The ultimate and very strong impression on the mind of a stranger,

pondering the morals of society in America, is that human nature is much

the same everywhere, whatever may be its environment of riches or

poverty; and that it is justice to the human nature, and not improvement

in fortunes, which must be looked to as the promise of a better time.

Laws and customs may be creative of vice; and should be therefore

perpetually under process of observation and correction: but laws and

customs cannot be creative of virtue: they may encourage and help to

preserve it; but they cannot originate it. In the present case, the

course to be pursued is to exalt the aims, and strengthen the

self-discipline of the whole of society, by each one being as good as he

can make himself, and relying on his own efforts after self-perfection

rather than on any fortunate arrangements of outward social

circumstances. Women, especially, should be allowed the use and benefit

of whatever native strength their Maker has seen fit to give them. It is

essential to the virtue of society that they should be allowed the

freest moral action, unfettered by ignorance, and unintimidated by

authority: for it is unquestioned and unquestionable that if women were

not weak, men could not be wicked: that if women were bravely pure,

there must be an end to the dastardly tyranny of licentiousness.

SECTION II.

OCCUPATION.

The greater number of American women have home and its affairs,

wherewith to occupy themselves. Wifely and motherly occupation may be

called the sole business of woman there. If she has not that, she has

nothing. The only alternative, as I have said, is making an occupation

of either religion or dissipation; neither of which is fit to be so

used: the one being a state of mind; the other altogether a negation

when not taken in alternation with business.

It must happen that where all women have only one serious object, many

of them will be unfit for that object. In the United States, as

elsewhere, there are women no more fit to be wives and mothers than to

be statesmen and generals; no more fit for any responsibility whatever,

than for the maximum of responsibility. There is no need to describe

such: they may be seen everywhere. I allude to them only for the purpose

of mentioning that many of this class shirk some of their labours and

cares, by taking refuge in boarding-houses. It is a circumstance very

unfavourable to the character of some American women, that

boarding-house life has been rendered compulsory by the scarcity of

labour,--the difficulty of obtaining domestic service. The more I saw of

boarding-house life, the worse I thought of it; though I saw none but

the best. Indeed, the degrees of merit in such establishments weigh

little in the consideration of the evil of their existence at all. In

the best it is something to be secure of respectable company, of a good

table, a well-mannered and courteous hostess, and comfort in the private

apartments: but the mischiefs of the system throw all these objects into

the back-ground.

To begin with young children. There can be no sufficient command of

proper food for them; nor any security that they will eat it naturally

at the table where fifty persons may be sitting, a dozen obsequious

blacks waiting, and an array of tempting dishes within sight. The child

is in imminent danger of being too shy and frightened to eat at all, or

of becoming greedy to eat too much. Next, it is melancholy to see girls

of twelve years old either slinking down beside their parents, and

blushing painfully as often as any one of fifty strangers looks towards

them; or boldly staring at all that is going on, and serving themselves,

like little women of the world. After tea, it is a common practice to

hand the young ladies to the piano, to play and sing to a party,

composed chiefly of gentlemen, and brought together on no principle of

selection except mere respectability. Next comes the mischief to the

young married ladies, the most numerous class of women found in

boarding-houses. The uncertainty about domestic service is so great, and

the economy of boarding-house life so tempting to people who have not

provided themselves with house and furniture, that it is not to be

wondered at that many young married people use the accommodation

provided. But no sensible husband, who could beforehand become

acquainted with the liabilities incurred, would willingly expose his

domestic peace to the fearful risk. I saw enough when I saw the

elegantly dressed ladies repair to the windows of the common

drawing-room, on their husbands' departure to the counting-house, after

breakfast. There the ladies sit for hours, doing nothing but gossiping

with one another, with any gentlemen of the house who may happen to

have no business, and with visitors. It is true that the sober-minded

among the ladies can and do withdraw to their own apartments for the

morning: but they complain that they cannot settle to regular

employments as they could in a house of their own. Either they are not

going to stay long; or they have not room for their books, or they are

broken in upon by their acquaintances in the house. The common testimony

is, that little can be done in boarding-houses: and if the more

sober-minded find it so, the fate of the thoughtless, who have no real

business to do, may be easily anticipated. They find a dear friend or

two among the boarders, to whom they confide their husbands' secrets. A

woman who would do this once would do it twice, or as often as she

changes her boarding-house, and finds a new dear friend in each. I have

been assured that there is no end to the difficulties in which gentlemen

have been involved, both as to their commercial and domestic affairs, by

the indiscretion of their thoughtless young wives, amidst the idleness

and levities of boarding-house life.--As for the gentlemen, they are

much to be pitied. Public meals, a noisy house, confinement to one or

two private rooms, with the absence of all gratifications of their own

peculiar convenience and taste, are but a poor solace to the man of

business, after the toils and cares of the day. When to these are added

the snares to which their wives are exposed, it may be imagined that men

of sense and refinement would rather bear with any domestic

inconvenience from the uncertainty and bad quality of help, than give up

housekeeping. They would content themselves, if need were, with a bread

and cheese dinner, light their own fire, and let their wives dust the

furniture a few times in the year, rather than give up privacy, with

its securities. I rather think that the gentlemen generally think and

feel thus; and that when they break up housekeeping and go to

boarding-houses, it is out of indulgence to the wishes of their wives;

who, if they were as wise as they should be, would wish it seldomer and

less than they do.

The study of the economy of domestic service was a continual amusement

to me. What I saw would fill a volume. Many families are, and have for

years been, as well off for domestics as any family in England; and I

must say that among the loudest complainers there were many who, from

fault of either judgment or temper, deserved whatever difficulty they

met with. This is remarkably the case with English ladies settled in

America. They carry with them habits of command, and expectations of

obedience; and when these are found utterly to fail, they grow afraid of

their servants. Even when they have learned the theory that domestic

service is a matter of contract, an exchange of service for recompense,

the authority of the employer extending no further than to require the

performance of the service promised,--when the ladies have learned to

assent in words to this, they are still apt to be annoyed at things

which in no way concern them. If one domestic chooses to wait at table

with no cap over her scanty chevelure, and in spectacles,--if another

goes to church on Sunday morning, dressed exactly like her mistress, the

lady is in no way answerable for the bad taste of her domestics. But

English residents often cannot learn to acquiesce in these things; nor

in the servants doing their work in their own way; nor in their dividing

their time as they please between their mistress's work and their own.

The consequence is, that they soon find it impossible to get American

help at all, and they are consigned to the tender mercies of the low

Irish; and every one knows what kind of servants they commonly are. Some

few of them are the best domestics in America: those who know how to

value a respectable home, a steady sufficient income, the honour of

being trusted, and the security of valuable friends for life: but too

many of them are unsettled, reckless, slovenly; some dishonest, and some

intemperate.

The most fortunate housekeepers I found to be those who acted the most

strenuously on principles of justice and kindness. Such housekeepers are

careful, in the first place, that no part of the mutual duty shall pass

unexplained; no opening be left for future dispute that can be avoided.

The candidate is not only informed precisely what the work is, and shown

the accommodations of the house, but consulted with about cases where

the convenience of the two parties may clash. For instance, the employer

stipulates to be informed some hours before, when her domestic intends

to go out; and that such going out shall never take place when there is

company. In return, she yields all she can to the wishes of her domestic

about recreation, receiving the visits of her family, &c. Where a

complete mutual understanding is arrived at, there is the best chance of

the terms of the contract being faithfully adhered to, and liberally

construed, on both sides: and I have seen instances of the parties

having lived together in friendship and contentment for five, seven,

eleven, and fourteen years.[25] Others, again, I have seen who, without

fault of their own, have changed their servants three times in a

fortnight. Some, too, I have observed who will certainly never be

comfortably settled, unless they can be taught the first principles of

democracy.

Many ladies, in the country especially, take little girls to train;

having them bound to a certain term of service. In such a case, the girl

is taken at about eleven years old, and bound to remain till she is

eighteen. Her mistress engages to clothe her; to give her

Sunday-schooling, and a certain amount of weekday schooling in the year;

and to present her at the end of the term (except in case of bad

behaviour) with fifty dollars, or a cow, or some equivalent. Under a

good mistress, this is an excellent bargain for the girl; but mistresses

complain that as soon as the girls become really serviceable, by the

time they are fourteen or fifteen, they begin to grow restless, having

usually abundance of kind friends to tell them what good wages they

might get if they were free.

In several abodes in which I resided for a longer or shorter time, the

routine of the house was as easy and agreeable as any Englishman's;

elsewhere, the accounts of domestic difficulties were both edifying and

amusing. At first, I heard but little of such things; there being a

prevalent idea in America that English ladies concern themselves very

little about household affairs. This injurious misapprehension the

ladies of England owe, with many others, to the fashionable novels which

deluge the country from New York to beyond the Mississippi. Though the

Americans repeat and believe that these books are false pictures of

manners, they cannot be wholly upon their guard against impressions

derived from them. Too many of them involuntarily image to themselves

the ladies of England as like the duchesses and countesses of those low

books: and can scarcely believe that the wives of merchants,

manufacturers, and shopkeepers, and of the greater number of

professional men, buy their own provision, keep household accounts, look

to the making and mending, the baking, making of preserves, &c., and

sometimes cook, with their own hands, any dish of which their husbands

may be fond. When it was found, from my revelations, that English and

American ladies have, after all, much the same sort of things to do, the

real state of household economy was laid open to me.

All American ladies should know how to clear-starch and iron: how to

keep plate and glass: how to cook dainties: and, if they understand the

making of bread and soup likewise, so much the better. The gentlemen

usually charge themselves with the business of marketing; which is very

fair. A lady, highly accomplished and very literary, told me that she

had lately been left entirely without help, in a country village where

there was little hope of being speedily able to procure any. She and her

daughter made the bread, for six weeks, and entirely kept the house,

which might vie with any nobleman's for true luxury; perfect sufficiency

and neatness. She mentioned one good result from the necessity: that she

should never again put up with bad bread. She could now testify that

bread might always be good, notwithstanding changes of weather, and all

the excuses commonly given. I heard an anecdote from this lady which

struck me. She was in the habit of employing, when she wanted extra

help, a poor woman of colour, to do kitchen-work. The domestics had

always appeared on perfectly good terms with this woman till, one day,

when there was to be an evening party, the upper domestic declined

waiting on the company; giving as a reason that she was offended at

being required to sit down to table with the coloured woman. Her

mistress gently rebuked her pride, saying "If you are above waiting on

my company, my family are not. You will see my daughter carry the

tea-tray, and my niece the cake." The girl repented, and besought to be

allowed to wait; but her assistance was declined; at which she cried

heartily. The next day, she was very humble, and her mistress reasoned

with her, quite successfully. The lady made one concession in silence.

She had the coloured woman come after dinner, instead of before.

