| | | | | This warning, given in this | foot-note on the first page of the present volume, would | not have been needed had the authoress used the word | "Scotchwoman" ~~ a title which we have no hesitation in | saying would have been more correct, judging from | internal evidence alone. The "Englishwoman" finds out, | fraternizes, and talks Gaelic with a Highlander whenever | she meets one on her travels, as quickly and surely as one | Freemason recognises another. In common also with the | generality of her nation, she is not at all averse to | administering a back-handed blow to an Englishman; | while she never loses an opportunity of saying a good | word for her own countrymen, no matter whether they are | | Canny Scots, according to her, are | and | are | For Highlanders, indeed, she shows | an exaggerated partiality, and she is careful to immortalize | | she saw on one of the steam boats. But | although we are pretty sure as to the writer's country, we | must confess that we felt a little doubt as to her sex when | we found that, until she relieved a sea-sick black mother | of her squalling infant, on board a steamer, | and our doubts were considerably augmented | afterwards by her mentioning that a ragged drosky driver | came up to her at the Falls of Niagara, and addressed her | as | | Leaving this question to be solved according to the | reader's liking, we proceed to discuss the book. By way of | deprecating | | criticism, the authoress informs us in her prefatory | remarks, that she had been requested by | Moreover, in the remarks with which she | prefaces her accounts of American institutions, she | reminds her readers that hers are | This, then, is another | of that numerous class of books which do not profess to | have interest or value except for the friends of the writer; | and if the circulation of them could be confined to these | readers alone, we should not have a word of objection to | urge against the transmutation of such MSS. into print. | But it is too bad that the public should be treated to 460 | pages of what formerly constituted the substance of | gossiping letters to friends at home, or meagre notes of | travel. To make such a book as this fit for a larger | audience the materials ought to be well boiled down, all | the fine and slipshod writing carefully skimmed off, and | the refuse held in solution allowed to sink to the bottom, | the result of which process would be to give us some | hundred pages or so of readable, instructive, and | entertaining matter. In bygone times, when the visits of | travellers to the United States were few and far between, | we were thankful for any crumbs of information which | they thought proper to bestow upon our poverty; but now | that a voyage to America is an everyday affair, we have a | right to expect something more clearly defined in the way | of description than the glances of the country which the | hurrying traveller gains from the deck of a steamer or | through the windows of a railway carriage ~~ something | better in pictures of manners and character than sketches | made on the high road. Truly it has been said that a | reliable work on the United States has yet to be written; | and the publication of such books as these renders the | probability of a trustworthy one making its appearance | more distant than ever. When it is written, we have little | doubt that it will be the production of an American; for as | it is difficult for parents to understand their children when | they begin to act for themselves, so it is equally difficult | for England to understand her American progeny ~~ a | progeny which started into existence full grown, in all the | ardour, and superfluous energy of youth, without a past to | influence their present, and to moderate the anticipations | of their future. | In vain have we looked through these pages for original | matter, or for fresh light thrown on half familiar objects. | All the information given us respecting places which the | "Englishwoman" visits is simply such as she gleans during | her few hours' or days' sojourn, whilst the specimens | which her volume contains of American manners and | conversation are taken from what she has heard and | observed amongst the chance and not very select company | she met with on her travels. We give the following extract | as a sample. The scene takes place on board a steamer on | Lake Champlain: ~~ | | The "Englishwoman" owns to feeling | yet she asserts that all the | Germans at Cincinnati are, | The Irish are | | professors of | After this, she | speaks with no small admiration of the manner in which | Sunday is observed in the strictly American parts of | Cincinnati ~~ the church which she attended being the | | There is | "complimentary mourning" ~~ why not complimentary | religion also? | We imagine that by this time | there is scarcely anyone in | England who is not tolerably familiar, through prints or | descriptions, with American lake and river steamers, | railroad cars, and hotels; yet the "Englishwoman" enters | into as minute details on all these subjects as though she | had been the first to draw attention to them. Amongst the | things which render the style of the book particularly | unsatisfactory, is the manner in which the authoress jumps | from one subject to another. Thus, within the compass of a | page, we have a description of a colonial dinner, an | account of Ricton and its coal mines, and a story of a | catastrophe that once happened to a certain steamer. Then | the titles of her chapters, in which she often makes | desperate efforts to be smart and witty, give little idea of | the contents. Who, for instance, would imagine that the | heading

