CHAPTER VI.

Lord L'Estrange threw himself on a sofa, and leant his cheek on his

hand thoughtfully. Audley Egerton sate near him, with his arms folded,

and gazed on his friend's face with a soft expression of aspect,

which was very unusual to the firm outline of his handsome features.

The two men were as dissimilar in person as the reader will have

divined that they were in character. All about Egerton was so rigid,

all about L'Estrange so easy. In every posture of Harley's there was

the unconscious grace of a child. The very fashion of his garments

showed his abhorrence of restraint. His clothes were wide and loose;

his neckcloth, tied carelessly, left his throat half bare. You could

see that he had lived much in warm and southern lands, and contracted

a contempt for conventionalities; there was as little in his dress

as in his talk of the formal precision of the north. He was three or

four years younger than Audley, but he looked at least twelve years

younger. In fact, he was one of those men to whom old age seems

impossible--voice, look, figure, had all the charm of youth; and,

perhaps it was from this gracious youthfulness--at all events, it

was characteristic of the kind of love he inspired--that neither his

parents, nor the few friends admitted into his intimacy, ever called

him, in their habitual intercourse, by the name of his title. He was

not L'Estrange with them, he was Harley; and by that familiar baptismal

I will usually designate him. He was not one of those men whom author

or reader wish to view at a distance, and remember as "my Lord"--it

was so rarely that he remembered it himself. For the rest, it had been

said of him by a shrewd wit--"He is so natural that every one calls him

affected." Harley L'Estrange was not so critically handsome as Audley

Egerton; to a commonplace observer he was, at best, rather goodlooking

than otherwise. But women said that he had "a beautiful countenance,"

and they were not wrong. He wore his hair, which was of a fair

chestnut, long, and in loose curls; and instead of the Englishman's

whiskers, indulged in the foreigner's moustache. His complexion was

delicate, though not effeminate: it was rather the delicacy of a

student, than of a woman. But in his clear grey eye there was wonderful

vigour of life. A skilful physiologist, looking only into that eye,

would have recognised rare stamina of constitution--a nature so rich

that, while easily disturbed, it would require all the effects of time,

or all the fell combinations of passion and grief, to exhaust it. Even

now, though so thoughtful, and even so sad, the rays of that eye were

as concentred and steadfast as the light of the diamond.

"You were only, then, in jest," said Audley, after a long silence,

"when you spoke of this mission to Florence. You have still no idea of

entering into public life."

"None."

"I had hoped better things when I got your promise to pass one season

in London. But, indeed, you have kept your promise to the ear to break

it to the spirit. I could not presuppose that you would shun all

society, and be as much of a hermit here as under the vines of Como."

"I have sate in the Strangers' Gallery, and heard your great speakers;

I have been in the pit of the opera, and seen your fine ladies; I have

walked your streets, I have lounged in your parks, and I say that I

can't fall in love with a faded dowager, because she fills up her

wrinkles with rouge."

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

"She has a great many titles. Some people call her fashion, you busy

men, politics: it is all one--tricked out and artificial. I mean London

life. No, I can't fall in love with her, fawning old harridan!"

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

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

"But you are so _blasé_."

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

see?"

"Nothing!"

"Nothing--"

"Nothing but houses and dusty lilacs, my coachman dozing on his box,

and two women in pattens crossing the kennel."

"I see none of that where I lie on the sofa. I see but the stars. And

I feel for them as I did when I was a schoolboy at Eton. It is you who

are _blasé_, not I--enough of this. You do not forget my commission,

with respect to the exile who has married into your brother's family?"

"No; but here you set me a task more difficult than that of saddling

your cornet on the War Office."

"I know it is difficult, for the counter influence is vigilant and

strong; but, on the other hand, the enemy is so damnable a traitor that

one must have the Fates and the household gods on one's side."

"Nevertheless," said the practical Audley, bending over a book on the

table, "I think that the best plan would be to attempt a compromise

with the traitor."

"To judge of others by myself," answered Harley with spirit, "it

were less bitter to put up with wrong than to palter with it for

compensation. And such wrong! Compromise with the open foe--that may be

done with honour; but with the perjured friend--that were to forgive

the perjury!"

"You are too vindictive," said Egerton; "there may be excuses for the

friend, which palliate even"--

"Hush! Audley, hush! or I shall think the world has indeed corrupted

you. Excuse for the friend who deceives, who betrays! No, such is the

true outlaw of Humanity; and the Furies surround him even while he

sleeps in the temple."

The man of the world lifted his eyes slowly on the animated face of

one still natural enough for the passions. He then once more returned

to his book, and said, after a pause, "It is time you should marry,

Harley."

"No," answered L'Estrange, with a smile at this sudden turn in the

conversation--"not time yet; for my chief objection to that change

in life is, that all the women now-a-days are too old for me, or I

am too young for them. A few, indeed are so infantine that one is

ashamed to be their toy; but most are so knowing that one is a fool

to be their dupe. The first, if they condescend to love you, love

you as the biggest doll they have yet dandled, and for a doll's good

qualities--your pretty blue eyes, and your exquisite millinery. The

last, if they prudently accept you, do so on algebraical principles;

you are but the X or the Y that represents a certain aggregate of

goods matrimonial--pedigree, title, rent-roll, diamonds, pin-money,

opera-box. They cast you up with the help of mamma, and you wake some

morning to find that _plus_ wife _minus_ affection equals--the Devil!"

"Nonsense," said Audley, with his quiet grave laugh. "I grant that

it is often the misfortune of a man in your station to be married

rather for what he has, than for what he is; but you are tolerably

penetrating, and not likely to be deceived in the character of the

woman you court."

"Of the woman I _court_?--No! But of the woman I _marry_, very likely

indeed. Woman is a changeable thing, as our Virgil informed us at

school; but her change _par excellence_ is from the fairy you woo to

the brownie you wed. It is not that she has been a hypocrite, it is

that she is a transmigration. You marry a girl for her accomplishments.

She paints charmingly, or plays like St Cecilia. Clap a ring on her

finger, and she never draws again--except perhaps your caricature on

the back of a letter, and never opens a piano after the honeymoon.

You marry her for her sweet temper; and next year, her nerves are so

shattered that you can't contradict her but you are whirled into a

storm of hysterics. You marry her because she declares she hates balls

and likes quiet; and ten to one but what she becomes a patroness at

Almacks, or a lady in waiting."

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

"If it were only necessary to live, that would be a consolatory and

encouraging reflection. But to live with peace, to live with dignity,

to live with freedom, to live in harmony with your thoughts, your

habits, your aspirations--and this in the perpetual companionship of a

person to whom you have given the power to wound your peace, to assail

your dignity, to cripple your freedom, to jar on each thought and each

habit, and bring you down to the meanest details of earth, when you

invite her, poor soul, to soar to the spheres--that makes the to be, or

not to be, which is the question."

"If I were you, Harley, I would do as I have heard the author of

_Sandford and Merton_ did--choose out a child and educate her yourself

after your own heart."

"You have hit it," answered Harley seriously. "That has long been my

idea--a very vague one, I confess. But I fear I shall be an old man

before I find even the child.

"Ah!" he continued, yet more earnestly, while the whole character of

his varying countenance changed again--"ah! if indeed I could discover

what I seek--one who with the heart of a child has the mind of a woman;

one who beholds in nature the variety, the charm, the never feverish,

ever healthful excitement that others vainly seek in the bastard

sentimentalities of a life false with artificial forms; one who can

comprehend, as by intuition, the rich poetry with which creation is

clothed--poetry so clear to the child when enraptured with the flower,

or when wondering at the star! If on me such exquisite companionship

were bestowed--why, then"--He paused, sighed deeply, and, covering his

face with his hand, resumed, in faltering accents,--

"But once--but once only, did such vision of the Beautiful made human

rise before me--rise amidst 'golden exhalations of the dawn.' It

beggared my life in vanishing. You know only--you only--how--how"--

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

fingers.

"So long ago!" said Audley, sharing his friend's emotion. "Years so

long and so weary, yet still thus tenacious of a mere boyish memory."

"Away with it, then!" cried Harley, springing to his feet, and with a

laugh of strange merriment. "Your carriage still waits: set me home

before you go to the House."

Then laying his hand lightly on his friend's shoulder, he said, "Is it

for you, Audley Egerton, to speak sneeringly of boyish memories? What

else is it that binds us together? What else warms my heart when I meet

you? What else draws your thoughts from blue-books and beer-bills, to

waste them on a vagrant like me? Shake hands. Oh, friend of my boyhood!

recollect the oars that we plied and the bats that we wielded in the

old time, or the murmured talk on the moss-grown bank, as we sate

together, building in the summer air castles mightier than Windsor. Ah!

they are strong ties, those boyish memories, believe me! I remember as

if it were yesterday my translation of that lovely passage in Persius,

beginning--let me see--ah!--

"Quum primum pavido custos mihi purpura cessit,"

that passage on friendship which gushes out so livingly from the stern

heart of the satirist. And when old ---- complimented me on my verses,

my eye sought yours. Verily, I now say as then,

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

[2] "What was the star I know not, but certainly some star it was that

attuned me unto thee."

Audley turned away his head as he returned the grasp of his friend's

hand; and while Harley, with his light elastic footstep, descended the

stairs, Egerton lingered behind, and there was no trace of the worldly

man upon his countenance when he took his place in the carriage by his

companion's side.

Two hours afterwards, weary cries of "Question, question!" "Divide,

divide!" sank into reluctant silence as Audley Egerton rose to conclude

the debate--the man of men to speak late at night, and to impatient

benches: a man who would be heard; whom a Bedlam broke loose would not

have roared down; with voice clear and sound as a bell, and form as

firmly set on the ground as church-tower. And while, on the dullest of

dull questions, Audley Egerton thus, not too lively himself, enforced

attention, where was Harley L'Estrange? Standing alone by the river

at Richmond, and murmuring low fantastic thoughts as he gazed on the

moonlit tide.