A country lady travelled thirty miles to a town where she thought she

might intercept some Irish, coming down from Canada into the States, and

supply herself with domestics from among them. She engaged to send them

thirty miles to confession, twice a year, if they would live with

her.--Another country lady told me that her family suffered from want of

water, because the man objected to bring it. The maids fetched it; and

even the children, in their little cans. The man was sturdy on the

point, and she could not dismiss him for such a reason, he was such a

valuable servant; though he could not drive, from having only one eye,

and always got drunk when his work was done. The same lady had her house

pretty well kept, by dint of superintending everything herself: but,

when she wanted her rooms papered, she thought she might leave that kind

of work to the artist who undertook it. When it was done, she was

summoned to look at it, and called upon to admire the way in which the

man had "made every crease show." He had spent his ingenuity in

contriving that the pattern should not join in any two strips.

The mother of a young bride of my acquaintance flattered herself that

she had graced her daughter's new house, during the wedding journey,

with two exemplary domestics. The day previous to the bride's return,

before the women had seen either master or mistress, they gave notice

that they were going away directly, in consequence of the receipt of

some family news which had changed their plans. They were prevailed upon

to stay for a week, when they persisted in going, though no successors

had been obtained, and their young mistress was to receive her company

the next day. What made the matter desperate was that the bride knew

nothing of housekeeping. She made them cook as much provision, to be

eaten cold, as would possibly keep; and when they had closed the door

behind them, sat down and cried for a whole hour. How she got out of her

troubles, I forget: but she was in excellent spirits when she told me

the story.

Many anecdotes are current about the manners of the young people who

come down from the retired parts of the country to domestic service in

Boston. A simple country girl obeyed her instructions exactly about

putting the dinner upon the table, and then summoning the family. But

they delayed a few minutes, from some cause; and when they entered the

dining-room, found the domestic seated and eating. She had helped

herself from a fowl, thinking that "the folk were so long a-coming, the

things would get cold." A young man from Vermont was hired by a family

who were in extreme want of a footman. He was a most friendly personage,

as willing as he was free and easy; but he knew nothing of life out of a

small farm-house. An evening or two after his arrival, there was a large

party at the house. His mistress strove to impress upon him that all he

had to do at tea-time was to follow, with the sugar and cream, the

waiter who carried the tea; to see that every one had cream and sugar;

and to hold his tongue. He did his part with an earnest face, stepping

industriously from guest to guest. When he had made the circuit, and

reached the door, a doubt struck him whether a group in the furthest

part of the room had had the benefit of his attentions. He raised

himself on his toes with, "I'll ask;" and shouted over the heads of the

company, "I say, how are ye off for sweetenin' in that ere corner?"

These extreme cases sound ridiculously and uncomfortably enough: but it

must be remembered that they are extreme cases. For my own part, I had

rather suffer any inconvenience from having to work occasionally in

chambers and kitchen, and from having little hospitable designs

frustrated, than witness the subservience in which the menial class is

held in Europe. In England, servants have been so long accustomed to

this subservience; it is so completely the established custom for the

mistress to regulate their manners, their clothes, their intercourse

with their friends, and many other things which they ought to manage for

themselves, that it has become difficult to treat them any better.

Mistresses who abstain from such regulation find that they are spoiling

their servants; and heads of families who would make friends of their

domestics find them little fitted to reciprocate the duty. In America it

is otherwise: and may it ever be so! All but those who care for their

selfish gratification more than for the welfare of those about them will

be glad to have intelligent and disinterested friends in the domestics

whom they may be able to attach, though there may be difficulty at first

in retaining them; and some eccentricities of manner and dress may

remain to be borne with.

One of the pleasures of travelling through a democratic country is the

seeing no liveries. No such badge of menial service is to be met with

throughout the States, except in the houses of the foreign ambassadors

at Washington. Of how much higher a character American domestic service

is than any which would endure to be distinguished by a badge, the

following instance will show. I spent an evening at the house of the

president of Harvard University. The party was waited on at tea by a

domestic of the president's, who is also Major of the Horse. On cavalry

days, when guests are invited to dine with the regiment, the major, in

his regimentals, takes the head of the table, and has the president on

his right hand. He plays the host as freely as if no other relation

existed between them. The toasts being all transacted, he goes home,

doffs his regimentals, and waits on the president's guests at tea.

As for the occupations with which American ladies fill up their leisure;

what has been already said will show that there is no great weight or

diversity of occupation. Many are largely engaged in charities, doing

good or harm according to the enlightenment of mind which is carried to

the work. In New England, a vast deal of time is spent in attending

preachings, and other religious meetings: and in paying visits, for

religious purposes, to the poor and sorrowful. The same results follow

from this practice that may be witnessed wherever it is much pursued. In

as far as sympathy is kept up, and acquaintanceship between different

classes in society is occasioned, the practice is good. In as far as it

unsettles the minds of the visitors, encourages a false craving for

religious excitement, tempts to spiritual interference on the one hand,

and cant on the other, and humours or oppresses those who need such

offices least, while it alienates those who want them most, the practice

is bad. I am disposed to think that much good is done, and much harm:

and that, whenever women have a greater charge of indispensable business

on their hands, so as to do good and reciprocate religious sympathy by

laying hold of opportunities, instead of by making occupation, more than

the present good will be done, without any of the harm.

All American ladies are more or less literary: and some are so to

excellent purpose: to the saving of their minds from vacuity. Readers

are plentiful: thinkers are rare. Minds are of a very passive character:

and it follows that languages are much cultivated. If ever a woman was

pointed out to me as distinguished for information, I might be sure

beforehand that she was a linguist. I met with a great number of ladies

who read Latin; some Greek; some Hebrew; some German. With the exception

of the last, the learning did not seem to be of much use to them, except

as a harmless exercise. I met with more intellectual activity, more

general power, among many ladies who gave little time to books, than

among those who are distinguished as being literary. I did not meet with

a good artist among all the ladies in the States. I never had the

pleasure of seeing a good drawing, except in one instance; or, except in

two, of hearing good music. The entire failure of all attempts to draw

is still a mystery to me. The attempts are incessant; but the results

are below criticism. Natural philosophy is not pursued to any extent by

women. There is some pretension to mental and moral philosophy; but the

less that is said on that head the better.

This is a sad account of things. It may tempt some to ask 'what then are

the American women?' They are better educated by Providence than by men.

The lot of humanity is theirs: they have labour, probation, joy, and

sorrow. They are good wives; and, under the teaching of nature, good

mothers. They have, within the range of their activity, good sense, good

temper, and good manners. Their beauty is very remarkable; and, I think,

their wit no less. Their charity is overflowing, if it were but more

enlightened: and it may be supposed that they could not exist without

religion. It appears to superabound; but it is not usually of a healthy

character. It may seem harsh to say this: but is it not the fact that

religion emanates from the nature, from the moral state of the

individual? Is it not therefore true that unless the nature be

completely exercised, the moral state harmonised, the religion cannot be

healthy?

One consequence, mournful and injurious, of the 'chivalrous' taste and

temper of a country with regard to its women is that it is difficult,

where it is not impossible, for women to earn their bread. Where it is a

boast that women do not labour, the encouragement and rewards of labour

are not provided. It is so in America. In some parts, there are now so

many women dependent on their own exertions for a maintenance, that the

evil will give way before the force of circumstances. In the meantime,

the lot of poor women is sad. Before the opening of the factories, there

were but three resources; teaching, needle-work, and keeping

boarding-houses or hotels. Now, there are the mills; and women are

employed in printing-offices; as compositors, as well as folders and

stitchers.

I dare not trust myself to do more than touch on this topic. There would

be little use in dwelling upon it; for the mischief lies in the system

by which women are depressed, so as to have the greater number of

objects of pursuit placed beyond their reach, more than in any minor

arrangements which might be rectified by an exposure of particular

evils. I would only ask of philanthropists of all countries to inquire

of physicians what is the state of health of sempstresses; and to judge

thence whether it is not inconsistent with common humanity that women

should depend for bread upon such employment. Let them inquire what is

the recompense of this kind of labour, and then wonder if they can that

the pleasures of the licentious are chiefly supplied from that class.

Let them reverence the strength of such as keep their virtue, when the

toil which they know is slowly and surely destroying them will barely

afford them bread, while the wages of sin are luxury and idleness.

During the present interval between the feudal age and the coming time,

when life and its occupations will be freely thrown open to women as to

men, the condition of the female working classes is such that if its

sufferings were but made known, emotions of horror and shame would

tremble through the whole of society.

For women who shrink from the lot of the needlewoman,--almost equally

dreadful, from the fashionable milliner down to the humble

stocking-darner,--for those who shrink through pride, or fear of

sickness, poverty, or temptation, there is little resource but

pretension to teach. What office is there which involves more

responsibility, which requires more qualifications, and which ought,

therefore, to be more honourable, than that of teaching? What work is

there for which a decided bent, not to say a genius, is more requisite?

Yet are governesses furnished, in America as elsewhere, from among those

who teach because they want bread; and who certainly would not teach for

any other reason. Teaching and training children is, to a few, a very

few, a delightful employment, notwithstanding all its toils and cares.

Except to these few it is irksome; and, when accompanied with poverty

and mortification, intolerable. Let philanthropists inquire into the

proportion of governesses among the inmates of lunatic asylums. The

answer to this question will be found to involve a world of rebuke and

instruction. What can be the condition of the sex when such an

occupation is overcrowded with candidates, qualified and unqualified?

What is to be hoped from the generation of children confided to the

cares of a class, conscientious perhaps beyond most, but reluctant,

harassed, and depressed?

The most accomplished governesses in the United States may obtain 600

dollars a-year in the families of southern planters; provided they will

promise to teach everything. In the north they are paid less; and in

neither case, is there a possibility of making provision for sickness

and old age. Ladies who fully deserve the confidence of society may

realise an independence in a few years by school-keeping in the north:

but, on the whole, the scanty reward of female labour in America remains

the reproach to the country which its philanthropists have for some

years proclaimed it to be. I hope they will persevere in their

proclamation, though special methods of charity will not avail to cure

the evil. It lies deep; it lies in the subordination of the sex: and

upon this the exposures and remonstrances of philanthropists may

ultimately succeed in fixing the attention of society; particularly of

women. The progression or emancipation of any class usually, if not

always, takes place through the efforts of individuals of that class:

and so it must be here. All women should inform themselves of the

condition of their sex, and of their own position. It must necessarily

follow that the noblest of them will, sooner or later, put forth a moral

power which shall prostrate cant, and burst asunder the bonds, (silken

to some, but cold iron to others,) of feudal prejudices and usages. In

the meantime, is it to be understood that the principles of the

Declaration of Independence bear no relation to half of the human race?

If so, what is the ground of the limitation? If not so, how is the

restricted and dependent state of women to be reconciled with the

proclamation that "all are endowed by their Creator with certain

inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit

of happiness?"

