fashion does every where, not only in the metropolis alone, but only in particular parts, streets, and even sides of certain streets. A stranger furnished from the city of London would be as much behind the modes of one mile further west, as if equipped in another hemisphere; the standard of taste is as different as in a different world.

Of all the superiorities of Great Britain, the domestic animal kingdom is the most unrivalled; the horse, cow, sheep, dog, hare, and rabbit. The English horse is unequalled; cart horse, dray horse, wagon horse, coach horse, stage horse, post horse, gig horse, race horse, hunter, saddle horse, and royal horse, (the cream-colored Hanoverian breed used by the monarch,) all distinct and each perfect in their kind. Pure lineage, perfect training, indefatigable grooming; at least one hundred thousand well mounted gentlemen and ladies all out every tolerable day in Eng.

land, all attended by their well-mounted grooms, and innumerable vehicles drawn by noble horses, with picked footmen in flashy liveries, and coachmen altogether sui-generis, with their wigs and cocked hats, place this genre, if not for use, at least in appearance, beyond all other nations. The Duke before alluded to, told me that Sir William Draper, when serving in this country, sent him a racking horse, what I think he called a Narragansett, but that the rack was not liked in England, where it is, at least was, universally condemned as equally unnatural for the horse and ungraceful for the rider. I am not sure whether the English war horse is the best. General Moreau preferred the Andalusian horse; and M. de Haussez, one of Charles the Tenth's exiled ministers, in his interesting view of England, gives the preference to the Norman horse for labor and longevity. The continentals, therefore, do not give it up. I believe there is a general opinion on the Continent of Europe, that English cavalry are more showy than serviceable; they are said to have failed at Waterloo. The English clothe, physic, and pamper their horses more than others. There are also American turf-men who consider our race horses superior to the English; but I must confess that to all appearance nothing is comparable, in Europe or America, to the splendid whole of the English equestrian department-horse, carriage, coachman, footman, groom, and all-its entirety, nobility and perfection.

I reached London, driving through the wonderful crowds of the streets, in all the bustle of a contested election. Burdett was then standing his first canvass. I was the bearer of a letter to Cobbett, a large, stout, well built, orderly-sergeant-looking man, very talkative and very abusive. I stood with him at the window of his book store, under the loyal sign of the crown and mitre, when the populace drew Burdett's carriage along Pall Mall. Billingsgate could not transcend—as Americans say when they mean, to exceed-the coarse and profane reproaches he poured out with unsparing bluntness on the vile mob and their viler Whig leader, with whom afterwards, both leader and mob, he became a Radical, and then quarrelled with the leader as that leader has with the followers. Populace, whether educated or not, seldom reflect that inconsistency is humanity, and that as politicians are not superhuman, so it is human to err, especially for ardent men with strong passions..

Next day I spent at the country residence of the great English advocate-Erskine; extremely free and animated in conversation, very kindly disposed towards this country, and altogether an agreeable host for a young American. It was the cant of his own profession to discredit Erskine as unlearned and undisciplined, and of some English statesmen to deny his parliamentary talents, on the plea, more prevalent there than here, that lawyers cannot be great statesmen. Erskine was certainly eminent in parliament, and un

rivalled at the bar. If much the greatest professional reputation and emolument are any tests of excellence, he was the first lawyer, and as a public man he filled a large space with signal ability. William Pinckney declared he would rather be Erskine than any other man of his age; and whoever will compare his speeches with the best of their kind, may see reason for that perhaps extravagant estimate. Erskine, like Pinckney, was a professional enthusiast, which is a talent per se. When Dallas, afterwards Chief Justice, was rejoicing, at Erskine's, that the courts were just over, and he should have some repose, Erskine replied with great enthusiasm, and a great oath, that he should like to gnaw another brief immediately. After his short career as Chancellor, he deplored the peerage and pension which deprived him of so much greater professional gain, celebrity and enjoyment; for there is greater enjoyment in signal professional success than mere promotion, titular distinction, or elegant leisure.