When Audley left him at home, he had joined his parents, made them

gay with his careless gaiety, seen the old-fashioned folks retire to

rest, and then--while they, perhaps, deemed him once more the hero

of ball-rooms and the cynosure of clubs--he drove slowly through the

soft summer night, amidst the perfumes of many a garden and many a

gleaming chestnut grove, with no other aim before him than to reach the

loveliest margin of England's loveliest river, at the hour the moon was

fullest and the song of the nightingale most sweet. And so eccentric a

humourist was this man, that I believe, as he there loitered--no one

near to cry "How affected!" or "How romantic!"--he enjoyed himself more

than if he had been exchanging the politest "how-d'ye-do's" in the

hottest of London drawing-rooms, or betting his hundreds on the odd

trick with Lord De R---- for his partner.

TRANSATLANTIC TOURISTS.[3]

[3] _Lettres sur l'Amérique._ Par X. MARMIER. 2 volumes. Paris, 1851.

_The United States and Cuba._ By JOHN GLANVILLE TAYLOR. London, 1851.

Books of European travel beyond the Atlantic, of rare appearance only a

few years ago, bid fair to become plentiful as snags in the Mississippi

or buffaloes on the prairies of the West. Emigration, Californian

gold, and the perfection of steam-navigation, have brought America to

our door. The falls of Niagara now behold as many European visitors

as did those of Schaffhausen half a century since; and Broadway is as

familiar a word as were the Boulevards before the Peace. Even amidst

her own revolutions, embroilments, and alarms, the eyes of Europe have

of late been fixed with unusual attention upon the New World. Mexico,

California, Cuba--aggrandising wars, treasure-seeking enterprise,

piratical aggression--in turn have filled the columns of our newspapers

and occupied a large share of our thoughts.

Mr X. Marmier is a French gentleman who has devoted his life

to wandering in foreign lands, and writing narratives of his

peregrinations. North and south, east and west, nothing is too hot or

too cold for him. To-day, in frozen Iceland, he studies Scandinavian

history; to-morrow, on Algerine sands, he rambles in the footsteps

of Bugeaud. Behold him, in the sweet springtime, strolling beneath

blossoms on the sunny banks of Rhine: autumn comes, and he pensively

roams by the mystical waters of Nile. Russia, Sweden and Holland,

Lapland and Poland, have in turn had the happiness to possess him.

Europe, to him, is thrice-trodden ground, and Asia bears the print

of his foot. His travels are reckoned by thousands of leagues, his

writings by dozens of volumes. No wonder that his erratic tastes

have at last driven him across the Atlantic. There he adheres to

his magnificent contempt of space. His is no limited excursion to

Boston and New York, Washington and New Orleans: the St Lawrence and

the Mississippi are boundaries too narrow for his aspiring soul and

many-leagued boots. One vast continent is insufficient to satisfy his

craving after locomotion. North America explored, Cuba visited, he

pauses and hesitates. The quay of the Havana is the last place where

a professed wanderer can be expected to cut short his rambles and go

home. There sea and sky are both so bright and calm, that recollections

of past tempests and less hospitable shores fade into indistinctness.

There, too, are facilities of departure for almost any part of the

globe. "Thence," says M. Marmier, in an ecstasy of perplexity,

"sail the English packets which coast, in their rapid course, the

whole emerald chain of the Antilles; thence, the American steamers,

transporting to Chagres the legions of pilgrims attracted by the

worship of gold to the Californian shrine; thence, French and English

vessels, which in a few weeks convey their passengers to the noble

city of Nantes or the spacious harbour of Cadiz." Beset by so many

seductions, M. Marmier could not be expected to choose the nearest way

to Paris. Nor did he; and therefore is it that, upon the title-page of

his book, Rio de la Plata succeeds the names of Canada, United States,

Havana.

Mr John Glanville Taylor is a traveller of a very different stamp.

No amateur wanderer, in quest of novelty or with a view to a book,

he crossed the Atlantic (in the spring of 1841) when a lad of

eighteen, to seek his fortune--as appears from his own account of the

matter--but with mining more particularly in view. Finding nothing

to do in the States, he proceeded, after a short sojourn, to Cuba,

to investigate the prospects of a newly-discovered gold-vein. This

proving unproductive, he entered into partnership with a planter and

slave-owner, was ruined by the drought and famine of 1843-4, served

as overseer of a sugar plantation, and, finally, after upwards of

three years' residence in the island, returned to England _via_ New

York. The volume containing such portions of his adventures and

observations, during his absence from this country, as he has deemed

worth recording, is manly in tone, tolerably interesting in substance,

and contains, here and there, scraps of useful information, although

the author's opinions are sometimes crude and hastily formed--the

fault of a young writer, and yet younger traveller. His downright

matter-of-fact views often contrast amusingly with those of the more

experienced and literary Frenchman. As a traveller sentimental rather

than adventurous--as a writer we have usually found M. Marmier facile

rather than fascinating, and oftener insipid than graphic. In his

books of European travel there is a lack of the vivid and lively; and

his style, correct and not ungraceful, has yet a monotony that acts

somniferously on the reader. His work on America is an improvement

on his previous publications. The nine hundred pages might perhaps

have been compressed, with advantage, into two-thirds of the space;

but still, amidst a superabundance of words, we find pointed and

interesting passages, and occasionally an original view of men and

things Transatlantic.

Frenchmen are very apt to express great sympathy with, and admiration

of, the people of the United States. This arises from various causes.

Some are smitten with their democratic institutions; some exult

in American independence as a triumph over England; others assume

a share in that triumph, on account of French auxiliaries in the

American War; whilst others, again, suffer their imaginations to be

captivated by the wonderfully rapid rise and prodigious development

of American wealth and power. It does not require any great amount

of sentiment and fancy to get up this kind of love-at-a-distance.

Many of our readers remember Miss Edgeworth's clever tale of _L'Amie

Inconnue_, where a romantic young lady conceives a violent attachment

for the authoress of a sentimental novel, corresponds with her under

the name of Araminta, makes a pilgrimage to Wales to seek her in a

cottage amidst honeysuckles, and finally has her illusions destroyed

by discovering her in a two-pair-back at Bristol, putting brandy

in her tea, and bullying a lover named Nathaniel. This is exactly

the sort of disenchantment in store for those Frenchmen who, after

picturing to themselves the United States as a democratic Utopia,

the very paradise of the worshippers of Liberty, have occasion to

visit the unseen land of their affections. On arrival in the States,

nineteen out of twenty of them find themselves about as comfortable

as a cat in a kennel of terriers. They are not spitefully worried,

certainly, but unintentionally they are most awfully annoyed. In

fact, no two characters can be more antagonistic than those of the

Frenchman and American. However strong his predetermination, the former

finds it impossible to be pleased in the country where he had fondly

anticipated so much gratification. The most he can do is to laud

Yankee energy and enterprise, and to pass lightly over the details of

manners and customs that jar with all his notions of propriety and

enjoyment of life.

"Before I put foot on shore," says M. Marmier, "I felt disposed to

love that American land whose mere aspect makes so many hearts beat,

and gives birth to so many hopes." He may love the land, but he very

soon lets us see that he does not much like the dwellers upon it. After

sketching their busy habits and feverish activity, their unremitting

pursuit of lucre and contempt of an intellectual _far niente_, he thus

continues his epistle to the unknown lady-correspondent to whom all the

_Lettres sur l'Amérique_ are addressed:

"It would be false to say that such vigorous commercial

faculties, and such habits, constitute an amiable people;

and truly I would not wish you to live amongst them, nor do

I imagine that they will ever leave in my heart one of those

tender memories which I still retain of the dear natives of

Germany and Scandinavia, and even of the Turks, who are such

worthy people."

M. Marmier, we may here observe, is constitutionally tender. A pensive

softness is the general characteristic of his writings. He is addicted

to moonlight; the sight of a wooden hut in a sunny nook of the Hudson

sets him dreaming about love in a cottage, and quoting Tom Moore with

indifferent orthography; in his moments of melancholy he loves to

muse by the river-side, and repeat to himself a certain ditty about

roses, rivulets, and nightingales, which he picked up in Canada. With

such gentle tastes, something more than a trifle is needed to betray

him into wrath and sarcasm. On the other hand, the delicacy of his

organisation evidently makes him peculiarly liable to be shocked by

certain Yankee qualities and habits. One of the first annoyances he

experiences is from the curiosity of his fellow-passengers on board a

Hudson steamboat. He feels it the more that he has just suffered from

their taciturnity, and found it impossible to obtain from them other

than monosyllabic replies to his questions concerning the places they

pass.

"With a phlegm, compared to which British phlegm is jovial

vivacity, the American combines an inquisitiveness worthy of

a savage; and the attention which was denied me when I sought

a few details concerning the scenes we traversed, was soon

fixed upon me, to my great discomfort, by various parts of my

dress. One of them took hold of my watch-chain, without the

least ceremony, turned and twisted it about between his dirty

fingers, then, satisfied with the examination, walked away

without uttering a word. Another, seated beside me, suddenly

exclaimed--'_You have got a Paris hat_,' and forthwith took it

off my head, closed and opened the springs, showed it to one

of his neighbours, and, when they had both looked at it inside

and out, gave it back into my hands. A moment later, having to

pay my bill to the steward, I was so unfortunate as to open my

purse--a beautiful little purse of cherry-coloured silk and

gold. Forthwith an American fell violently in love with it,

pulled out a horrible knitted bag, and proposed a barter. I

laughed in his face. I hid my purse, but he still persecuted

me. At last I ground between my teeth, Yankee fashion, a d----,

which made him step back a pace or two. To avoid being thus

beset, I put my hat into its box, and covered my head with a

cap; I put my watch-chain into my pocket, buttoned my waistcoat

over my breast-pin, and, thanks to these precautions, I could

at last walk about and sit on deck without being exposed to

stupid importunity."

It may be said that M. Marmier is hardly indulgent enough to the

honest Yankees, to whose curiosity the sight of a live Frenchman, in

trinkets and a Gibus hat, and 'fresh as imported,' was doubtless a

strong stimulant. A countrywoman of his (by connections, habits, and

residence, although not by birth) has described, in a very charming

work,[4] similar traits in a more tolerant tone. She also was in a

steamboat on the Hudson, when she suddenly found herself surrounded, or

rather assailed, by a crowd of women, who wonderingly contemplated an

embroidery in brilliant colours with which she was occupied.