SECTION III.

HEALTH.

Some popular American writers have lately laid hold of this subject, to

the great advantage of the society in which they live. Dr. Combe's

"Principles of Physiology" has gone through several editions; and I know

that the demand of society for fresh air and soap and water has

considerably increased in consequence. But much remains to be done. In

private houses, baths are a rarity. In steam-boats, the accommodations

for washing are limited in the extreme; and in all but first-rate

hotels, the philosophy of personal cleanliness is certainly not

understood. The Creoles of Louisiana are the most satisfactory hosts and

hostesses in this respect, except a few particularly thoughtful people

elsewhere. In the house of a Creole, a guest finds a large pan or tub of

fresh cold water, with soap and towels, placed in a corner of his room,

morning and night. In such a climate as that of New Orleans, there is no

safety nor comfort in anything short of a complete ablution, twice a

day. On board steam-boats which have not separate state-rooms, there are

no means of preserving sufficient cleanliness and health. How the ladies

of the cabin can expect to enjoy any degree of vigour and cheerfulness

during a voyage of four or five days, during which they wash merely

their faces and hands, I cannot imagine. It is to be hoped that the

majority will soon demand that there should be a range of

washing-closets in all steam-boats whose voyages are longer than

twenty-four hours.

The common excuse for the deficient activity and lack of fresh air is

the climate. But this excuse will not avail while there are ladies who

do preserve their health by walking and riding, and thoroughly

ventilating their houses. Any one who knows Stockbridge, and the feats

which are there performed by a troop of rosy, graceful girls, and active

women, will reject all pleas about the difficulty of getting air and

exercise. It is one of the misfortunes of a new country that its cities

have environs which are little tempting for walking. It must be

acknowledged that it requires some resolution to go out to walk in

places no more tempting than Pennsylvania Avenue, at Washington;

Broadway, New York; or the trim streets of Philadelphia; or even the

pretty Common at Boston. But the way to have good country walks provided

is to wish for them. When the whole female society of America shall be

as fond of exercise, as highly-principled with regard to it, as the

Stockbridge ladies, the facilities will be furnished. In the meantime,

there are pretty walks within reach of the whole population, except that

of three or four large cities. Boston is particularly unfortunate in

occupying a promontory, from which it is usually necessary to pass very

long bridges to the mainland: a passage too bleak to be attempted in

windy weather, and too exposed to be endurable in a hot sun, without

necessity. But those who have carriages can easily get transported

beyond this inconvenience; and for those who have not, there is the

Common and the Neck.

Those who wish for health, and know how to seek it, contrive to walk in

summer very early in the morning; like residents in India. The mornings

of the sultry months are perfectly delicious; and there is no excuse for

neglect of exercise while they last. The autumn weather of the northern

States is the best of the year, when the hues and airs of paradise seem

shed abroad. The greater number of days in the winter admit of exercise.

The winds are too cutting to be encountered; but the days of calm clear

frost might be much better employed in walking than in sleighing. No

eulogiums on the sleigh will ever reconcile me to it. I dislike the

motion, and, after a short time, the jingle of the bells. But the danger

is the prime consideration. Young ladies who dry up their whole frames

in the heat of fires of anthracite coal, never breathing the outward air

but in going to church, and in stepping in and out of the carriage in

going to parties, will once in a time go on a sleighing expedition;

sitting motionless in the open air, with hot bricks to their feet, and

their faces in danger of being frost-bitten. If there be pleasure in

such frolics, it is too dearly bought by the peril. If the troops of

girls who would mourn over the abolition of sleighing would but try how

they like the luxury of daily active exercise in fresh air, they would

find the exchange well worth making, on the score of pleasure alone.

The ladies plead that they have much exercise within doors, about their

household occupations. Except making beds, rubbing tables, and romping

with children, I know of no household occupations which involve much

exercise. The weariness which some of them occasion, is of a kind which

would be relieved by walking. And all this does not imply fresh air, of

which no one can get enough without going out into it, except in some

country residences. It made me sorrowful to see children shut up during

the winter in houses, heated by anthracite coal up to the temperature of

85°; and to see how pallid and dried the poor little things looked, long

before there was a prospect of their speedy release from their

imprisonment. Some, who were let out on fine days, were pretty sure to

catch cold. Those only seemed heartily to thrive who were kept in rooms

moderately heated, and vigorously exercised in the open air, on all but

windy and other unmanageable days. The burning of anthracite coal

affected me unpleasantly, except where an evaporation of water was going

on in the room. I suspect that some of the maladies of the country may

be more or less owing to its use.

One proof of the badness of the system of non-exercising, is found in

the fact that the distortion of the spine is even more common among

women in America than in Europe. Physicians who have turned their

attention to this symptom, declare that the difficulty is to find in

boarding-schools a spine that is perfectly straight: and when the period

of growth is completed, a large majority of cases remains where the

weakness is not entirely got over. The posture-making of the United

States is renowned. Of course there is a cause for a propensity so

general. The languor induced by the climate is that assigned. The ladies

not being able to use the same freedom as the gentlemen, get rid of

their languor as they may; but not as they best may. Instead of sitting

still all through the hot weather, and all through the cold weather,

they had better exercise their limbs during some portion of the day, and

lie down during the most sultry hours; and in the winter, avail

themselves of every opportunity for active employment. If they would do

this, it is not to be conceived that the next generation would be

distinguished as the present is for its spare forms and pallid

complexions.

The apathy on the subject of health was to me no otherwise to be

accounted for than by supposing that the feeling of vigorous health is

almost unknown. Invalids are remarkably uncomplaining and unalarmed;

and their friends talk of their having "a weak breast," and "delicate

lungs," with little more seriousness than the English use in speaking of

a common cold. The numbers of clergymen who had to leave their flocks,

professors their chairs, young men and women their country, in pursuit

of health, made me melancholy sometimes when the friends and neighbours

took it calmly as the commonest of events. As I am pretty confident that

a remedy might be found in more judicious management, this acquiescence

strikes me as being by far too Mahomedan in its character. The extremest

case that I met with was in a lady, who declared, with complacency, that

she could not walk a mile. She owned her belief that the inactivity of

the American women shortened their lives by some years; but thought this

did not matter, as they were not aware of it at the time.

I should like to see a well-principled reform in diet tried, with a view

to the improvement of the general health. I should like to see hot bread

and cakes banished; a diminution in the quantity of pickles and

preserves, and also in the quantity of meat eaten. I should like to see

the effect of making the diet of children more simple. Almost any change

would be worth trying for so great an object. What is to become of the

next, and again of the succeeding generation, if the average of health

cannot be raised, it is fearful to think of. The only prevalence of

vigorous health that I witnessed in the country, was in the elevated

parts of the Alleghany range; in the State of Michigan; and perhaps I

might add, among the ladies of Charleston, who pass three quarters of

the year in the open air of their piazzas.[26]

All these means of improving health, though probably necessary, will

not avail without some others. There must be less anxiety of mind among

men, and less vacuity among women. With a brain fully but equably

exercised, and composed nerves, the above-mentioned methods would

probably enable the Americans to defy the changes of their climate: but

not without this justice to the brain and nerves. It is rather

remarkable that this anxiety prevails most in the parts of the country

which make the most conspicuous profession of religion. Religious faith

and hope should naturally promote health and equanimity by teaching the

spirit to repose on immovable principles, and unintermitting laws: by

disburdening the mind of worldly cares, and giving rest to the weary and

heavy-laden. If it does not thus calm and lighten the mind, it fails of

its effect. If it disturbs the mental and bodily frame, its operation is

perverted. It would be well if this were looked to. The more moderate

religionists point to the graves of the young who have fallen victims to

Revivals. Let them look at home to see if no spiritual competition, no

asceticism interferes with the equable workings of the frame, by which

its powers are kept in vigorous and joyous action, without excess.

There is no doubt of this wear and tear from anxiety being the chief

cause of the excessive use of tobacco in the United States. Its charm to

men, who have not the elasticity of health and good animal spirits to

oppose to toil and trouble, may be imagined. It is to be hoped that the

enjoyment of the natural and perfect stimulant will soon supersede the

use of the artificial and pernicious one.

The vacuity of mind of many women is, I conclude, the cause of a vice

which it is painful to allude to; but which cannot honestly be passed

over, in the consideration of the morals and the health of American

women. It is no secret on the spot, that the habit of intemperance is

not infrequent among women of station and education in the most

enlightened parts of the country. I witnessed some instances, and heard

of more. It does not seem to me to be regarded with all the dismay which

such a symptom ought to excite. To the stranger, a novelty so horrible,

a spectacle so fearful, suggests wide and deep subjects of

investigation. If women, in a region professing religion more

strenuously than any other, living in the deepest external peace,

surrounded by prosperity, and outwardly honoured more conspicuously than

in any other country, can ever so far cast off self-restraint, shame,

domestic affection, and the deep prejudices of education, as to plunge

into the living hell of intemperance, there must be something fearfully

wrong in their position. An intemperate man has strong temptation to

plead: he began with conviviality, and only arrives at solitary

intemperance as the ultimate degradation. A woman indulges in the vice

in solitude and secrecy, as long as secrecy is possible. She knows that

there is no excuse, no solace, no hope. There is nothing before her but

despair. It is impossible to suppose than that there has otherwise been

despair throughout: the despair which waits upon vacuity. I believe that

the practice has, in some few cases, arisen from physicians prescribing

cordials to growing girls at school, and from the difficulty found in

desisting from the use of agreeable stimulants. In other cases, the vice

is hereditary. In others, no explanation remains, but that which appears

to me quite sufficient,--vacuity of mind. Lest my mention of this very

remarkable fact should lead to the supposition of the practice being

more common than it is, I think it right to state, that I happened to

know of seven or eight cases in the higher classes of society of one

city. The number of cases is a fact of comparatively small importance.

That one exists, is a grief which the whole of society should take to

heart, and ponder with the entire strength of its understanding.

FOOTNOTES:

[25] The wages of domestic service vary, of course, according to

circumstances. In the eastern cities, a good footman is paid about

twenty-five dollars per month: a cook, two dollars a-week; and a

housemaid a dollar and a-half.

[26] I was informed by an eminent physician, that within his

recollection, _goîtres_ were very common at Pittsburg. The patients

recovered, if early sent round to the open country on the other side of

the hill. Since the woods have been felled, and the city thereby well

ventilated, the disease has wholly disappeared.

CHAPTER III.

CHILDREN.

"An evidence and reprehension both

Of the mere schoolboy's lean and tardy growth."

_Cowper._

Nothing less than an entire work would be required for the discussion of

the subject of education in any country. I can only indicate here two or

three peculiarities which strike the stranger in the discipline of

American children; of those whose lot is cast in the northern States;

for it needs no further showing, that those who are reared among slaves

have not the ordinary chances of wisdom and peace.