"politics ~~ chemistry ~~ mathematics"

refers | to the nonsense talked on these subjects by "a queer | character" ~~ one of her stage-coach fellow travellers? | Perhaps the best chapter in the book is the one on Canada | and its resources, which, although containing nothing | absolutely new, reminds the intending emigrant of many | things which it will be useful for him to remember. Her | descriptions of Prince Edward Island are not without | interest; and her pictures of Cincinnati, Chicago, and | Quebec are lively enough. Her account of the Falls of | Niagara contains a strange mixture of matter-of-fact | sentiment, and vulgarity. The prairies she dismisses in a | few sentences; about slavery she utters the usual | commonplaces; and she echoes the hacknied complaints as | to the want of energy amongst the Nova Scotians. nearly | two of her chapters are devoted to New York. She dilates | con amore on its wonders ~~ its | stores, with their roofs supported on marble pillars, their | various rooms filled with the costliest productions of the | world, and their managers doing a business of 1,5000,000 | pounds per annum ~~ its hotels, | with accommodation for 1000 | visitors, for whom are provided rooms furnished with | brocade a 9 pounds per yard ~~ its | public charities, and its 5980 | taverns. Her amazement is also not a little raised by the | oyster-loving propensities of its inhabitants ~~ their | passion for this luxury being so great that the consumption | during the season is estimated at 3500 | pounds per day. She also | visits, among other places, the American Museum, and in | connexion with it mentions that 60,000 copies of | Barnum's Autobiography were sold at | New York in one day ~~ Barnum thus once rivalling the | Times in circulation, and so | embodying a great fact to the world. | Although the "Authoress" shows a very proper degree of | reticence in speaking of the society in which she mixed by | virtue of her letters of introduction ~~ and, we cannot help | fancying, through the collection of autographs which, like | a pedlar's pack, she carried with her everywhere ~~ she | gives us a peep into some private houses, which, she says, | so far as decorations and the display of wealth are | concerned, go far to throw Windsor Castle and Stafford | House into the shade. Some of them have their six or | seven reception rooms, furnished in various styles ~~ the | Mediaeval, the Elizabethan, the Italian, the Persian, and | the modern English; and the society, she gives us to | understand, is in keeping with these externals, from which | we suppose we are to infer that it dresses and talks in the | mediaeval, Italian, and Persian styles. With regard to | American society, of which the authoress writes at some | length, it strikes us that we shall not be able to form a | good idea of it until it is represented by an American | himself, in that epic of modern life, the novel. As for the | pictures of it which we owe to Mrs. Wetherall and Mrs. | Stow, it would be an injustice to the Americans to suppose | that they faithfully depict the best society in the Northern | and Southern states, New York, and New Orleans. For the | American character, taken as a whole, the authoress has | nothing better to say than that | The want of a | general and high standard of morality is, we are told, very | apparent; dishonesty is jested about under the name of |

"smartness,"

and commended | under that of

"cuteness."

| The concluding chapters are devoted to an account of | American institutions, compiled from works by | Americans. There is little or nothing that will be new to | most persons in what the authoress says of political | parties; and she seems herself to be unaware that the | Know-nothings are not, as she appears to imagine, of | recent origin, but that the party is the resuscitation of one | formed, some years since, under the name of Native | Americans. | In conclusion, we would advise the "Englishwoman" (who | certainly possesses some powers of observation), the next | time she sets out on her travels to be content with seeing | fewer places, that she may gain a more perfect knowledge | of those in which she sojourns, and so prepare herself to | give both her friends and the public something beyond the | crude, superficial, and hasty view of which her present | volume mainly consists.