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

"After an examination of some minutes' duration," says Madame

de Merlin, "they seized upon the tapestry without looking at

me or making the least apology, as if the knees on which it

rested had been the tray of a work-box; then alternately taking

possession of wools, scissors, thimble, they passed them from

hand to hand without taking the slightest heed of the person to

whom they belonged. At last the boldest amongst them carried

off the embroidery and disappeared. I begged my companion to

follow her, and ascertain what she meant to do with it. In

a few minutes she brought it back, after showing it to her

friends, who were below in the cabin. Soon a second group of

women accosted me; one of them, without the slightest preamble

or polite preface, asked me if I were French. On my reply in

the affirmative,--'We never see your countrywomen in these

parts,' said she; 'you please us. Do all Frenchwomen resemble

you?' Then she ran to fetch her husband, and planted him before

me like a sentry, showing me to him as she might have done

a curious bird. What think you of this savage curiosity of

the women of the West, of these strange manners and artless

avowals? They have something confiding and primitive which

pleases me."

Lenient to the deficiencies of American women, the amiable and

accomplished Countess Merlin expresses plainly and forcibly her disgust

at the manners of the men. M. Marmier echoes her complaints. Not

so Mr Taylor, who visited America at an age when all that is novel

pleases, and who can see no fault in the natives. He reluctantly

admits their dress to be a little precise, and their manners rather

graver than he likes; in their cities and societies he complains of a

lack of cordiality, and of the scarcity of dinner-parties. He thinks

tobacco-chewing a nasty habit, although he doubts not that to others

it may seem just the reverse. But he totally denies that Americans are

at all inquisitive, and refutes, quite to his own satisfaction, the

rash assertions of those European travellers who have declared the bulk

of them to be coarse and gluttonous feeders. In the enthusiasm of his

vindication, he says that, "far from being guilty of gluttony, they

appear to eat _merely_ to live, and may be blamed rather for seeming to

care _too little_ for the good things of this life." The Englishman,

according to Mr Taylor, is the exact opposite of the American in this

respect, and the Spaniard has hit the happy medium. Here is what M.

Marmier says upon the subject:--

"Whilst I thus gossip with you, as if I were seated in an

arm-chair at your chimney corner, I forget the dining-room

already noted, the bill of fare printed on vellum paper, the

smart waiters in round jackets and white aprons, exactly like

those at Vefour's. My fellow-travellers, are far from a similar

forgetfulness of one of the chief enjoyments of the steamer.

Some of them, as soon as they came on board, paid it a long

visit, and soon returned thither for the second time. Is it

not Brillat-Savarin who has said--'Elsewhere men eat, at Paris

only do they know how to dine.' Had he seen this country, he

would have said--'Here men do not eat, they devour.' The word

is hardly expressive enough. Better to understand the full

force I wish to give it, please to refer to Buffon under the

heading _Pike and Shark_. You will then, perhaps, have some

idea of American voracity. Here is the usual order of the daily

meals in the United States:--Between seven and eight o'clock in

the morning, a bell, a gong, or some other noisy instrument,

announces breakfast. This consists of joints of roast-beef,

ox-tongues, ducks, and fowls, accompanied with potatoes, bread

and butter, and other light dishes. The Americans rush to

table like starving animals. It is really the only suitable

comparison. Heedless of his neighbours, careless of the most

ordinary rules of European politeness, each man draws towards

himself every dish within his reach, and piles upon one or two

plates enormous pyramids of meat, butter, and vegetables. Then

he works away with hands and teeth, as if his moments were

numbered, without speaking, almost without drawing breath, but

following with haggard eyes the dishes that travel away from

him, and harpooning them as soon as they come within reach, to

seize upon a fresh supply.

This first operation finished, the American lights a cigar;

goes to the place where spirits are sold, which is here

called the bar-room; tosses off a glass of whisky or Madeira,

and sets himself to ruminate till the hour of noon. Noon is

very far off, and many are unable to get through this mortal

interval of four hours without a second and third visit to

the dear bar-room, after which they ruminate again. The bell

announces luncheon, consisting of soup, a box of sardines,

cold meat, butter, and a lump of cheese. At three o'clock,

another tap on the tom-tom--the best, the most desired of all;

it proclaims dinner, of which the two preceding repasts were

but the modest preface. This time the table is covered from

one end to the other with vast dishes, containing enormous

roasted joints, highly-spiced sauces, prodigious puddings. The

same appetite as at breakfast, the same universal silence. No

sounds but the clatter of knife and fork, and the crunching of

bones between impatient jaws. So great is the hurry in which

this third repast is got through, that the diners do not even

think of wiping their knives before plunging them into the

salt or butter, and napkins are habitually thrown aside, for

the manifest reason that the use of the napkin entails a loss

of time. Yet these people laugh at Turks for using neither

spoons nor forks at their meals. I remember to have eaten a

few dinners with Turks, and I declare that they were models of

cleanliness compared to those at which I have been compelled to

assist in American hotels and steamers.

Dinner over, the rest of the day is long to get through.

Accordingly, towards seven o'clock, you hear, for the fourth

time, the blessed bell inviting the inmates of the building

to a cup of tea or coffee, accompanied by cold game or salted

meats, after which visits to the bar-room may be recommenced

_ad libitum_.

To see these men of business thus rush to table, and stow

away a whole cargo of miscellaneous viands in less time

than a Spaniard takes to imbibe a single cup of chocolate,

one might imagine that they consider every minute passed in

the dining-room as so much time lost, and that they are in

desperate haste to return to their counting-house, and bury

themselves in ledgers and day-books. Unfortunately, as on

leaving the eating-room I have almost invariably found every

man of them with his body on one chair, and his feet, raised to

a level with his head, on the back of another, I am bound to

conclude that it is not business, but an unparalleled voracity,

which induces them to feed at steeple-chase pace.

Many travellers who here, in the States, are considered very

impertinent, but who nevertheless write with the most amiable

intentions, attribute the cold taciturnity of Americans to

their preoccupation with commercial combinations or political

affairs. I believe that, without doing them injustice, one

might very often attribute it to the labour of the digestive

organs, put four times a-day to a severe task, and which

frequently, in their fatigue, require the employment of

soda-water, and almost continually the acrid and hideous

mastication of a roll of tobacco. The fact is, that in general

the American is much more silent than the Turk. There is also

this difference between them--the Turk, seated on a carpet,

with his silken vest, his long beard, his large turban, appears

nobly indolent or gently meditative, and the stranger's eye may

rest with pleasure on his calm and benevolent physiognomy; the

silence of the American, on the contrary, is gloomy and uneasy,

dry and hard, (_sec et dur_.) His countenance is _pointed_, his

movements are stiff and angular. His repose is not the happy

placidity of the Oriental, or of the southern European--the

enjoyment of _kief_, the pleasure of the siesta; it is a sort

of prostration, agitated from time to time by a feverish

movement."

The following sketch is certainly not very flattering. After laying

down the rather novel proposition, that man is one of the ugliest of

created animals, M. Marmier proceeds to prove the American the ugliest

of all civilised races of men:--

"Picture to yourself, if you please, a lean figure with bony

wrists, feet of dimensions that would for ever tarnish the

scutcheon of a gentleman, a hat stuck upon the back of the

head, straight hair; a cheek swollen, not by an accidental

cold, but from morning till night by a lump of tobacco;

lips stained yellow by the juice of the same plant; a black

coat with narrow skirts, a tumbled shirt, the gloves of

a gendarme,[5] trousers in harmony with the rest of the

equipment, and you will have before you the exact portrait of a

thoroughbred Yankee."

[5] Thick clumsy buckskin gloves.

All this would shock Mr Taylor. Substantially, however, it is true

enough. Sealsfield, himself a naturalised American, and a warm admirer

of the institutions of his adopted country, has sketched scenes very

similar to M. Marmier's delineations of hotel and steamboat life--life

in those places of resort being pretty equally divided between the

dining-table, the bar, and the spittoon. Hamilton, Marryat, Mrs

Trollope, and other keen observers and able writers,[6] have enabled

us to dispense with the accounts of foreign travellers in the States.

But still the verdict passed upon the citizens of the Great Republic

by an educated and intelligent Frenchman must always possess weight

and interest. Were M. Marmier an irritable or grumbling traveller, one

might think it right to receive his impressions with caution; but,

on the contrary, in all his previous books that we have seen, he has

shown himself so indulgent and easy to please, that it is impossible

to refuse him credit when he adopts a different tone, and abandons

his habitual suavity for such severity of sarcasm as he may have at

command. We have seen him annoyed and disgusted on board the steamers;

presently we find him put to the torture in an American stage:--

[6] Amongst these, Professor James Johnston now takes honourable rank.

His valuable _Notes on North America_ reached us too late for notice

in the present article--admitting even that they could with propriety

have been included in a review of works of a lighter and more ephemeral

character. His volumes, which address themselves particularly to the

agriculturist and emigrant, are replete with useful information, and

we shall take an early opportunity of drawing attention to their

instructive and interesting contents.

"The railway left me at Cumberland, and handed me over to the

stage-coach. Probably you do not know what a stage-coach is in

this country. It is a wooden box placed on four wheels, and

intended to convey travellers along roads which the locomotive

has not yet favoured with its visits. But what a box, and

what a road! We were nine, packed together like herrings in

a barrel, jolting through the ruts and bounding over the

stones as if we had been afflicted with St Vitus's dance. Add

to these comforts the delightful society of seven graceful

Americans, chewing, spitting, and (in order to be more at their

ease) _taking off their boots_. A timid, delicate young girl,

seated in one of the corners of this infamous box, suffered in

silence, and the next morning we found her in a swoon. For my

part, I passed the night in tossing to one side or the other an

enormous dirty body which constantly fell back upon me, and two

enormous legs which seemed determined to crush mine. Assuredly,

if a severe penance can, according to expiatory dogmas, cleanse

us from our sins, my soul ought, after these twenty-four hours

of coaching, to be as pure as that of the newborn child; and

if ever I meet an Indian fakeer in quest of a new torture

wherewith to propitiate the goddess Siwa, I will send him to

America, to travel by the Cumberland stage."