The Americans, particularly those of New England, look with a just

complacency on the apparatus of education furnished to their entire

population.[27] There are schools provided for the training of every

individual, from the earliest age; colleges to receive the élite of the

schools; and lyceums, and other such institutions, for the subsequent

instruction of working men. The provision of schools is so adequate,

that any citizen who sees a child at play during school-hours, may ask

"why are you not at school?" and, unless a good reason be given, may

take him to the school-house of the district. Some, who do not penetrate

to the principle of this, exclaim upon the tyranny practised upon the

parents. The principle is, that, in a democracy, where life and society

are equally open to all, and where all have agreed to require of each

other a certain amount of intellectual and moral competency, the means

being provided, it becomes the duty of all to see that the means are

used. Their use is an indispensable condition of the privileges of

citizenship. No control is exercised as to how and where the child shall

be educated. It rests with the parent to send him to a public or private

school, or have him taught at home: but in case of his being found in a

neglected state as to education, it is in the power of any citizen to

bring him to the advantage provided for him by society.

The instruction furnished is not good enough for the youth of such a

country, with such a responsibility and such a destiny awaiting them as

the working out the first democratic organisation that the world has

witnessed in practice. The information provided is both meagre and

superficial. There is not even any systematic instruction given on

political morals: an enormous deficiency in a republic. But it must be

remembered how young the society is; how far it has already gone beyond

most other countries; and how great is the certainty that the majority,

always ultimately in the right, will gradually exalt the character of

the instruction which it has been already wise enough to provide. It

must be remembered too, how much farther the same kind and degree of

instruction goes in a democracy than elsewhere. The alphabet itself is

of little or no value to a slave, while it is an inestimable treasure

to a conscious young republican. One needs but go from a charity-school

in an English county to a free-school in Massachusetts, to see how

different the bare acquisition of reading and writing is to children

who, if they look forward at all, do it languidly, and into a life of

mechanical labour merely, and to young citizens who are aware that they

have their share of the work of self-government to achieve. Elderly

gentlemen in the country may smile, and foreigners of all ages may scoff

at the self-confidence and complacency of young men who have just

exercised the suffrage for the first time: but the being secure of the

dignity, the certainty of being fully and efficaciously represented, the

probability of sooner or later filling some responsible political

office, are a stimulus which goes far to supply the deficiencies of the

instruction imparted. It is much to be wished that this stimulus were as

strong and as virtuous in one or two colleges whose inmates are on the

very verge of the exercise of their political rights, as in some of even

the primary schools. The aristocratic atmosphere of Harvard University,

for instance, would be much purified by a few breezes of such democratic

inspiration as issue from the school-houses of some of the country

districts.

Some persons plead that there is less occasion for school instruction in

the principles of politics, than for an improved teaching of some other

things; because children are instructed in politics every day of their

lives by what they hear at home, and wherever they go. But they hear all

too little of principles. What they hear is argumentation about

particular men, and immediate measures. The more sure they are of

learning details elsewhere, the more necessary it is that they should

here be exercised in those principles by which the details are to be

judged and made available as knowledge. They come to school with their

heads crammed with prejudices, and their memories with words, which it

should be part of the work of school to reduce to truth and clearness,

by substituting principles for the one, and annexing ideas to the other.

A Sunday-school teacher asked a child, "Who killed Abel?" "General

Jackson."--Another inquired of a scholar, "In what state were mankind

left after the fall?"--"In the State of Vermont."

The early republican consciousness of which I have spoken, and the fact

of the more important place which the children occupy in a society whose

numbers are small in proportion to its resources, are the two

circumstances which occasion that freedom of manners in children of

which so much complaint has been made by observers, and on which so much

remonstrance has been wasted;--I say "wasted," because remonstrance is

of no avail against a necessary fact. Till the United States cease to be

republican, and their vast area is fully peopled, the children there

will continue as free and easy and as important as they are. For my own

part, I delight in the American children; in those who are not overlaid

with religious instruction. There are instances, as there are

everywhere, of spoiled, pert, and selfish children. Parents' hearts are

pierced there, as elsewhere. But the independence and fearlessness of

children were a perpetual charm in my eyes. To go no deeper, it is a

constant amusement to see how the speculations of young minds issue,

when they take their own way of thinking, and naturally say all they

think. Some admirable specimens of active little minds were laid open to

me at a juvenile ball at Baltimore. I could not have got at so much in a

year in England. If I had at home gone in among eighty or a hundred

little people, between the ages of eight and sixteen, I should have

extracted little more than "Yes, ma'am," and "No, ma'am." At Baltimore,

a dozen boys and girls at a time crowded round me, questioning,

discussing, speculating, revealing in a way which enchanted me. In

private houses, the comments slipped in at table by the children were

often the most memorable, and generally the most amusing part of the

conversation. Their aspirations all come out. Some of these are very

striking as indicating the relative value of things in the children's

minds. One affectionate little sister, of less than four years old,

stimulated her brother William, (five,) by telling him that if he would

be very very good, he might in time be called William Webster; and then

he might get on to be as good as Jesus Christ. Three children were

talking over the birth-day of the second, (ten) and how they should like

to keep it. They settled that they should like of all things to have

Miss Sedgwick, and Mr. Bryant, and myself, to spend the day with them.

They did not venture to invite us, and had no intention of our knowing

their wish.

In conversing with a truly wise parent, one day, I remarked on the

change of relation which takes place when the superior children of

ordinary parents become guides and protectors to those who have kept

their childhood restrained under a rigid rule. We talked over the

difficulties of the transition here, (by far the hardest part of filial

duty,) and speculated on what the case would be after death, supposing

the parties to recognise each other in a new life of progression. My

friend observed that the only thing to be done is to avoid to the utmost

the exercise of authority, and to make children friends from the very

beginning. He and many others have done this with gladdening success.

They do not lay aside their democratic principles in this relation, more

than in others, because they happen to have almost unlimited power in

their own hands. They watch and guard: they remove stumbling-blocks:

they manifest approbation and disapprobation: they express wishes, but,

at the same time, study the wishes of their little people: they leave as

much as possible to natural retribution: they impose no opinions, and

quarrel with none: in short, they exercise the tenderest friendship

without presuming upon it. What is the consequence? I had the pleasure

of hearing this friend say, "There is nothing in the world so easy as

managing children. You may make them anything you please." In my own

mind I added, "with such hearts and minds to bring to the work as the

parents of your children have."--One reason of the pleasure with which I

regarded the freedom of American children was that I took it as a sign

that the most tremendous suffering perhaps of human life is probably

lessened, if not obviated, there:--the misery of concealed doubts and

fears, and heavy solitary troubles,--the misery which makes the early

years of a shy child a fearful purgatory. Yet purgatory is not the word:

for this misery purges no sins, while it originates many. I have a

strong suspicion that the faults of temper so prevalent where parental

authority is strong, and where children are made as insignificant as

they can be made, and the excellence of temper in America, are

attributable to the different management of childhood in the one article

of freedom. There is no doubt that many children are irrecoverably

depressed and unnerved for want of being convinced that anybody cares

for them. They nourish doubts, they harbour fears and suspicions, and

carry within them prejudices and errors, for want of its occurring to

them to ask questions; and though they may outgrow these defects and

errors, they never recover from them. Unexplained and inexplicable

obstacles are thrown in the way of their filial duty,--obstacles which

not even the strongest conscientiousness can overcome with grace: the

vigour of the spirit is prostrated, or perverted into wilfulness: the

calmness of self-respect is forfeited, and so is the repose of a loving

faith in others. In short, the temper is ruined, and the life is

spoiled; and all from the parents not having made friends of their

children from the beginning.--No one will suppose that I mean to

represent this mistake as general anywhere. But I am confident it is

very common at home: and that it cannot, in the nature of things, ever

become common in America. I saw one or two melancholy instances of it:

and a few rare cases where parents attempted unjustifiably to rule the

proceedings of their grown up sons and daughters; not by express

command, but by pleas which, from a parent, are more irresistible than

even commands. But these were remarkable, and remarked upon, as

exceptions. I saw two extreme contrasting cases, in near neighbourhood,

of girls brought up, the one in the spirit of love, the other in that of

fear. Those two girls are the best teachers of moral philosophy that

ever fell in my way. In point of birth, organisation, means of

education, they were about equal. Both were made to be beautiful and

intelligent. The one is pallid, indolent, (with the reputation of

learning,) tasteless, timid, and triste, manifesting nothing but

occasionally an intense selfishness, and a prudery beyond belief. The

education of this girl has been the study of her anxious parents from

the day of her birth: but they have omitted to let her know and feel

that anybody loved her. The other, the darling of a large family,

meeting love from all eyes, and hearing tenderness in every voice, is

beautiful as a Hebe, and so free and joyous that her presence is like

sunshine in a rainy day. She knows that she is beautiful and

accomplished; but she is, as far as eye can see, absolutely devoid of

vanity. She has been apprised, over and over again, that people think

her a genius: she silently contradicts this, and settles with herself

that she can acquire anything, but originate nothing. She studies with

her whole being, as if she were coming out next year in a learned

profession. She dances at balls as if nothing lay beyond the ball-room.

She flits hither and thither, in rain or sunshine, walking, riding, or

driving, on little errands of kindness; and bears the smallest interests

of her friends in mind in the heights of her mirth and the depths of her

studies. At dull evening parties, she can sit under the lamp, (little

knowing how beautiful she looks) quietly amusing herself with prints,

and not wanting notice: and she can speak out what she thinks and feels

to a circle of admirers, as simply and earnestly as she would to her own

mother. I have seen people shake their heads, and fear lest she should

be spoiled; but my own conviction is that this young creature is

unspoilable. She has had all the praise and admiration she can have: no

watchfulness of parents can keep them from her. She does not want praise

and admiration. She has other interests and other desires: and my belief

is, that if she were left alone to-morrow, the last of her family, she

would be as safe, busy, and, in due time, happy, as she is now under

their tender guardianship. She is the most complete example I ever

witnessed of a being growing up in the light and warmth and perfect

freedom of love; and she has left me very little toleration for

authority, in education more than in anything else.

A question was asked me, oftener than once, which indicates the

difference between family manners in England and America. I was asked

whether it was possible that the Bennet family would act as they are

represented in "Pride and Prejudice:" whether a foolish mother, with

grown up daughters, would be allowed to spoil the two youngest, instead

of the sensible daughters taking the case into their own hands. It is

certainly true that in America the superior minds of the family would

take the lead; while in England, however the domestic affairs might

gradually arrange themselves, no person would be found breathing the

suggestion of superseding the mother's authority. The most remarkable

difference is, that in England the parents value the authority as a

right, however lenient they may be in the use of it. In America, the

parent disapproves of it, as a matter of reason: and, if he acts

rationally, had rather not possess it. Little revelations of the state

of the case were perpetually occurring, which excited my wonder at

first, and my interest throughout. It appeared through the smallest

circumstances; as, for instance, when a lady was describing to me the

wedding-day of her eldest daughter. She mentioned that two or three of

the children were not in the drawing-room at the time of the ceremony.