I saw Fox in Paris, a fat greasy-looking man, with very shaggy eyebrows, dark complexion, thoughtful expression, plain, unfashionable dress, and a white hat, which was then such a symbol of Whig or rather Radical politics, that none but a root and branch man would venture to wear it. A Tory or a gentleman would rather wear a turban, than that much despised sign of a party then in great degradation. An American Senator, just from England, was telling the news to Mr. Fox, to whom he was introduced, in the American Minister's apartments where they met, and stating various acts of the French which had given, he said, great offence in England, and must produce war. Fox listened, with his great jowl hanging, and his white hat squeezed up in his hand, without uttering a word, till the American was saying that the spirit of the people of England would not brook-the French misconduct, he was about to add, when Fox bluntly interrupted him by-"Don't talk to me of the spirit of the people of England; I'd as soon hear of the spirit of a dish-clout." I was all attention to hear something great from so great a statesman, whose person surprised me, but whose politics I much admired, and of whose talents I had formed the loftiest notions. Both the manner and the matter of his first speech, therefore, amazed me much more than even his unintellectual appearance. An extremely familiar and even coarse way of talking is, I believe, more common among eminent men in other countries than this. Conversational display and ambition are not common in Europe, and well bred nowhere. I heard him once, and only once, in the House of Commons, I can hardly say speak, but begin to speak-for the gallery was cleared, and we were all turned out just as he had passed the shoal places after the difficulties of his launch, and was beginning to float in his natural eloquence. The outset was curious to an American. Fluency is so

H

common here, that hesitation is almost unknown among all those who speak in public, whereas in England it is a rare talent; and in France, while every one talks well, very few can speak at all. Fox had the same white hat, not in his hand, but in both, which he worked and twisted about every way, as hatters do when making hats, plunging along with difficulty from sentence to sentence, either wanting words or having more than he knew what to do with. Without knowing who he was, an audience would pity him, and think he had better sit down than try what he could not accomplish. This very awkwardness at the outset, however, became a merit as he warmed and went on, for its seeming diffidence or difficulty gave additional charm to what followed, when a rapid flood of strong thoughts poured forth in fervid language with intense earnestness, perhaps the first of all oratorical attributes, and in which Fox is said to have excelled; a deep and anxious feeling of right imparted to the sympathies of others. It must be this that Demosthenes means by action; for mere words or gestures, without intense feeling, however rhetorical, cannot move as oratory must. Good sense, understanding the subject, is the first thing required of an English public speaker,-ability to tell hearers something they do not know, without which they will not attend to the most agreeable declamation. If we could exchange with them a quantity of fluency for its equivalent in information, both parties would be gainers, for many of their best speakers are tiresome prosers of good sense, as not a few of ours are mere ranters of bad English. In these very slight sketches, European government, legislation, jurisprudence, commerce, agriculture, manufactures, society, education, and religion-the statistics of the old world presented in the philosophy of the new-are not attempted. They offer great and delightful fields of instructive dissertation for some American Montesquieu or De Tocqueville to elaborate. Unequal to such harvest, I have confined myself to the humble gleanings of mostly material objects, which every transient visit to Europe brings to view. I am admonished, by my present limits, to omit remarkable Holland, classic Flanders, romantic Switzerland, and transcendertal Germany, left to a long repose in my old portfolio, while I pass for a short conclusion to France, Paris and Bonaparte: that wonderful people, as Washington happily termed the French, in his fervid welcome of their first republican representative to this country, whose immense Dictator, as Lafayette with similar felicity entitled their incarnation in an Emperor, led them through an incredible Iliad of prodigious exploits; a people among whose inexplicable traits is that of inveterate stability of national, with extraordinary inconstancy of individual character, as signalized in every stage of their dramatic annals, from when Cæsar, in his Commentaries, characterized them, near two thousand years ago, as eager