Madame de Merlin, certainly a very amiable and hardy traveller, slow

to feel small annoyances or to censure foreign habits, is unable

to conceal her disgust at some of the practices which so shocked

M. Marmier. She went out to New York in the same vessel with Fanny

Elssler, and was present at her first appearance in that city.

"The enthusiasm," she says, "was immense; I thought myself

at Rome, and had difficulty in recognising the nation that

talks by measure and walks by springs. But soon these men,

with hat on head and coat off, lying down upon their seats,

and who, after placing their heavy-nailed shoes on the ground,

carelessly rested their woollen-stockinged feet on the back of

their neighbours' chairs, reminded me that I was in the United

States."

On entering the railway between New York and Philadelphia, the Countess

found it--

"Full of men and newspapers, the former carrying the latter.

There were sixty-five travellers. When I went in, every place

seemed full, and no one stirred. I had a right to my place,

for which I had paid beforehand. The conductor addressed a

few words to one of the occupants of a bench intended for

four persons, but which was then occupied but by three. The

traveller continued to read, and paid not the least attention

to what was said to him. Second appeal, same insensibility.

Then the conductor pushed him. He yielded to this third and

energetic summons, but without raising his head from his

newspaper, and as if he had been displaced by a jolt of the

carriage. This passenger was the only one who wore gloves. One

must see this nation to form an idea of its manners. Here a

man lets himself be pushed, elbowed, hustled, and suffers his

toes to be trodden upon, without wincing; what is still more

astonishing, he sees people lean upon his wife before his eyes,

and endures all these insults with stoical tranquillity--the

contrary would appear absurd or ridiculous.... During the

journey, my neighbour thought proper to rest his back against

my shoulder. I gently told him of it. He took no heed, and

preserved his position--not with any impertinent intention,

but because he found himself comfortable. At sight of this, my

young companion, a Spaniard by blood, a Frenchman by education,

turned red and pale alternately; his lips were compressed, his

eyes flashed. I was frightened; but suddenly, assuming an air

of calmness, he extended his hands, placed them on the back of

my boorish neighbour, and pushed him quietly into his place.

'If I had put myself in a passion with him,' he afterwards

said to me, 'he would never have understood why.'

'And you would have been wrong,' added Mr W--n; 'how can one

be angry with people who would think it quite natural that you

should behave in the same way to their wives and daughters?'"

It is not surprising that Mr Taylor, at his age, and in his superficial

glance at the United States, should have overlooked a point of

American character which particularly strikes M. Marmier, the poet

and dilettante, and Madame de Merlin, the high-bred and intellectual

woman. This is, the general sacrifice, to the positively and materially

useful, of those pursuits and refinements which are the grace, and

embellishment of human existence. The neglect of the fine arts, the

absence of feeling for the beautiful, are there the result of the

ardour for speculation and the all-absorbing pursuit of dollars.

"The artist," says Madame de Merlin, "is assimilated to the

artisan, and art is measured by the yard, like merchandise.

They do not cultivate music or painting, or even flowers. Do

you wish to inhale the perfume of a flower? you must buy it

at a high price: it is an article of trade, and only to be

found at the nurseryman's. I am not aware of a single picture

in the United States, unless it be in the Pantheon, where

several memorable epochs of the American Revolution are rudely

represented upon some old panels of wall. In this country, all

that is beautiful is forbidden: the beautiful is not useful.

The grace of the human form, music, poetry, painting, flowers,

are blessings vouchsafed by Providence to man to soften the

bitterness of his days of mourning, to alleviate the burthen

of his chains; they are gleams of joy amidst long years of

struggle, brilliant flashes through the gloom of night; they

are the luxury of human life."

Less elegant and eloquent than Madame de Merlin, M. Marmier resumes in

greater detail, but with equal force, nearly the same idea:--

"The Americans may say to me, 'We are not a polite people it is

true; we seek not to be affable or attentive, it must be owned;

and the foreigner who comes amongst us may well be shocked by

our coldness. But if we disdain, as frivolous, the elegant

habits of European society, we have an audacity of enterprise,

and a rapidity of action, which must astonish Europe. To start

from the spot where we now are (on the Hudson.) In less than

forty years, we have covered this desert river with steamers

and vessels of every kind, we have cleared and peopled its

banks, converted its hamlets into flourishing cities, dug

harbours and canals, laid down railroads, given life, movement,

and commercial prosperity to the whole district. Before us is

Albany, which, in the seventeenth century, was a mere fort, and

which now has a population of forty-two thousand souls; and

down yonder is the commercial metropolis of New York, the first

in the world after Liverpool. Nothing equals the spring of

our activity and the boldness of our conceptions. Things that

you in France take years to combine, and which you lengthily

discuss in the tribune and the newspapers, we accomplish in a

turn of the hand. In a couple of months we shall establish a

line of steamers to Havre, and another to England. Already we

have similar communication with Germany by the port of Bremen,

with the Antilles and the Pacific Ocean. Not a corner of the

globe is there where our flag does not wave. How many projects

have there not been elaborated in your old Europe for cutting

through the Isthmus of Panama? England and France sent thither

their engineers, who published long reports--reports which were

examined by councils of ministers, submitted to commissions,

and finally shelved in public offices. At New York, two or

three merchants formed an association, which decided, in two or

three days, that the Isthmus of Panama should be crossed by a

railroad. No sooner said than done. Already the workmen are on

the ground; another year, and the United States' steam-engine

will connect the two oceans.'

I recognise," says M. Marmier, "the justice of such reasoning,

and I bow my head before this power of human genius applied

to the wonders of industry. But, O worthy Yankees, Scripture

says that '_man shall not live by bread alone_,'--the heart and

the mind have other requirements. Unless our mind be absorbed

in the movements of a high-pressure steam-engine, and our

heart changed into a bank-note, there will always remain to us

pleasing reveries, thoughts of art and poetry, the enjoyments

of social life and of expansive affections, which all the

efforts of your courage and the success of your toil can never

replace."

Appositely to Madame de Merlin's slighting mention of the pictures

of Revolutionary scenes, comes in a passage from M. Marmier's first

volume, relating to the Americans' exaggerated estimate of their

military glories.

"At Plattsburg, situated where the Saranac enters Lake

Champlain, there is a chance that the American, who has passed

whole hours without heeding you, and who has hitherto received

your advances like a dog in a bad humour, will suddenly

embellish his metallic physiognomy with a jovial smile, and

approach you with a complaisant air. For he longs to tell you

of the victory gained near this town by the Americans, in the

year 1814, commanded by Commodore Macdonough, over the English

troops; and he narrates the story with so many details, and

such an emphasis, that you at last wish he would relapse into

his habitual silence.

The Americans, like the Russians, have a national pride

surpassing all expression. They cannot, like the Russians,

talk of their old traditions; nor have they, like them,

ancient monuments of a venerable character, and modern ones

of grand aspect. They have not, like the soldiers of Suwarrow

and Alexander, conquered a valiant reputation upon the chief

battle-fields of Europe. Neither have they the literature of

Russia, so artless in its popular poetry, so original in the

compositions of Pushkin and Gogol. But little do they care

what exists in other countries. They have the happiness to

believe all other nations very inferior to them, and all the

imagination that the perpetual use of figures has left them is

agreeably employed in raising the airy edifice of their glory.

Their least success is an event which must occupy the thoughts

of the whole world. A battle in which they have taken a banner

And slain thirty men is a second Marengo. The name of their

General Scott is to be transmitted to posterity with the same

lustre as that of Alexander or Cæsar; and not a soldier who

served in the war against Mexico but is a Napoleon on a small

scale. When they talk of their country and of its progress, the

ordinary vocabulary is too weak for their enthusiasm. They are

fain to seek extraordinary epithets, words which the learned

Johnson never admitted into his dictionary. They remind me of

the Italian cicerone who exclaimed, when showing a picture of

Albano to a traveller, '_Ah, Signor! questo è un maestro, e un

grande pittore, e un pittorissimo!_'

I accordingly heard, from one end to the other, the story of

the battle of Plattsburg, after which my officious American,

satisfied probably with my attention, made me a bow--a rare

circumstance! I even believe--a still rarer event--that he made

a motion as if to raise his hand to his hat. Then, having no

other Homeric epic to narrate, he took himself off, and left me

opposite to the shores of the Champlain, at liberty to indulge

in meditation."

Thus left to his reflections, M. Marmier grows pathetic--as is not

unfrequently the case with him--and feels his heart oppressed with

an unspeakable sadness, and gives us a French prose version of some

German verses by Tieck, which he might just as well have omitted, as

also some gossip about the moon and other analogous matters, which

merely serves to swell his book, and will inevitably be passed unread

by every sane reader. However, we must take the gentleman as we find

him, and sift, as well as we can, the wheat from the chaff, when the

latter occasionally predominates. Presently he relapses from the

pathetic into the sarcastic, on occasion of a visit to the Legislative

Assembly of the United States, which reminded him a good deal of that

of France. There were certain points of difference, however. "The

American deputies, he says, chewed tobacco very agreeably, and spat

with remarkable dexterity to a distance of fifteen paces,"--through

a keyhole at that distance, we have heard it asserted, but do not

guarantee the fact. Even Mr Taylor but imperfectly conceals his disgust

at the "antique vases, vulgarly called spittoons," placed beside

the desk of each member of Congress. From the senate-house to the

President's levee is but a step. It is taken by M. Marmier under the

guidance and protection of a lady, to do honour to whose introduction

he put on, he tells us, his whitest cravat and his blackest coat. But

soon he perceived that this garb of ceremony formed a striking contrast

with the motley costumes that thronged the White House at Washington.

Frocks of every colour were there, and vests of every cut, but of coats

very few.

"There was no servant at the door or in the antechamber. We

walked at once into the saloon, where the President was on his

legs, fulfilling the arduous duty imposed upon him, without

respect for his age and for the dignity of his military

services, by the arrogant republic. My amiable conductress

advanced towards him. He held out his hand and said, 'How do

you do?' She named me, he turned towards me, holding out his

hand, and saying 'How do you do?' A crowd of visitors came

up; he shook hands with them all, repeating 'How do you do?'