Why? They were so angry at their brother-in-law for taking away their

sister, that they kept out of the way till he had driven from the door

with his bride. What children in England would have dreamed of absenting

themselves in such a way?

It is amusing to observe what the ability for self-preservation is among

children in a country where nursemaids are scarce. It frightened me at

first to see mere babies playing on broken wooden bridges, where the

rushing water below might be seen through large holes; and little boys

climbing trees which slanted over a rocky precipice; or getting into a

canoe tossing on a rough river. But I find that accidents to children

are rarely or never heard of. The obvious results of such training are a

dexterity, fearlessness, and presence of mind, and aptitude for bodily

exercises, which are of eminent use in mature life.

I was sorry to perceive in some of the cities, especially in Boston, an

unconsciousness on the part of many parents of the superior value of the

discipline of circumstance to that of express teaching, in the work of

education. Perhaps no one would be found to deny in words that the best

training is that which exercises the whole being of a child: yet there

is a method of education somewhat in fashion in Boston just now, which

bids fair to kill off its victims in early life; and irreparably

injure,--morally as well as physically,--those whom it may spare. The

good people of Boston are more fond of excitement than of consistency:

or, rather, that part of society is so which professes to constitute the

city. When Spurzheim was there, the brain was everything; and his wise

and benevolent remonstrances about the neglect or abuse of the bodily

powers were received with great candour, and with much apparent

conviction. Short as the interval has been, a considerable number of his

disciples have gone directly over to the opposite philosophy; and in

their spiritualism out-herod Herod. They frame their theory and practice

on the principle that human beings are created perfect spirits in an

infant body. Some go further back than this, and actually teach little

children dogmatically that spirit makes body; and that their own bodies

are the result of the efforts of their spirits to manifest themselves.

Such outrageous absurdities might be left to contempt, but for the

consequences in practice. There is a school in Boston, (a large one,

when I left the city,) conducted on this principle. The master

presupposes his little pupils possessed of all truth, in philosophy and

morals; and that his business is to bring it out into expression; to

help the outward life to conform to the inner light; and, especially, to

learn of these enlightened babes, with all humility. Large exposures

might be made of the mischief this gentleman is doing to his pupils by

relaxing their bodies, pampering their imaginations, over-stimulating

the consciences of some, and hardening those of others; and by his

extraordinary management, offering them every inducement to falsehood

and hypocrisy. His system can be beneficial to none, and must be ruinous

to many. If he should retain any pupils long enough to make a full trial

of his methods with them, those who survive the neglect of bodily

exercises and over-excitement of brain, will be found the first to throw

off moral restraints, on perceiving at length that their moral guide has

been employing their early years in the pursuit of shadows and the

contempt of realities. There is, however, little fear of such a full

trial being made. A few weeks are enough to convince sensible parents of

the destructiveness of such a system; and it will probably issue in

being one of the fancies of the day at Boston; and little heard of

anywhere else.

The fundamental principle is, however, working mischief in other

directions. It affects, very unfortunately, the welfare of the blind;

and yet more of the deaf and dumb who are taken under the benevolent

protection of society. As long as there are many of the most

distinguished members of the community who hold that the interior being

of these sufferers is in a perfect state, only the means of

manifestation being deficient; that their training is to proceed on the

supposition of their being possessed of a complete set of intellectual

and moral intuitions; and that they therefore only need to be furnished

with types, being already full of the things typified; and even that

they have the advantage over others in the exclusion of false and vulgar

associations,--the pupils will have little chance of benefit beyond the

protection and comfort secured to them in their appropriate

institutions. In the conversation of those who verbally pitied their

case, I could frequently trace an inward persuasion that the deaf and

dumb were better off than those who could hear and speak: and there were

few who discovered, while admiring the supposed allegorical discourse or

compositions of the pupils, that the whole was little more than a set of

images, absolutely empty of the abstract truth which they were supposed

to involve. I had witnessed this tremendous error in the teaching of the

deaf and dumb elsewhere; but I little thought ever to meet with it

beyond the confines of the particular, and almost inscrutable case under

notice. In the school above mentioned, however, error nourishes, blessed

as the pupils are with their five senses and the instrument of speech.

Putting aside such cases of eccentricity, the children of America have

the advantage of the best possible early discipline; that of activity

and self-dependence. The grand defect is a subsequent one. Education is

not made appropriate to the aims of its subjects. All, whatever may be

their views in life, are educated nearly alike up to nineteen. This is

an absurdity copied from the old world, but unworthy of the good sense

of the new. It will be rectified when the lives of rich men become as

steadily aimed as those of citizens who have their way to make. Young

men of fortune, who may have a taste for science or literature, do not

yield themselves up to these pursuits, because "there is yet no

scientific or literary class for them to fall into." Where is the

necessity to them of such a class to fall into? And, supposing the

necessity, how is there ever to be such a class, unless somebody begins

to supply the elements?--It will be done. No restraint of custom will

long be powerful enough to curb the force of intellectual tendency. The

passion for truth, the craving for knowledge, are ever found, in the

long run, irrepressible by the incubus of conventionalism. A genius will

arise, now here, now there, to startle society out of its rules and

precedents: and when America has had, now a philosopher and now a poet,

who, like Schiller's "true artist," shall "look upwards to his dignity

and his calling, and not downwards to his happiness and his wants,"

society will enlarge its discipline, and become a great preparatory

school for the fruition of whatever the hand of man findeth to do, or

his understanding to investigate, or his imagination to reveal.

FOOTNOTE:

[27] See Appendix D.

CHAPTER IV.

SUFFERERS.

"One of the universal sentiments which Christianity has deeply

imbedded in the human heart is that of the _natural equality of

men_.... It has produced the spectacle, which I believe to be

peculiar to christian times, of one class uplifting another, the

happy toiling for the miserable, the free vindicating the rights of

the oppressed. With all the noble examples of disinterested

friendship and patriotism, which ancient history affords, I can

remember no approach to that _wholesale compassion_, that general

action of one order of society on another, that system of

_benevolent agitation_ in behalf of powerless and forgotten

suffering, which characterises the history of modern times."

_Rationale of Religious Inquiry._

The idea of travelling in America was first suggested to me by a

philanthropist's saying to me, "Whatever else may be true about the

Americans, it is certain that they have got at principles of justice and

mercy in the treatment of the least happy classes of society which we

may be glad to learn from them. I wish you would go and see what they

are." I did so; and the results of my investigation have not been

reserved for this short chapter, but are spread over the whole of my

book. The fundamental democratic principles on which American society is

organised, are those "principles of justice and mercy" by which the

guilty, the ignorant, the needy, and the infirm, are saved and blessed.

The charity of a democratic society is heart-reviving to witness; for

there is a security that no wholesale oppression is bearing down the

million in one direction, while charity is lifting up the hundred in

another. Generally speaking, the misery that is seen is all that exists:

there is no paralysing sense of the hopelessness of setting up

individual benevolence against social injustice. If the community has

not yet arrived at the point at which all communities are destined to

arrive, of perceiving guilt to be infirmity, of obviating punishment,

ignorance, and want, still the Americans are more blessed than others,

in the certainty that they have far less superinduced misery than

societies abroad, and are using wiser methods than others for its

alleviation. In a country where social equality is the great principle

in which all acquiesce, and where, consequently, the golden rule is

suggested by every collision between man and man, neglect of misery is

almost as much out of the question as the oppression from which most

misery springs.

In the treatment of the guilty, America is beyond the rest of the world,

exactly in proportion to the superiority of her political principles. I

was favoured with the confidence of a great number of the prisoners in

the Philadelphia penitentiary where absolute seclusion is the principle

of punishment. Every one of these prisoners, (none of them being aware

of the existence of any other,) told me that he was under obligations to

those who had the charge of him for treating him "with respect." The

expression struck me much as being universally used by them. Some

explained the contrast between this method of punishment and

imprisonment in the old prisons, copied from those of Europe; where

criminals are herded together, and treated like anything but men and

citizens. Others said that though they had done a wrong thing, and were

rightly sequestered on that ground, they ought not to have any farther

punishment inflicted upon them; and that it was the worst of punishments

not to be treated with the respect due to men. In a community where

criminals feel and speak thus, human rights cannot but be, at length, as

much regarded in the infliction of punishment as in its other

arrangements.

Much yet remains to be done, to this end. An enormous amount of wrong

must remain in a society where the elaboration of a vast apparatus for

the infliction of human misery, like that required by the system of

solitary imprisonment, is yet a work of mercy. Milder and juster methods

of treating moral infirmity will succeed when men shall have learned to

obviate the largest possible amount of it. In the meantime, I am

persuaded that this is the best method of punishment which has yet been

tried. Much as the prisoners suffer from the dreary solitude, cheered

only by their labour and the occasional visits of official

superintendents, they testified, without exception and without concert,

to their preference of this over all other methods of punishment. The

grounds of preference were, that they could preserve their self-respect,

in the first place; and, in the next, their chance in society on their

release. They leave the prison with the recompense of their extra labour

in their pockets, and without the fear of being waylaid by vicious old

companions, or hunted from employment to employment by those whose

interest it is to deprive them of a chance of establishing a character.

There is no evidence, at present, that solitary imprisonment, _with

labour_, is more injurious to health than any other condition which is

attended with anxiety of mind. The Philadelphia prisoners certainly

appeared to me to be more healthy-looking than those at Auburn, or at

any other prison I visited.

