A celebrated lady (since dead) in speaking of this stupendous work,
said that she first saw it from the Isle of Anglesea, so that it was
relieved against the lofty mountains of North Wales; and she added in
a strain {583} of eloquent and poetical comparison familiar to her,
that Snowdon seemed to her a fit back ground for the Menai Bridge.
All this may be very true, but then only think of the _eloquent and
poetical comparison_ of Snowdon being a back ground for the Menai
Bridge!
Mrs. Hemans and our author go to church together.
She spoke (says he) of the various accompaniments of the service, and
when she came to the banners she said ‘they seemed to wave as the
music of the anthem rose to the lofty arches!’ I ventured here to
throw in a little dash of prose—saying that _I was afraid that they
did not wave, that I wished they might, and looked up to see if they
did, but could not see it._
Mr. Dewey does not like oatmeal cake.
In good truth I should never desire to have any thing to do with it
save as a specimen; for of all the stuff that ever I tasted, it was
the most inedible, impracticable, insufferable, dry, hard, coarse,
rasping, gritty, chaffy: I _could_ not eat it, and it seemed to me
that if I could, it would be no more nourishing than gravel kneaded
into mud, and baked in a lime-kiln. As to drink—whiskey! whiskey! the
boatman said was the only thing, and the thing indispensable. I tasted
of it—_and truly it had not the usual odious taste of our American
whiskey!_
We quote these passages merely as specimens of the singular
simplicity—more properly _naiveté_—which is the prevailing feature of
the book.
Mr. Dewey left New York for England on the 8th June 1833, and arrived
in St. George's channel _on the 24th of the same month_, having a fair
wind and smooth sea during the entire passage. Leaving England, he
visited Wales, Ireland, Scotland, France, Belgium, Prussia,
Switzerland, and Italy. Returning by way of Liverpool, he reached home
on the 22d of May, 1834.