These amiable salutations bidding fair to be indefinitely

prolonged, my charming introductress thought I had enough of

it, and took me up to the President's daughter, who welcomed

me with the never-failing 'How do you do?' After which we went

to walk about another saloon with a crowd of individuals who

were parading it in pairs in silent procession; women, such

as exist nowhere but in Henri Monnier's comedies, and men to

whom you would fear to grant admittance into your anteroom. For

opening his marble palace once a-week to this plebeian crowd,

for courteously saluting all these ladies who keep stalls,

for shaking hands with some hundreds of unclean citizens, the

republic gives its President only one hundred and twenty-five

thousand francs a year. It is poor pay!"

The pittance certainly appears paltry, contrasted with the more ample

allowance of a French president; but the two cases will hardly admit

of a comparison, nor does M. Marmier draw one. There is evidently very

little of the republican in his composition; we should rather take

him for one of the class which M. Louis Blanc's followers designate,

in picturesque abbreviation, as _aristos_; and indeed he makes no

secret of his aversion to what he terms _demagoguery_--a word which is

probably not to be found either in Boyer or Walker, but which some of

our ballad-writing friends may possibly think no bad rhyme to roguery.

Soon after his visit to the President, we find our errant Frenchman

steaming down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans. At Cincinnati,

when about to embark on a steamer pompously advertised as "The

splendid and fast-running John Hancock," he is somewhat startled by

a conversation between two Americans, from which he gathers that the

said "Hancock" is a worthless boat, whose boilers have been condemned

by the inspector, and which the insurance companies refuse to take,

but out of whose rotten hull and rickety engines the considerate

proprietors propose to squeeze a little more passage-money at risk of

the passengers' lives. So M. Marmier takes his place by the "Western

World," also announced as "splendid and fast-running," but which, he

flatters himself, is more sea, or at least river worthy, and devotes

a few pages to the perils of the West, the recklessness of steamboat

captains in America, and the unpaternal nature of a Government which

imposes no check on the employment of damaged steamers. Explosions,

conflagrations, inundations, snags, sawyers, and races--he makes out a

terrible list of dangers, and estimates at thirty or forty per annum

the number of steamers lost in the Western waters.

"The average existence of a boat is here about four years. In

four years it must have brought in its cost, with interest.

If it lasts longer, it is by unhoped-for good luck. But the

American does not trouble his head about difficulties or

perils. He _must_ travel, and he travels at all risks. You have

doubtless read the account of that terrible explosion of the

"Louisiana," which, about a month ago, discharged the fragments

of her boilers and some hundreds of corpses upon the quay of

New Orleans. Next day, not a steamer had a passenger the less.

_Go ahead_ is the American motto. Is there a new territory to

explore at three hundred leagues distance, a sale of goods to

be effected north or south--_go ahead!_ The weather may be bad,

the roads covered with snow, the journey long and difficult,

no matter--_go ahead_. The steamer by which they are to go is

of bad repute, is ill organised and worse commanded; there

is danger of its sinking at the very first casualty; never

mind--_go ahead_. Fatigue and danger are nothing--movement

before everything. I ought to admire such intrepidity; but,

with my old-fashioned European notions, I regret to think that

the seductions of fortune can inspire as great courage as the

chivalrous sentiments of glory, religion, and love."

M. Marmier is manifestly of too romantic a turn to travel in the

States with gratification to himself, or to write about them in a

manner likely to satisfy their inhabitants. He humbly confesses his

deficiencies, and implores indulgence. A poor tourist, he says,

incapable of correctly adding up a column of figures, and ignorant of

the very first principles of mechanical science, he prefers the fresh

morning breeze to the roar of a locomotive, and would never dream of

putting a railway in competition with a hawthorn-hedged footpath.

And although, before starting on his Transatlantic expedition, he

assiduously studied the works on America of Michel Chevalier, De

Tocqueville, and Miss Martineau, even _they_ had not sufficiently

guarded him against disappointments. At the bottom of his heart there

still lingered fanciful dreams of vast forests, Indian traditions, and

deep silent savannahs. He had dreamed of New York as "rising like an

enchanted isle between the waves of ocean and the azure current of the

Hudson, in the poetical prestige of a world decked in all the charms of

youth." We feel that our imperfect translation but feebly renders the

elevation of M. Marmier's style and sentiments; but it may suffice to

give the reader an idea of that gentleman's bitter disappointment on

finding the city of his dreams a vast focus of speculation, cupidity,

and roguery; where "the stranger is every moment exposed to find

himself gently duped or audaciously robbed;" where the proportion of

knaves and adventurers to the mass of the population exceeds that in

any other city of the world; and where the religion, even of the most

honest, is the blind and unbounded worship of the Golden Calf. The most

ungallant of Frenchmen, he spares not even the ladies, but imagines

that the gay swarm which daily flutters in Broadway, between the hours

of twelve and two, laden to excess with silks and velvets, shawls and

laces, collars and jewellery, do not repair thither solely for their

amusement, nor yet for the more important business of shopping; but

that they are intended as sauntering advertisements of the wealth of

their houses, "and to announce, perhaps, by an increased display of

plumes and diamonds, each new victory achieved in the campaigns of

speculation." In America, according to M. Marmier, and particularly in

New York, everything is reducible into dollars and cents, and is duly

reduced accordingly.

"To understand the ardour with which they toil in this

reproduction, (of dollars,) we must bear in mind that, in their

virtuous democracy, there is no other real sign of distinction,

neither birth nor titles of nobility, nor artistic and literary

talent. Here everything must be reckoned by figures, or

weighed in the goldsmith's balance. A captain of a vessel has

distinguished himself by a voyage of discovery, and you take

pleasure in quoting the interesting places he has seen, and the

observations he has made. You are interrupted by an inquiry

of how much he was paid. A painter has been successful at the

Exhibition, and has received the most encouraging eulogiums,

accompanied with a gold medal. They overlook the eulogiums,

but desire to know the weight of the medal. Tell an American

that Murray gave Lord Byron sixteen hundred guineas for a canto

of _Childe Harold_, he opens his eyes, and exclaims, with

poetic enthusiasm, that he should like to have written _Childe

Harold_. But if you add, that Béranger lives in a cottage

at Passy, and that his whole fortune consists of a slender

annuity, he ridicules Béranger's glory, and reckons he would

have done better to take to trade. With such ideas, you will

understand that here literature takes no very high flight.

Cooper, Washington Irving, and the learned historian Prescott,

have certainly acquired much more fame in Europe than in the

United States. For there the merit of their works is alone

thought of; but here it is gravely remarked that, with all

their writings, they have not made their fortunes.

Nevertheless, standing in a New York library, and reckoning

up the immense number of newspapers published in America, one

might suppose that a more literary country did not exist on

the globe's surface. But those publishers do but reprint,

in a compact form, and at the lowest possible price, the

_feuilletons_ of France, and the elegant octavos of England.

Alexander Dumas gives employment to more printing-presses,

papermakers, and stitchers here than in France. As to the two

thousand four hundred newspapers of which the United States

boast, as of a sign of the diffusion of enlightenment, it is

impossible, until one has held them in one's hand, and read

them with one's own eyes, to form an idea of such a mass of

personal diatribes, coarse chronicles, puerile anecdotes--of

such a confused medley of political and commercial notices,

mingled with shopkeepers' puffs in prose and verse, and

smothered in an ocean of advertisements. Nothing that you see

in France can give you an idea of these advertisements. They

are a daily inventory of all imaginable merchandise, heaped

up, _pêle-mêle_, as in an immense arena--a register of all the

inventions possible, and of every conceivable trade.... With

the exception of the New Orleans _Bee_, and of the _Courier of

the United States_, (both published in the French language,) I

do not know an American paper--not even the best of all, that

of a distinguished poet, Mr Bryant--which can be compared,

for the order of its contents, and its general getting-up, to

the most unpretending of our provincial newspapers. As every

considerable city publishes at least a dozen papers, and every

little town two or three, the consequence is, that none attain

sufficient circulation to afford fair remuneration to a body

of able writers. Some are sustained by the funds of partymen,

whose organs they are; and the majority exist only by the

proceeds of their advertisements."

Arrived at New Orleans, M. Marmier makes his moan over the fair and

broad territories once possessed by France in the Western Hemisphere,

and predicts the loss of nearly all that she still retains in those

latitudes, the Islands of Guadaloupe and Martinique, as a natural

consequence of that decree of the Provisional Government which

liberated, at one blow, the whole of the blacks, thereby ruining the

white proprietors. The slaves had cost three or four thousand francs

a-piece; four hundred francs was the indemnity granted to their owners.

The negroes, thus suddenly emancipated, at once took to idleness, and

would work only when they pleased, and as they pleased, and on their

own terms. The sugar-fields were deserted, and the Creoles, abandoning

their plantations, worthless for want of hands to cultivate them, were

emigrating in numbers to the United States. M. Marmier met a great many

of these unfortunate men, ruined and exiled by the mad precipitation of

one of the most worthless and despicable Governments that ever swayed,

even for a brief space, the destinies of a great country and its

colonies.

"Some day," he says, "the negroes will no longer be satisfied

to receive wages. With the ideas of equality preached to them

by their apostles, they will grow indignant at their condition

of hired labourers. They will desire to possess lands. The

sooner to have them, they will seize them by force. All the

emigrants from Guadaloupe and Martinique with whom I conversed

respecting the present condition of the two islands, foresaw a

bloody and terrible catastrophe. Failing energetic repression,

those islands, like that of St Domingo, will be lost to us.

But we shall have the satisfaction, perhaps, of witnessing the

foundation of a new kingdom of blacks, and of manufacturing at

Paris the crown and sceptre of another Faustin I."

Such gloomy accounts of their condition and prospects were not

calculated to encourage M. Marmier in any design he may have

entertained of a visit to the French West-Indian colonies. He preferred

Cuba--previously, however, abiding some days in New Orleans, where,

as in Canada, he fondly traced the lingering habits and traditions of

his native land. The gay, urbane, and sociable Creoles contrasted most

favourably with the dry, taciturn, tobacco-chewing men of business of

the Northern States. M. Marmier was no less surprised than pleased at

the striking difference, having expected to find the people of New

Orleans already "vitrified by the American furnace."