There is at present a deficiency in the religious ministrations of the

prison. This is a fact which, I believe, has only to be made known to

cease to be true. Among the clergy of all denominations in Philadelphia,

there must be many who would contrive to afford their services in turn,

if they were fully aware how much they are needed. I know of no

direction that can be taken by charity with such certainty of success as

visiting the solitary prisoner. I think it far from desirable that

prisoners should be visited for the express purpose of giving them

religious, and no other, instruction and sympathy. The great object is

to occupy the prisoner's mind with things which interest him most; to

keep up his sympathies, and nourish his human affections; and especially

to promote the activity and cheerfulness of his mind. His situation is

such,--he is so driven back upon the realities of life in his own mind,

that the danger is of his accepting religion as a temporary solace, of

his separating it in idea from active life, and craving for the most

exciting kind of it; so as that when he returns to the world, he will

discard it as something suiting his prison-life, but no longer needed,

no longer appropriate. If, keeping this in view, a very few good men and

women of Philadelphia would go sometimes to spend an hour with a

prisoner, honourably observing the rules, telling no news, but

cheerfully conversing on the prisoner's affairs,--his work, his family,

his prospects on coming out, the books he reads, &c.--if they would

carry him good and entertaining books, and if religious ones, only those

of a moderate and cheerful character, (such being indeed not easy to be

found,)--these friendly visitors could scarcely fail of restoring, more

or less completely, the moral health of the objects of their

benevolence. None who have not tried can imagine the ease with which

sufferers so placed are influenced; in the absence of all that is

pernicious, and in absolute dependence, as they are, on the sympathy of

those who will be kind to them. If watchful observance were united with

common prudence and kindness, I believe that a prisoner of five years

would rarely re-enter society unqualified for the discharge of his

duties there. It must be remembered that the criminals of the United

States are rarely the depraved, brutish creatures that fill the prisons

of the old world. Even in the old world, I have no doubt that every

prison visitor has been conscious, on first conversing privately with a

criminal, of a feeling of surprise at finding him so human: but in

America, convicts are even more like other men. The reason of my

visiting them, as I told them, was to satisfy myself about the causes of

crime in a country where there is almost an absence of that want which

occasions the greater proportion of social offences in England. Sooner

or later, all told me their stories in full: and I found that in every

case some domestic misery had been the poison of their lives. A harsh

step-mother, an unfaithful wife, a jilting mistress, an intemperate son

or father,--these were the miseries at home which sent them out to

drink: drinking brought on murder, or caused vicious wants, which must

be supplied by theft. The stories, infinitely varied in their

circumstances, were all alike in their moral.

I do not like the principle of the Auburn prison: and I am confident

that very little effectual reformation can take place under it. The

disadvantages of the prisoners being waylaid and dogged on their

discharge are very great; but there are some within the prison quite as

serious. The spy system is abominable, in whatever light it is viewed.

It is the deepest of insults; and if there be a case rather than another

in which insult is to be avoided, it is where a reformation is desired.

The great point to be gained with the criminal is to regenerate

self-respect. A virtuous man may preserve his self-respect under the

eyes of a spy; (though even he is in some danger); but a morally infirm

man can never thus acquire it. Arrangements should be made for his

secure custody and harmless outward conduct, and then he should be left

to himself. And what is the purpose of the spying,--of the loop-holes to

peep through, and the moccasins which are to make the tread of the spies

as stealthy as that of a cat? To detect talking; talking subjecting a

man to the lash. Talking is an innocent act; and, in the case of men

secluded from the world and their families, and all that has hitherto

interested them, an unavoidable act. They ought to talk; and they do, in

spite of spies, governor, and the whip. They learn to murmur

intelligibly behind their teeth, without moving the lips, and to take

advantage of the briefest instants when the superintendent turns his

back. It is surprising to me that any effectual reformation can be

looked for from men who, convicted of grave crimes, have the prohibition

to speak set up before their minds as the chief circumstance and

interest of their lives for five, seven, or ten years. Their interest in

it makes it the chief circumstance. How the disordered being is to be

rectified, how the prostrated conscience is to be reinstated, while an

innocent and necessary act is thus erected into an offence, I leave

those who are most versed in moral proportions to decide. I do not

believe in the possibility of effectual reformation in any but a few

cases, under such a discipline.

The will of the majority has not yet wrought out the right practice

from good principles, in two cases which regard the treatment of the

guilty: and great evil arises in the interval. It is extremely

difficult, in some parts of the States, and with regard to some

particular offences, to get the laws enforced against offenders. In

those parts of the States where personal conflicts are countenanced by

opinion, offences against the person go too often unpunished; elsewhere,

riot is passed over without notice; and in some few places, the most

heinous crimes of all are nearly certain to be got over without the

conviction of the offender. The impunity of riot arises from the

reliance society has on the moral sense of the whole: a reliance very

honourable in itself, but found of late to be inadequate under the

pressure of such a crisis as that of the anti-slavery question. Nothing

can be more honourable to the people, than the fact that they have been

safe and virtuous under the superintendence of principle, while the laws

have slept so long, that it is now found difficult to put them in force:

but now that the time has come for a conflict of classes and opinions,

the time has also come for the law to be vigilant and inexorable. The

frequent impunity of the most serious crimes arises from the growing

enmity of opinion to the punishment of death. There can be little doubt

that in a short time capital punishments will be abolished throughout

the northern States: and if this is to be done, the sooner it is done

the better: for the present impunity is a tremendous evil.

In passing the City Hall of one of the northern cities with a friend, I

asked what was the meaning of a great crowd that was about the doors,

and even clustered on the windows of the building. My friend told me,

that a young man was being examined on the charge of being the murderer

in a most aggravated case, which had been related to me the day before.

I observed, that no one seemed to have any doubt of his guilt. She

replied, that there never was a clearer case; but that he would be

acquitted: the examination and trial were a mere form, of which every

one knew the conclusion beforehand. The people did not choose to see any

more hanging; and till the law was so altered as to allow an alternative

of punishment, no conviction for a capital offence would be obtainable.

I asked, on what pretence the young man would be got off, if the

evidence against him was as clear as was represented. She said, some one

would be found to swear an alibi: the young man would be wholly

disgraced, and would probably set out westwards the morning after his

acquittal. I watched the progress of the case. The trial was a long one.

There was no doubt of the suppression of large portions of the evidence

against him. A tradesman swore an alibi: the young man was thereupon

acquitted; and next morning he was on his way to the west.

On the principle that punishment should be reformatory, the practice of

pardoning criminals has gone to far too great an extent, from the belief

of reformation in each particular case. The consequence is very

injurious. A sentence of life-imprisonment is generally understood to

mean imprisonment for a shorter term than if ten or seven years had been

named. Every one of the prisoners I conversed with was in anxious

expectation of a pardon. In the cases of those who were in for five

years, and who I knew would not be pardoned, I reasoned the matter; and

found that the fact of all their fellow-prisoners having the same

expectation with themselves, made a strong impression. They were, amidst

their dreadful disappointment, easily convinced: but I could not but

mourn that they did not learn the philosophy of the case in society,

rather than in prison.

Whenever the abolition of the punishment of death takes place, it will

be essential to the safety of virtue and society, that it should be

understood that the practice of pardoning is, except on rare and

specified occasions, to cease; and that punishment is to be certain in

proportion to its justice.

The pauperism of the United States is, to the observation of a stranger,

nothing at all. To residents, it is an occasion for the exercise of

their ever-ready charity. It is confined to the ports, emigrants making

their way back into the country, the families of intemperate or disabled

men, and unconnected women, who depend on their own exertions. The

amount altogether is far from commensurate with the charity of the

community; and it is to be hoped that the curse of a legal charity, at

least to the able-bodied, will be avoided in a country where it

certainly cannot become necessary within any assignable time. I was

grieved to see the magnificent pauper asylum near Philadelphia, made to

accommodate luxuriously 1200 persons; and to have its arrangements

pointed out to me, as yielding far more comfort to the inmates than the

labourer can secure at home by any degree of industry and prudence.

There are so many persons in the city, however, who see the badness of

the principle, and regret the erection, that I trust a watch will be

maintained over the establishment, and its corridors kept as empty as

possible. In Boston, the principles of true charity have been better

acted upon. There, many of the clergymen,--among the rest, Father

Taylor, the seaman's friend,--are in possession of wisdom, derived from

the mournful experience of England; and seem likely to save the city

from the misery of a debasing pauperism among any class of its

inhabitants. I know no large city where there is so much mutual

helpfulness, so little neglect and ignorance of the concerns of other

classes, as in Boston: and I cannot but anticipate that from thence the

world may derive the brightest lesson that has yet been offered it, in

the duties of the rich towards the poor. If the agents of the

benevolence of the wealthy will but be scrupulously careful to avoid all

that mental encroachment and moral interference, which have but too

generally ruined the efficacy of charity, and go on to exhibit the

devotion of the philanthropist, without the inquisitiveness and

authoritativeness of the priest, they may deserve the thanks of the

whole of society, as well as the attachment of those whom they befriend.

In Boston, an excellent plan has been adopted for the prevention of

fraud on the part of paupers, and the mutual enlightenment and guidance

of the agents of charity. A weekly meeting is held of delegates, from

all societies engaged in the relief of the poor. The delegates compare

lists of the persons relieved, so as to ascertain that none are

fraudulently receiving from more than one society: they discuss and

investigate doubtful cases; extend indulgence to those of peculiar

hardship; and, in short, secure all the advantages of co-operation.

Perhaps there are no cities in England but London too large for a

somewhat similar organisation: and its adoption would be an act of great

wisdom.

In the south, I was rather amused at a boast which was made to me of the

small amount of pauperism. As the plague distances all lesser diseases,

so does slavery obviate pauperism. In a society of two classes, where

the one class are all capitalists, and the other property, there can be

no pauperism but through the vice or accidental disability of members

of the first. But I was beset by many an anxious thought about the fate

of disabled slaves. Masters are, of course, bound to take care of their

slaves for life. There are doubtless many masters who guard the comfort

of their helpless negroes all the more carefully from the sense of the

entire dependence of the poor creatures upon their mercy: but, there are

few human beings fit to be trusted with absolute power: and while there

are many who abuse the authority they have over slaves who are not

helpless, it is fearful to think what may be the fate of those who are

purely burdensome. I observed, here and there, an idiot slave. Those

whom I saw were kindly treated, humoured, and indulged. These were the

only cases of natural infirmity that I witnessed among the negroes; and

the absence of others struck me. At Columbia, South Carolina, I was

taken by a benevolent physician to see the State Lunatic Asylum, which

might be considered his work; so diligent had he been in obtaining

appropriations for the object from the legislature, and afterwards in

organising its plans, with great wisdom and humanity. When we were

looking out from the top of this building, watching the patients in

their airing grounds, I observed that no people of colour were visible

in any part of the establishment. I inquired whether negroes were as

subject to insanity as whites. Probably; but no means were known to have

been taken to ascertain the fact. From the violence of their passions,

there could be no doubt that insanity must exist among them. Were such

insane negroes ever seen?--No one present had ever seen any.--Where were

they then?--It was some time before I could get a clear answer to this:

but my friend the physician said, at length, that he had no doubt they

were kept in out-houses, chained to logs, to prevent their doing harm.

No member of society is charged with the duty of investigating cases of

disease and suffering among slaves who cannot make their own state

known. They are wholly at the mercy of their owners. The physician told

me that it was his intention, now he had accomplished his object of

establishing a lunatic asylum for the whites, to persevere no less

strenuously till he obtained one for the blacks. He will probably not

find this a very difficult object to effect; for the interest of

masters, as well as their humanity, is concerned in having an asylum

provided by the State for their useless or mischievous negroes.