"For of all the things," he says, "which astonish the stranger

in the United States, the most astonishing, perhaps, is the

power of absorption of the American character. Suppose a

skilful chemist throwing five or six different ingredients

into his crucible, mingling and crushing them with a view to

the extraction of one homogeneous essence, and you have the

image of the moral and intellectual chemistry which continually

acts upon this country. What we call the American people is

but an agglomeration of emigrants from various regions and

races. The first came from England; others have come from

Germany, Ireland, France, the mountains of Switzerland, the

shores of the Baltic--in short, from all the countries of

Europe. At first this agglomeration was effected slowly, by

small detachments. Now it annually consists of whole armies

of artisans and tillers of the soil, and of thousands upon

thousands of families. All these foreigners naturally take

with them to the United States their particular predilections,

their national habits, doubtless also their prejudices. At

first the character of the American displeases them, and they

are disagreeably surprised by his habits. They resolve to keep

aloof from him, to live apart with their own countrymen, to

preserve, upon that distant continent, the manners of their

native land, and in their mother tongue they energetically

protest that they never will become Americans. Vain is the

project! useless the protestation! The American atmosphere

envelopes them, and by its constant action weakens their

recollections, dissolves their prejudices, decomposes

their primitive elements. Little by little, by insensible

modifications, they change their views and mode of living,

adopt the usages and language of the Americans, and end by

being absorbed in the American nation, as are the streamlets

from the valleys in the great rivers that bear them onward to

the ocean. How many are the honest Germans, who, after cursing

the rudeness of American manners, and bitterly regretting

their good kindly Germany, have come at last to stick their

hat, Yankee fashion, on the back of their head, to stiffen

themselves, like the Yankee, in a coat buttoned up to the chin,

to disdain all the rules of European courtesy, and to use no

other language but the consecrated dialect of business."

Fearing a like transformation in the French population of New Orleans,

M. Marmier, delighted to find himself mistaken, thanks Heaven for his

escape from the frigid zone of Yankee-land, and for once more finding

himself, for the first time since he left Canada, amongst people with

hearts as well as heads, whose commercial pursuits do not preclude

social enjoyments and friendly attentions to a stranger. He notes a

vast difference between the aspect of New Orleans and that of the

other cities of the Union. In the Louisianian capital there is more

of holidaymaking, and less of unremitting money-seeking; there are to

be found gay dinners, agreeable pastimes, music in the streets and

coffee-houses, manners more courtly and dress more elegant, an opera

and a vaudeville. This, at least, is the case in the French portion of

the city; and the inhabitants of the American quarter have benefited,

our traveller assures us, by the contact and intercourse of their

lively and amiable neighbours. Even in New Orleans, however, he finds

things to blame, or at least to deplore. The principal of these is

the fatal practice of duelling, which has brought desolation into

so many Creole families. _A. N., victime de l'honneur à 24 ans_, is

the brief but significant inscription upon a plain tombstone, before

which he pauses during his ramble amidst the flower garlands and green

shrubberies of the carefully kept cemetery. Duels in Louisiana are much

less frequent since the passing of a law which deprives the duellist of

his civil rights for a space of five years, and which closes to him the

profession of the bar, and the avenues to certain public employments.

No law, however, can tame the fierce passions of the men of the

Southern States, or prevent those extempore duels, fought out on the

instant of quarrel, with revolver and Arkansas toothpick--a Gargantuan

toothpick, M. Marmier shudderingly explains, having a two-edged blade,

a foot long and two or three inches wide.

Before quitting the Union, whose inhabitants and institutions have

certainly met with little favour at his hands, M. Marmier apologises

for any undue severity into which he may possibly have been betrayed.

"If," he says, "in my remarks on the social relations of the

Americans, I have been unjust towards them, I sincerely ask

their pardon. In towns and cities one feels a desire to meet

benevolent glances and friendly words from our fellow-men;

and this, with some rare exceptions, which I gladly treasure

up, is what I sought in vain in the great cities of the

United States. Whether my search was unskilful, I know not; or

whether, like an impatient miner, I too hastily abandoned a bed

of rocks which concealed a precious vein. It is possible I may

have done so. The one thing certain is, that in Canada and at

New Orleans the sympathetic vein was revealed to me at once,

and I had but to extend my hands to be met on all sides with a

friendly grasp."

Finally, M. Marmier, who, whatever his faults of style or occasional

flimsiness of substance, must be admitted to form his own opinions

and to speak them out frankly and boldly, whether right or

wrong--prophesies the rupture of the Union as a consequence of the

slavery question.

"When the two halves of this immense country shall have taken a

greater development, when each of them shall have grown strong

enough to need no longer the other's support, the consciousness

of its power will give keenness to its susceptibilities, and it

will repel with anger what it now with difficulty tolerates. A

fortuitous circumstance will cause a long-repressed animosity

to burst forth; and slavery is, perhaps, the straw that shall

break the steel bar of the United States."

With which ominous valediction M. Marmier closes his first volume, and

embarks on board the "Ohio," the leviathan of American steamboats,

constructed for the express purpose of conveying Californian

gold-seekers to Chagres, and boasting, according to advertisement,

engines each of a thousand horse power, and cabins for five hundred

and fifty passengers--figures which the incredulous Marmier, long

since initiated in the mysteries of Yankee puffery, inclines to think

exaggerated. The vessel, however, is undeniably both fine and fast,

and on the fourth morning after her departure from New Orleans,

(four-and-twenty hours having been lost getting over the bar,) she

flashes past the walls of the castle of the Moro. A narrow passage

between rocks, fortresses right and left, frowning batteries of

cannon--the entrance to the port of Havana is a menacing introduction

to the delightful panorama that presents itself within. A vast

semi-circular basin, which no tempest ever ruffles, envelops the

city with its azure waters. So gay and bright is the aspect of the

city itself, that the enthusiastic Marmier is at the gangway in an

instant; his carpet-bag in one hand, his pilgrim's staff in the other,

shouting for a boat to convey him ashore. He forgets that he is no

longer in the States, where passports are unknown and all may come

and go unquestioned. Cuba is the paradise of police and custom-house

officers, the purgatory of tourists. Before embarking at a foreign

port, your passport must receive the visa of the Spanish consul. Two

dollars for that. On arriving at Cuba, the authorities take your

passport and give in exchange a document of their own fabrication.

Eight dollars for that. Still you are not allowed to land till an

inhabitant of the island has guaranteed your respectability. It is a

puzzle how to obtain this guarantee whilst you are forcibly detained on

ship-board. The difficulty is removed by the appearance alongside of a

number of obliging individuals, offering to certify your morality and

orthodoxy; in return for which service you cannot do less than offer

them a four-dollar bit. So that on summing up, and including boat-hire

and porterage, it costs the humblest traveller something like twenty

dollars to cross the quay of the Havana and reach his hotel.

But it is worth while to pay a good price for leave to land upon the

enchanting shores of the Queen of the Antilles, to roam in forests of

orange trees, to repose beneath the broad shade of the banana, and

to enjoy, in their delightful quintas, the hospitality of the kindly

Havanese. Besides, as M. Marmier exclaims, what are a hundred francs

in a country whose soil produces golden harvests! _There_ are none of

your coarse copper coins, or dirty Yankee bank-notes. A silver _medio_

(about threepence) is the smallest current coin, dollars are spent

like francs in France, and a Cuban thinks no more of a portly golden

ounce than a Paris dandy of a light napoleon. In that beauteous and

luxurious isle, now almost the last colony remaining to the Sovereign

of "Spain and the Indies," whilst the rich have abundant facilities

for squandering their wealth, the man of humble fortune is at no loss

for enjoyments. The bright sky, the glorious scenery, the gorgeous

flowers, the cooling fruits of the tropics, are as free to him as

to the _millionnaire_. And both alike are subject to the perils and

annoyances of those sultry regions, where venomous plants and reptiles,

offensive vermin, and the relentless _vomito_, the terrible Yellow

Jack, are more than equivalent, as evils, to the grey skies and

chilling blasts, snow-drifts and long winters of Northern Europe. It

was in the month of January that M. Marmier reached the Havana, and by

aid of open doors and windows, of curtains, mosquito nets, and a bed

composed of two sheets and a sackcloth stretched on a frame, the heat

was rendered very endurable. He scarcely dared imagine what it might be

in the dog-days, when the demon of fever stalks abroad, invisible but

fatal. In some years, however, the _vomito_, even at the most unhealthy

season, commits few ravages, its virulence seems impaired, and the

rejoicing Cubans almost imagine it is dying out upon their shores.

The delightful dream of security is soon dispelled. Suddenly the grim

phantom reappears, more deadly than ever, smiting alike the stranger

and the native, the rough European mariner, and the graceful daughter

of the tropics.

"Last year, in the month of August, the ships in harbour

resembled those which are deserted by their sailors in the

port of San Francisco. But it was not to hurry to the dazzling

_placer_ that sailors and officers abandoned the national flag.

It was to seek in the hospital a remedy for their tortures, to

be buried in a foreign graveyard, far away from their pleasant

Scheldt and beautiful Gironde."

As if the isle itself did not harbour enough disease, the winds of

heaven and the ocean tides wafted it thither from other climes, from

the fever-ridden shores of Tampico and Vera Cruz.

"One day the watcher on the Moro saw an English brig pass at

the foot of the ramparts, steered by a woman, whom a pale

skeleton-like man strove to assist in her task. Captain

Jackson, who commanded this brig, had left Tampico with his

wife, two young children, and seven sailors. A few days after

they sailed, the seven sailors sickened of the fever and died,

one after the other; the captain and his children, attacked by

the same malady, lay in bed, unable to move. The woman, with

a superhuman courage, inspired by her trust in God, threw the

corpses into the sea, furled a part of the sails, took charge

of the wheel, nursed her husband and children, and, thanks

to a favourable wind which seconded her resolution, directed

the ship towards the island of Cuba, until such time as her

husband, rising from his sick bed, was able to give her some

assistance. And thus she came into port, after forty days'

navigation, timid and modest, casting down her eyes when lauded

for her heroic energy, and seemingly unconscious of having

achieved that from which the imagination of the most resolute

man might well recoil with terror."