The Lunatic Asylums of the United States are an honour to the country,

to judge by those which I saw. The insane in Pennsylvania hospital,

Philadelphia, should be removed to some more light and cheerful abode,

and be much more fully supplied with employment, and with stimulus to

engage in it. I was less pleased with their condition than with that of

any other insane patients whom I saw. The institution at Worcester,

Massachusetts, is admirably managed under Dr. Woodward. So was that at

Charlestown, near Boston, by Dr. Lee; a young physician who has since

died, mourned by his grateful patients, and by all who had their welfare

at heart. The establishment at Bloomingdale, near New York, is of

similar excellence. The only great deficiency that I am aware of is one

which belongs to most lunatic asylums, and which it does not rest with

the superintendent to supply;--a want of sufficient employment. Every

exertion is made to provide a variety of amusements, and to encourage

all little undertakings that may be suggested: but regular, important

business is what is wanted. It is to be hoped that in the establishment

of all such institutions, the provision of an ample quantity of land

will be one of the prime considerations. Watchful and ingenious kindness

may do much to alleviate the miseries of the insane; but if cure is

sought, I believe it is agreed by those who know best, that regular

employment, with a reasonable object, is indispensable.

The Asylum for the Blind at Philadelphia was a young institution at the

time I saw it; but it pleased me more than any I ever visited: more than

the larger one at Boston; whose institution and conduct are, however,

honourable to all concerned in it. The reason of my preference of the

Philadelphia one is that the pupils there were more active and cheerful

than those of Boston. The spirits of the inmates are the one infallible

test of the management of an institution for the blind. The fault of

such in general is that mirth is not sufficiently cultivated, and

religion too exclusively so. It should ever be remembered that religion

comes out of the mind, and not in at the eye or ear; and that the truest

way of cultivating religion is to exercise the faculties, and enlarge

the stock of ideas to the utmost. The method of printing for the blind,

introduced with such admirable ingenuity and success into the American

institutions, I should like to see employed to bring within the reach of

the blind the most amusing works that can be found. I should like to see

it made an object with benevolent persons to go and give the pupils a

hearty laugh occasionally, by reading droll books, and telling amusing

stories. The one thing which the born blind want most is to have their

cheerlessness removed, to be drawn out of their abstractions, and

exercised in play on the greatest possible variety of familiar objects

and events. They should hear no condolence: their friends should keep

their sympathetic sorrow to themselves; and explain, cheerfully and

fully, the allusions to visual objects which must occur in all reading

and conversation. It grieves me to hear the hymns and other compositions

put into the mouths of blind pupils, all full of lamentation and

resignation about not seeing the stars and the face of nature. Such

sorrow is for those who see to feel on their behalf; or for those who

have lost sight: not for those who never saw. Put into their mouths, it

becomes cant. When a roving sea-captain tells his children of the

glories of oriental scenery which they are destined never to behold,

does he teach them to sigh, and struggle to submit patiently to their

destiny of staying at home? Does he not rather make them take pleasure

in mirthfully and eagerly learning what he can teach? The face of nature

is a foreign land to the born blind. Let them be taught all that can

possibly be conveyed to them, and in the most spirited manner that they

can bear. There is a nearer approach to the realisation of this

principle of teaching the blind in the Philadelphia house than I ever

saw elsewhere. It would be enough to cheer a misanthrope to see a little

German boy there, picked up out of the streets, dull, neglected, and

depressed; but within a few months, standing in the centre of the group

of musicians, fiddling and stamping time with all his might, and quite

ready to obey every instigation to laugh. Mr. Friedlander, the tutor, is

much to be congratulated on what he has already done.

It may be worth suggesting here that while some of the thinkers of

America, like many of the same classes in England, are mourning over the

low state of the Philosophy of Mind in their country, society is

neglecting a most important means of obtaining the knowledge requisite

for the acquisition of such philosophy. Scholars are embracing

alternately the systems of Kant, of Fichte, of Spurzheim, of the Scotch

school; or abusing or eulogising Locke asking who Hartley was, or

weaving a rainbow arch of transcendentalism, which is to comprehend the

whole that lies within human vision, but sadly liable to be puffed away

in dark vapour with the first breeze of reality; scholars are thus

labouring at a system of mental philosophy on any but the experimental

method, while the materials for experiment lie all around and within

them. If they object, as is common, the difficulty of experimenting on

their conscious selves, there is the mental pathology of their blind

schools, and the asylums for the deaf and dumb. I am aware that they put

away the phenomena of insanity as irrelevant; but the same objections do

not pertain to the other two classes. Let the closet speculations be

pursued with all vigour: but if there were joined with these a close and

unwearied study of the phenomena of the minds of persons deficient in a

sense, and especially of those precluded from the full use of language,

the world might fairly look for an advance in the science of Mind equal

to that which medical science owes to pathology. It will not probably

lodge us in any final and total result, any more than medicine and

anatomy promise to ascertain the vital principle: but it will doubtless

yield us some points of certainty, in aid of the fluctuating

speculations amidst which we are now tossed, while few can be found to

agree even upon matters of so-called universal consciousness. I should

like to see a few philosophers interested in ascertaining and recording

the manifestations of some progressive minds, peculiar from infirmity,

for a series of years. If any such in America, worthy to undertake the

task, from having strength enough to put away theory and prejudice, and

record only what is really manifested to them, should be disposed to

take my hint, I hope they will not wait for a philosophical "class to

fall into."

I was told at Washington, with a smile half satirical and half

complacent, that "the people of New England do good by mania." I watched

accordingly for symptoms of this second or third-rate method of putting

benevolence into practice. The result was, that I was convinced that the

people of New England, and of the whole country, do good in all manner

of ways; some better and some worse, according to their light. I met

with pious ladies who make clothes for the poor, but who took work (her

means of bread) out of the hands of a sempstress, (who had three

children,) because her husband was in prison. They told me it would be

encouraging vice to have anything to do with the families of persons who

had committed offences: and when I asked how reformed offenders were to

put their reformation in practice, I was told that if I would employ

anybody who had been in prison, I deserved the censure of society. The

matter ended in the sempstress (a good young woman) having to go home to

her father's house. I met with others, both men and women, who make it

the business of their lives, or of their leisure from yet more pressing

duties, to seek out the sinners of society, and give them, not threats,

nor scorn, nor lectures, but sympathy and help. So does light vary in

this glimmering age; so eloquently does the conduct of Jesus speak to

some, while to others it seems to preach in an unknown tongue. With

regard to some methods of charity, nothing could exceed the ingenuity,

shrewdness, forethought, and determination with which they were managed:

in others, I was reminded of what I had been told about mania.

In regarding the Temperance movement, the word perpetually occurred to

me. How the vice of intemperance ever reached the pass it did in a

country where there is no excuse of want on the one hand, or of habits

of conviviality on the other, was sometimes attempted to be explained

to me; but never to my satisfaction. Much may be said upon it, which

cannot find a place here. Certain it is that the vice threatened to

poison society. It was as remarkable as licentiousness of other kinds

ever was in Paris, or at Vienna. Men who doubted the goodness of the

principle of Association in opposition to moral evil, were yet carried

away to countenance it by seeing nothing else that was to be done. Some

few of these foresaw that, as every man must be virtuous in himself and

by himself; as the principle of temperance in a man is incommunicable;

as no two men's temptations are alike; and as, especially in this case,

the temptations of the movers were immeasurably weaker than those of the

mass to be wrought upon, there could be no radical truth, no pervading

sincerity to rely upon. They foresaw what had happened; that there would

be a vast quantity of perjury, of false and hasty promising, of lapse,

and of secret, solitary drinking; that if some waverers were saved,

others would be plunged into hypocrisy in addition to their

intemperance; that schisms must arise out of the ignorance of bigots,

which would cause as much scandal to good morals as intemperance itself;

and that, worst of all, this method was the introduction of new and

fatal perils to freedom of conscience. A few foresaw all this; but a

very few had strength to resist the movement. A sort of reproach was

cast upon those who refused to join, like that which is now visited upon

such as adhere to the principle on which they first joined;--a kind of

insinuation that their temperance is not thorough.--What have the

consequences already been?

The amount of visible intemperance is actually lessened prodigiously;

perhaps to the full extent anticipated by the originators of the

movement. Spirit-shops have been shut up by hundreds; some few

drunkards have been reformed; and very large numbers of young men,

entering life, are now sober citizens, who seemed in danger of becoming

a curse to society. The question is whether the causes of the preceding

intemperance have been discovered and obviated. If not, there is every

reason to expect that the control of opinion over them will be but

temporary; and that the late sweeping and garnishing will give place to

a state of things at least as bad as before.

At present, the effect of example is perishing, day by day. The example

of those who have not pledged themselves is the only one morally

regarded; all other persons being known to be bound. Virtue under a vow

has no spiritual force. The more reasonable of those who are pledged

have confined their pledge to the distinct case of not touching

distilled liquors. They have the utmost difficulty in maintaining their

ground, as examples, (their sole object,) under the assaults of bigots

who complain that they are not "getting on;" and who, on their part,

have got on so far as to refuse the communion to persons who will not

abjure as they have done; to banish the sacramental wine; and to forbid

malt liquors, and even coffee, in taverns and private houses. The

superstition,--the attachment to the form without the spirit,--is

fearfully revealed upon occasion. A man was brought dead drunk into a

watch-house; and before the magistrate next morning, persisted that he

could not have been drunk, because he was a member of a Temperance

Society. The subservience of conscience to control is as necessary and

remarkable. For instance, a gentleman, whose wife, in a state of

imminent danger, was ordered brandy, ran and knocked up his minister to

get leave before he would procure any for her. It is true that these

are extreme cases: but the effect of such institutions upon weak minds

must be studied, as it is for weak minds that they are created.

My own convictions are that Associations, excellent as they are for

mechanical objects, are not fit instruments for the achievement of moral

aims: that there is yet no proof that the principle of self-restraint

has been exalted and strengthened in the United States by the Temperance

movement, while the already too great regard to opinion, and

subservience to spiritual encroachment have been much increased: that,

therefore, great as are the visible benefits of the institution, it may

at length appear that they have been dearly purchased. I have reason to

think that numbers of persons in the United States, especially

enlightened physicians, (who have the best means of knowledge,) are of

the same opinion. This is confirmed by the fact that there is a

spreading dislike of Associations for moral, while there is a growing

attachment to them for mechanical, objects. The majority will show to

those who may be living at the time what is the right.

Though scarcely necessary, it may be well to indicate the distinction

between Temperance and Abolition societies with regard to this

principle. The bond of Temperance societies is a pledge or vow

respecting the personal conduct of the pledger. The bond of the

Abolitionists is agreement in a principle which is to be proposed and

exhibited by mechanical means,--lecturing, printing, raising money for

benevolent purposes. Nobody is bound in thought, word, or action. There

have been a few Temperance societies which have avoided pledges, and

confined their exertions to spreading knowledge on the pathology of

intemperance, and its effects on the morals of the individual and of

society. Associations confined to these objects are probably not only

harmless, but highly useful.

CHAPTER V.

UTTERANCE.

"A country which has no national literature, or a literature too

insignificant to force its way abroad, must always be, to its

neighbours, at least in every important spiritual respect, an

unknown and misestimated country. Its towns may figure on our maps;

its revenues, population, manufactures, political connexions, may

be recorded in statistical books: but the character of the people

has no symbol and no voice; we cannot know them by speech and

discourse, but only by mere sight and outward observation of their

manners and procedure. Now, if both sight and speech, if both

travellers and native literature, are found but ineffectual in this

respect, how incalculably more so the former alone!"

_Edinburgh Review._--Vol. xlvi. p. 309.

There is but one method by which most nations can express the general

mind: by their literature. Popular books are the ideas of the people put

into language by an individual. To a self-governing people there are two

methods open: legislation is the expression of the popular mind, as well

as literature.

If the national mind of America be judged of by its legislation, it is

of a very high order; so much less violence to the first principles of

morals is exhibited there than in any other social arrangements that

the world has yet seen. If the American nation be judged of by its

literature, it may be pronounced to have no mind at all.

The two appearances are, however, reconcilable. The mind of a nation

grows, like that of an individual; and its growth follows somewhat the

same course. There may be in each a mind, vigorous and full of promise,

unerring in the recognition of true principles, but apt to err in the

application of them; ardent in admiration of all faithful and beautiful

expression of mind by others; but not yet knowing how to utter itself.

The youthful philosopher or poet is commonly a metaphysician before he

indicates what he is ultimately to become. In the age of vivid

consciousness, before he is twenty, the invisible and intangible world

of reality opens to him with a distinctness and lustre which make him in

after time almost envy himself his youthful years. In this bright

spiritual world, much is as indisputably revealed to him as material

objects to the bodily eye: principles in full prominence; and a long

perspective of certainties melting imperceptibly into probabilities; and

lost at last in the haze of possibility, bright with the meridian sun of

faith. To him

"The primal duties shine aloft, like stars:

The charities that soothe and heal and bless

Lie scattered at the feet of man, like flowers."

But of all this he can, for some time, express nothing. He burns with

convictions, but can testify them to others only by recognising the

expression which others have obtained the power of affording. If he

makes the attempt, he is either unintelligible or trite.

This appears to me to be the stage at which the mind of America has

arrived. That the legislation of the country is, on the whole, so

noble, is owing to the happy circumstance (a natural one in the order of

Providence, by which great agents rise up when a great work has to be

done) that accomplished individuals were standing ready to help the

people to an expression of its first convictions. The earliest

convictions of a nation so circumstanced are of their fundamental and

common rights: and the expression must be legislation. This has been

done so well by the Americans that there is every reason to anticipate

that more will follow; since principles are so linked together that it

is scarcely possible to grasp one without touching another. Accordingly,

though there is no contribution yet to the Philosophy of Mind from

America, many thinking men are feeling after its principles amidst the

accumulations of the old world: though no light has been given to

society from the American press on the principles of politics, Americans

may be heard quoting Burke from end to end of the country, infallibly

separating the democratic aspirations of his genius from the

aristocratic perversions of his temper and education: though America has

yet witnessed no creation, either in literature or the arts, and cannot

even distinguish a creation from a combination, imitation, or

delineation, yet the power of admiration which she shows in hailing that

which is far inferior to what she needs,--the vigour with which, after

incessant disappointment, she applies herself to the produce of her

press, to find the imperishable in what is just as transient as all that

has gone before,--is a prophecy that a creator will arise. The faith

that America is to have an artist of some order is universal: and such a

faith is a sufficient guarantee of the event. Every ephemeron of a

tale-writer, a dramatist, novelist, lyrist, and sonnetteer, has been

taken by one or another for the man. But he has not come out of his

silence yet; and it is likely that it may still be long before he does.

Every work of genius is, as has been said, a mystery till it appears.

What its principles and elaboration may be, it is for one man only--its

author--to conceive: but it is plain what it will not be. It will not

be, more or less, a copy of anything now existing. It will not be a mere

delineation of what passes before the bodily eye, unillumined and

unvivified by the light and movement of principles, of which forms are

but the exponents. It will not be an exhibition of the relations which

conventionalisms mutually bear, however fine may be the perception, and

however clever the presentation may be. Further than this American

literature has, as yet, produced nothing.

There is another reason, besides those which have been mentioned, why it

would be highly unjust and injurious to conclude that there is nothing

more in the nation's heart and brain than has come out before the eye.

The American nation is made up of contributions from almost all other

civilised nations: and, though the primary truths of God, and the

universal characteristics of Man are common to them all, there are

infinite diversities to be blended into unity before a national

character can arise; before a national mind can be seen to actuate the

mass of society. It is probable that the first great work of genius that

appears will be the most powerful instrument for effecting this blending

and reconciling: but the appearance of such a work is doubtless retarded

in proportion to the checks and repression of social sympathy, caused by

the diversity of influences under which society proceeds. The tuning for

the concert has begun; some captious persons are grumbling at the

discord; some inexperienced expectants take a wail here, and a flourish

there, to be music: but the hour has not struck. The leader has not yet

come to his place, to play the chord which shall bring the choral

response that must echo over the world.

I saw the house which Berkeley built in Rhode Island,--built in the

particular spot where it is, that he might have to pass, in his rides,

over the hill which lies between it and Newport, and feast himself with

the tranquil beauty of the sea, the bay and the downs, as they appear

from the ridge of the eminence. I saw the pile of rocks, with its ledges

and recesses, where he is said to have meditated and composed his

"Minute Philosopher." It was at first melancholy to visit these his

retreats, and think how empty the land still is of the philosophy he

loved. But the more one sees of the people, and the less of their books,

the stronger grows the hope of the stranger. One finds the observation

of many turned inwards. Fragments of spiritual visions occur to one and

another. Though some dogmatise, and others wait for revelation, and none

seem to remember the existence of the experimental method, still there

is a reaching after the Philosophy of Mind. At Harvard University, the

chair of Mental Philosophy has been vacant for above eight years: it

having been the custom formerly to indoctrinate the students with a

certain number of chapters of Locke; and no man being now found hardy

enough to undertake to discharge the duty thus; and the way not being

yet clear to any one who would lay open the whole field of this

philosophy, and let the students gather what they could out of it. Such

impediments do not exist beyond the walls; and many young minds are at

work without guidance, to whom guidance, however acceptable, is not

necessary. If the lectures which are given to young ladies, who are

carefully misinformed from Reid and Stewart,--if the reviews and

panegyrics of Dr. Brown, hazarded without the slightest conception of

the nature and extent of his meaning, are likely to throw the observer

into despair;--if he is amazed to see a coterie disputing upon the

ultimate principles perceived by Pure Reason, while he finds within

himself no evidence of the existence of this Pure Reason, and believes

that if it did universally exist, ultimate principles could admit of no

dispute,--he is yet cheered by finding, not only eagerness in the

pursuit of the philosophical ideas of others, but traces of some

originality of speculation. There is a little book, by a Swedenborgian,

called "The Growth of the Mind," which is, I believe unquestionably, an

original work. From its originality, and the beauty of some of its

images, and yet more of its exhibition of certain relations, it is

highly interesting, though it is not found to command that extensive

assent, which is the only guarantee of the soundness of works on the

Philosophy of Mind. Mankind may demur for ages to the earth being round,

and to its moving through space; but where the primary appeal, as in the

Philosophy of Mind, must be to consciousness, works which do not command

assent to their fundamental positions are failures as philosophy, though

they may have inferior merits and attractions.

The best productions of American literature are, in my opinion, the

tales and sketches in which the habits and manners of the people of the

country are delineated, with exactness, with impartiality of temper, and

without much regard to the picturesque. Such are the tales of Judge Hall

of Cincinnati. Such are the tales by the author of Swallow Barn; where,

however, there is the addition of a good deal of humour, and a

subtraction of some of the truth. Miss Sedgwick's tales are of the

highest order of the three, from the moral beauty which they breathe.

This moral beauty is of a much finer character than the _bonhommie_

which is the charm of Irving's pictures of manners. She sympathises

where he good-naturedly observes; she cheerily loves where he gently

quizzes. Miss Sedgwick's novels have this moral beauty too; as has

everything she touches: but they have great and irretrievable faults as

works of art. Tale-writing is her forte: and in this vocation, no one

who has observed her striking progression will venture to say what she

may not achieve.

Among the host of tales which appear without the names of their authors

are three, which strike me as excellent in their several ways: "Allen

Prescott," containing the history of a New England boy, drawn to the

life, and in a just and amiable spirit: "The New England Housekeeper,"

in which the _ménage_ of a rising young lawyer, with its fresh joys and

ludicrous perplexities, is humorously exhibited: and "Memoirs of a New

England Village Choir," a sketch of even higher merit.

Irving's writings have had their meed. He has lived in the sunshine of

fame for many years, and in the pleasant consciousness that he has been

a benefactor to the present generation, by shedding some gentle,

benignant, and beguiling influences on many intervals of their rough and

busy lives. More than this he has probably not expected; and more than

this he does not seem likely to achieve. If any of his works live, it

will be his Columbus: and the later of his productions will be the first

forgotten.

Cooper's novels have a very puny vitality. Some descriptions of scenery,

and some insulated adventures, have great merit: but it is not human

life that he presents. His female characters are far from human; and in

his selections of the chances of mortal existence, he usually chooses

the remotest. He has a vigour of perception and conception, which might

have made him, with study and discipline, a great writer. As it is, he

is, I believe, regarded as a much-regretted failure.

The Americans have a poet. Bryant has not done anything like what he can

and will do: but he has done some things that will live. Those of his

poems which are the best known, or the most quoted, are smooth, sweet,

faithful descriptions of nature, such as his own imagination delights

in. I shall always remember the voice and manner with which he took up a

casual remark of mine, about sights to be seen in the pine-barrens. When

the visitors had all departed, his question "And what of the

pine-barrens?" revealed the spirit of the poet. Of his poems of this

class, "The Evening Wind" is to me the most delicious. But others,--"The

Past," and "Thanatopsis"--indicate another kind, and a higher degree of

power. If he would live for his gifts, if his future years could be

devoted to "clear poetical activity," "looking up," like the true

artist, "to his dignity and his calling," that dignity and that calling

may prove to be as lofty as they no doubt appeared in the reveries of

his boyhood; and he may be listened to as lovingly over the expanse of

future time, as he already is over that of the ocean.

The Americans have also a historian of promise. Mr. Bancroft's History

of the United States is little more than begun: but the beginning is

characterised by an impartial and benevolent spirit, and by the

indications which it affords of the author's fidelity to democratic

principles; the two primary requisites in a historian of the republic.

The carrying on the work to a completion will be a task of great toil

and anxiety: but it will be a most important benefit to society at

large, if it fulfils its promise.