All who have read _Tom Cringle's Log_, will call to mind its glorious

descriptions of Cuban scenery, its graphic and thrilling sketches of

tropical sports and perils. We think all the better of Mr Taylor, that

he has attentively studied Captain Cringle's admirable work, and refers

to it with the respect due from a tyro to a master of the art. At St

Jago de Cuba he became acquainted with the original of Don Ricardo

Campana, the Spanish Scotchman who accompanied Cringle and Captain

Transom on their memorable expedition into the interior of the island.

Who has forgotten that exquisite chapter of the Log, "The Pirate's

Leman"? Mr Richard Maxwell Bell, the gentleman whose name Cringle has

humorously translated, is not a Scotchman, (as he is stated to be in

the Log,) but is every bit as hospitable, sensible, and kind-hearted

as he is there represented. By his good offices, Mr Taylor obtained a

companion in the person of a young Spanish officer, proceeding up the

country to join his regiment, for the journey to Gibara, a small town

on the north shore of the island, five and forty leagues from St Jago.

In the district of Holguin, whose capital is Gibara, the promised gold

vein was said to exist, and that was Mr Taylor's destination.

"After seven days' delay, I received intimation that my

fellow-traveller, Don Carlos Saldivar, was now ready, and

awaited my joining forces with him at eleven that night, so

as to get a long cool march by moonlight. About half-an-hour

after the appointed time, we filed off down the street, the

cavalcade consisting of about twenty-four horses, the head of

one being tied to the tail of the other; and Don Carlos and

myself brought up the rear. I have met with very few, even

old residents, who have ever crossed the island by the road

we took. It leads all the way over highlands, rocky passes,

and through mountainous streams, except where it crosses some

immense savannas; whereas the main road is mostly all the way

on the banks of the Cauto, the principal river of Cuba. But

the main road, though short and level, is dreadfully muddy

and clayey in rainy weather, and for that reason our arrieros

chose the other. After passing a small _ingenio_ or sugar-mill,

worked by oxen, which Don Carlos pointed out on the side of

the road, we entered a perfect forest of orange trees, whose

ripe and tempting fruit hung in profusion from every tree,

and lay also on the ground by cart-loads. I let the party get

ahead some distance, and then, quietly dismounting, eagerly

clutched the finest and ripest I could see. My mind misgave me

a little on applying the test of smell, although that was very

refreshing; but my worst fears came out on removing the peel,

when I found my orange was both bitter and sour, being of the

kind called in England "Seville," indigenous to and abundant

in all the forests of Cuba, as well as the lime. I rode up to

my friends, feeling considerably "sold," and now began to be

aware that good fruit, although abundant enough in Cuba, is

not to be had on every tree. We had accommodation, none of the

best, the four nights we passed on the road. One of them saw

us in a small _rancho_, the dwelling of a solitary negro, who,

it seemed, was a tailor, and where the only place I could find

for passing the night was on a _barbacoa_, or platform of small

round sticks; and of all the beds I ever tried to sleep on,

this was the most hopeless! I suffered much on this journey for

want of a hammock, and seriously counsel all who may have to

make a journey, long or short, in Cuba, to travel always with

one. But how different the mode of travelling in Cuba, where

Coolies are not to be had for a song, as they are here where

I am writing, (Ceylon.) A Ceylon planter or merchant cannot

move through the jungle or take any trip at all, without the

attendance of six or eight of these poor creatures, toiling

under a weight of baggage, bedding, &c. A Spaniard will travel

seven or eight hundred miles, suppose from the Havana, to

Holguin, on one and the same horse, and carry all he requires

with him. Folded partly over the cantle of his saddle, and

hanging on each side, the two capacious pockets of his _seron_

hold his coffee-pot, bread, and provisions on one side, and

several changes of garments on the other. In front are strapped

his cloak and holsters; behind, his hammock; and his trusty

_machete_ hangs by his side. He is a perfectly independent

man--a man after Sir Charles Napier's own heart; can carry two

or three days' provisions in his _seron_, and cares not a fig

where night overtakes him. To be sure there are, fortunately,

no venomous reptiles or wild beasts in Cuba. Here, in Ceylon,

perhaps it would not do to try on that 'dodge' too far. You

might find a cobra de capello alongside of you in your hammock,

or be unceremoniously ejected therefrom by an inquisitive

elephant, a playful cheetah or an affectionate bear."

The above extracts, culled from half-a-dozen pages of Mr Taylor, give

a fair idea of the texture of the earlier portion of his book, which,

it will be seen, is slight but agreeable. He is not strictly correct

in stating Cuba to be exempt from the plague of venomous reptiles. The

island certainly produces nothing to compare to the _cobra_, but it

has varieties of the serpent tribe that would be found anything but

pleasant bedfellows--to say nothing of most formidable scorpions, and

of gigantic spiders whose sting brings on fever. In his later chapters,

Mr Taylor grapples with graver subjects--gives us a few statistics,

describes the culture and preparation of sugar, and argues the question

of slavery, for the gradual extinction of which he propounds a project.

Although he passed upwards of three years in Cuba, the greater portion

of the time was spent in the plantations; and he saw nothing of the

great towns, except St Jago, where he slept through an earthquake, in

the next room to a man with the yellow fever, and where he was duly

impressed with the merits of Madame Sauce's boardinghouse and Bordeaux

wine. For sketches of Cuba's capital, the gay coquettish city of the

Havana, we must revert to M. Marmier, whom we find, with his national

versatility, driving in _volantes_, (the light cabriolets which are

almost the only equipages used in Cuba,) quoting Horace, Byron, and

Lamartine, lauding Havanese courtesy, glancing at Hegel's philosophy,

criticising Spanish colonial government, telling anecdotes of General

Tacon, (the stern but efficient governor to whom Cuba is indebted for

many reforms,) admiring the Creole beauties in the theatre, and cooling

his heated interior in the vast coffee-houses, where the delicious

fruits of the island--the orange, the pine, the guava, and many others

for which English names are wanting--are transformed into preserves,

ices, and frozen drinks. At one of these coffee-houses, an ingenious

French _glacier_ had so multiplied his refreshing inventions, that he

had exhausted his Spanish vocabulary, and was driven to politics and

the Anglo-Saxon. "Waiter!" cried a thirsty customer, within hearing of

M. Marmier, "bring me a President Taylor!" "A President Jackson for

me!" exclaimed another voice. M. Marmier, with praiseworthy curiosity,

tried both Taylor and Jackson. The ingenious confectioner, he declares,

had had due regard to the characters of the two venerable Presidents,

when he gave their names to his cunningly compounded liquors: Taylor

was a sweetish and cooling draught, Jackson an energetic punch. At the

theatre, where an Italian company performed _Lucia_ in most creditable

style, M. Marmier was struck with the elegance of the house and the

aristocratic appearance of the audience. The pit was full of men in

white waistcoats and trousers; the three ranges of boxes, instead of

wainscoting at the back, and a heavy wooden balustrade halfway up the

front, had Venetian blinds in the one place, admitting air and light,

and in the other a light trelliswork, which afforded a full view of the

fair inmates from their luxuriant hair down to their fairy feet.

"Above the boxes is the place allotted to the negroes, who seem

stationed there that their thickset figures and black faces

may serve as a foil to the white doves in the boxes. Ladies'

fashions have here no resemblance to those of Paris. Velvet is

not to be thought of; even satin is too heavy and inflexible

for those delicate forms, and Cinderella's slipper would be too

heavy a load for those bird-like feet. A flower in the hair,

a flood of gauze and lace on the body, a silk ribbon, with an

imperceptible sole, for a shoe, and another ribbon of the same

colour round the instep,--this is all that these lilies of the

tropics can support. One might take them for those Northern

elves, who formerly, in the forest glades, wove themselves

garments out of moonbeams."

Lavish and luxurious in dress, the Havanese lady does not long retain

the fresh and delicate tissues that drape her slender person, but

transfers them, often scarcely worn, to her black waiting-maids, who

turn out upon the Sunday, like so many African princesses, in all

the glory of satin shoes, lace mantilla, and muslin robes. At the

Havana, as at New Orleans, and even to a still greater extent, the lot

of the domestic slaves might be envied, as far as material comforts

go, by most of the lower classes of free Europeans. They form part

of the family in which they are brought up, enjoy great kindness and

indulgence, and frequently grow rich by hoarding the presents they

receive.

"Many economical negroes," says M. Marmier, "especially those

of the tribe of Caravalis, amass in service a sum which they

well know how to employ. The law of Cuba obliges the proprietor

to liberate his slave when he repays the sum he cost, either

at once or by instalments. There is a lottery at the Havana,

similar to those of Germany, which has already contributed

to the enfranchisement of many negroes. There are tickets at

twenty francs and at five francs, and prizes of forty thousand,

eighty thousand, and a hundred and fifty thousand francs. Once

there was a prize of five hundred thousand francs, which was

won by a negro, unluckily for him; for when he saw the mass

of gold spread upon the table, the excitement killed him.

Once free, the negro opens a workshop or warehouse, and buys

other slaves. Unhappy those who call him master. They are

worse treated by the man of their own colour than by the most

merciless of the whites."

However fortunate the lot of the domestic slaves in Cuba, neither of

the books before us gives a very pleasing picture of the life of those

on the plantations. Of course much depends on the character of their

owner, and whether he resides on his estate or leaves it entirely

to an overseer. Mr Taylor, who saw much more of plantation life than

M. Marmier, and indeed may be considered excellent authority on that

subject, gives quite a pastoral sketch of negro life on one particular

estate, partly owned and wholly managed by a kind-hearted friend

of his, from whom the slaves had no undue severity to fear; but he

significantly hints that cases of this sort are the exception rather

than the rule, and, indeed, in more than one place, his italics and

suppressions give us gloomy glimpses of the condition of the blacks

in Cuba. M. Marmier describes the corporal chastisements inflicted as

frequent and cruel, and occasionally leading to suicide and flight. But

neither the virgin forests of Cuba, extensive and intricate though they

be, nor the lofty and rarely-ascended mountains, secure the fugitive

slave from pursuit and capture. As soon as he is missed, the terrible

bloodhound is on his trail. Whilst residing on the sugar estate of

Santa L., Mr Taylor, sitting one evening in the verandah, happened to

fix his eyes on a distant clump of palms, which he had often before

admired. Suddenly the tallest of them disappeared.

"Struck by such a strange circumstance, I called to the

overseer, who was quietly walking his horse up the avenue,

and told him. Quick as lightning, without giving an answer,

he struck his spurs into his horse's flank, and quicker than

I can write, he was on the spot. A noble palm of eighty feet

lay prostrate, cut through with an axe, and already minus its

glory, (its crown,) cut off for the cabbage. In vain, however,

did he look for the culprit, and shout. But in less than two

minutes, behold him back! 'White or black, I have him now!'

shouted he, as he and the dog scampered off again. One sniff

at the tree was enough for the bloodhound, and in five minutes

more the negro, for it was one belonging to the estate, was in

custody--uninjured by the dog, for his master was close on his

track. He was punished, but, I believe, not very severely."

Madame de Merlin, from whose graceful pages we have already quoted,

speaks at some length of these celebrated slave-hunting dogs, whose

strength and sagacity are as remarkable as their intense instinctive

aversion to runaway negroes. These seldom dare resist them, but when

they do, the contest is never long nor the victory doubtful. The dog

seizes the man by the ear and pulls him to the ground; having thus

daunted him, he suffers him to rise, and takes him home without further

injury.

"Yesterday," says Madame de Merlin, "three malefactors who had

devastated the environs of Marianao, at a short distance from

the Havana, and who had escaped from the pursuit of justice,

were brought in by two dogs. On arriving near the town, one of

the dogs, his jaws all bloody, his eyes glittering, remained on

guard over the prisoners; whilst his comrade, running to the

entrance of the town, howled, shook people by their clothes,

and indicated, by the most ingenious signs, the spot where the

captives were waiting. At last he made himself understood, and

guided the police to the place where the other dog, stanch to

his post, was guarding the malefactors, who lay half-dead upon

the grass. One of the unfortunate wretches had a broken jaw,

and all three had been grievously wounded in the conflict."

The greater part of the labour on the sugar-plantations is necessarily

of the very severest description, and the hardship is trebled by the

burning heat of the climate; the negroes are punished by the whip,

twenty-five lashes being the number permitted by law, and which Mr

Taylor believes to be seldom exceeded, although there is no security

against it not being so, since he admits that the owner or manager,

offending in this particular, can evade the fine by a bribe to the

Government official. If a slave, weary of stripes and toll, takes to

the woods, the bloodhounds are on his track; and if he escapes for a

while the keen scent and unwearying pursuit of these sagacious and

formidable brutes, it is only at the cost of a life of constant terror

and privation amidst the jungles of _canas bravas_[7], or in the depths

of gloomy caverns, strewed with the bones of the aborigines of the

island. There exist, however, according to Mr Taylor, colonies of

fugitive negroes, dwelling in comparative security on mountain summits

of difficult approach.

[7] A species of gigantic reed or cane, which attains an elevation of

fifty feet, in clumps of two or three hundred stems.

"At the very eastern end of Cuba, within the triangle between

the cities of St Jago and Baracoa and Point Mäysi, is a wild

and rugged tract of country, and in the centre of all, an

immense mountain, called the Sierra del Cristal, which I have

often seen from the sea. Hither no adventurous topographer has

yet directed his steps; but, were the proper admeasurements

made, I am almost certain the Cristal would be found the

highest eminence in Cuba. On this mountain range, every one

unites in declaring that the runaway negroes have established a

large settlement."

Such collections of wild Indians or negroes are called Palenques, and

the men composing it are known as Apalencados. When more than seven are

congregated, it is a Palenque. The pursuit and suppression of these is

under the superintendence of an official, appointed for the purpose,

and of a tribunal called a consulate.

"If the expedition be considered one of extreme danger, special

rates of reward are offered. In that case, _extirpation_ is

probably determined on; but such cases have rarely happened....

The great Palenque of the Cristal remains as much a mystery

as ever; and some even doubt if the Spanish Government does

not leave it purposely as a kind of safety valve for the

discontented, for no expedition of importance enough to reduce

it has ever been undertaken, although small parties are

annually formed in Baracoa, who hover about it and capture a

great many negroes. Common report says that the settlement is

high up on an elevated plateau, only approachable by one pass,

which is fortified by overhanging rocks, kept ready to hurl on

the invaders, and strictly guarded by wary sentinels; and, that

on this plateau, whose inhabitants are said to amount to many

hundreds, grain, tobacco, &c. are grown sufficient for their

wants. It is further hinted that some whites have more dealings

with the Apalencados than they would wish generally known, and

supply them with clothes and necessaries unattainable in the

Palenque."

Spaniards are generally admitted to be much kinder slave-masters than

most Americans. Were we to give implicit credence to the Countess

Merlin, which her enthusiasm for her own countrymen and womanly

partisanship prevent our doing, we must believe Havana the very

paradise of slaves. "The humanity of the generality of the laws and

regulations of the Spaniards in the particular of slavery," says Mr

Taylor, "contrast favourably with that of _some_ of the States of

the American Union." M. Marmier considers the houses of the Havanese

to be "the El Dorado of slaves, the plantations their purgatory."

But all three authorities agree in preferring the condition of the

slaves to that of the _emancipados_--slaves captured by our cruisers

and liberated in the Havana, or confiscated by the Cuban authorities

in some rare moment of zeal and good faith. These are hired out to

taskmasters with a view of their being taught some trade, which they

very seldom manage to learn; and, meanwhile, they drag on in bondage

from year to year, often worse treated than slaves, because, as Mr

Taylor says, the _emancipado_ belongs to nobody, whilst the slave has

an owner who is interested, to a certain extent, in not destroying

his _animal_. It is the free black, in short, in these cases, who

gets least victuals, hardest work, and most whip. Mr Taylor is rather

good upon this head, and quotes with considerable effect the report

of the Sugar and Coffee Planting Committee, printed by order of the

House of Commons, and of which he received a copy in Ceylon, just as

he was writing his book. The document, he says, singularly confirmed

the impressions he had received five to eight years previously,

during his residence in Cuba, as to the shameful manner in which the

treaties respecting slavery are evaded in that colony. It shows how

the _emancipados_ are virtually sold (hired out for terms of years)

in an underhand manner, for the profit of the Spanish Government and

officials; how his Excellency the captain-general supplied the Gas

Company, of which the chaste and tender-hearted Christina is the

chief shareholder, with dark-complexioned lamp-lighters at five gold

ounces a-head; how Mrs O'Donnell, (now Countess of Lucena) lady of the

captain-general of that name, procured herself a snug little income by

the labour of four hundred _emancipados_, transferred to the paternal

care of the Marquis de las Delicias, chief judge, of the mixed court(!)

_and one of the greatest slave-holders in Cuba_--all these statements

being given upon the undeniable authority of a letter from the British

consul-general Crawford, read by the chairman of the Committee above

referred to. And there would be no difficulty in producing equally

reliable authority for a host of similar iniquities, incredible to

persons unacquainted with the atrocious immorality of Spanish colonial

administration, with the insatiable greed of certain high personages in

Spain, and with the immense fortunes amassed by Cuban captains-general.

"It is said," says Consul-general Crawford, as quoted by Mr Taylor,

"that upwards of five thousand of those unfortunate wretches (the

_emancipados_) have been resold at rates of from five to nine ounces,

by which upwards of six hundred thousand dollars have been made in

the government-house, one-sixth of which was divided amongst the

underlings, from the colonial secretary downwards." "I heard the other

day," says Mr Taylor, "of a grand new _ingenio_ having been set up by

Queen Christina, with every latest improvement; behold the secret!" He

makes bold to believe that not a few of the five thousand "unfortunate

wretches," spoken of by Mr Crawford, might be found doing duty in the

queen-mother's plantation and sugar-mill. A very probable hypothesis.

There can be no doubt, however, that the means by which the estate is

worked, and the gas-lamps lighted, would bear investigation quite as

well as the mode of acquisition of the funds invested in them by the

enormously wealthy widow of the Well-beloved Ferdinand.

Those recent visitors to Cuba who have written of what they there saw,

have in few instances done more than glance at the subject. They have

either treated it superficially, like M. Marmier, who, in his love of

locomotion and eagerness to get afloat again, dismisses the Pearl of

the Antilles in three or four hasty chapters; or, like Mr Taylor, their

opportunities of investigation have been limited to a small portion of

the island. Mr Madden's little volume is of a special and statistical

class; and, as far as it goes, we think well of it, notwithstanding

the attack made upon it by Mr Taylor, who is shocked at the faulty

spelling of Spanish words and names, and who laughs at Mr Madden for

deprecating the annexation of Cuba to the States, which he (Mr Taylor)

inclines to advocate. Madame de Merlin's work is much more copious and

comprehensive than any of the three above named; but if her sketches

of Havanese society and manners are pleasing and characteristic,

her descriptions of scenery vivid, and her retrospective historical

chapters careful and scholarly, on the other hand she is frequently

biassed, when touching on matters of greater practical importance, by

the joint prejudices of a Frenchwoman and of a Spanish Creole; whilst

her sex necessarily precluded her from acquaintance with various phases

of Spanish colonial life, and from exploring those wilder districts,

an account of which is essential to the completeness of a work on Cuba

professing thoroughly to describe the island and its motley population.

For such a work there is abundant room; and of such a one, in this

century of intelligent and enterprising travellers, we confidently hope

before long to welcome the appearance.

ONWARD TENDENCIES.

TO AUGUSTUS REGINALD DUNSHUNNER, ESQ. OF ST MIRRENS.

MY DEAR DUNSHUNNER,--Is it too great a liberty to inquire into the

nature of your present avocations, or to ask if you are occupied with

any magnificent scheme to take the public mind by storm? You have

of late maintained so mysterious and obstinate a silence, that your

friends are becoming anxious regarding you. Like Achilles, son of

Peleus, you seem to be sulking in your tent, whilst all the rest of

the Greeks are abroad in the clear sunlight, making head against the

Trojan army, and skirmishing in the front of their ships. We miss you,

and the public miss you. Your red right arm was wont to be seen far

in front of the battle fray, and, at the moment when the political

strife is hottest, we cannot afford to lose the countenance of our

bravest champion. I hope there is no Briseïs in the case? If so, tell

us which of the Free-Traders has wronged you, and the damsel shall be

immediately restored, with a corresponding recompense of plunder.