There is much substantial comfort, and some display in the
larger cities; in many of the more obvious features they are as
Paris or as London, being all large assemblies of active and
intelligent human beings--but yet they are wonderfully unlike in
nearly all their moral features. Now God forbid that any
reasonable American, (of whom there are so many millions), should
ever come to ask me what I mean; I should find it very difficult,
nay, perhaps, utterly impossible, to explain myself; but, on the
other hand, no European who has visited the Union, will find the
least difficulty in understanding me. I am in no way competent
to judge of the political institutions of America; and if I
should occasionally make an observation on their effects, as they
meet my superficial glance, they will be made in the spirit, and
with the feeling of a woman, who is apt to tell what her first
impressions may be, but unapt to reason back from effects to
their causes. Such observations, if they be unworthy of much
attention, are also obnoxious to little reproof: but there are
points of national peculiarity of which women may judge as ably
as men,--all that constitutes the external of society may be
fairly trusted to us.
Captain Hall, when asked what appeared to him to constitute the
greatest difference between England and America, replied, like a
gallant sailor, "the want of loyalty." Were the same question put
to me, I should answer, "the want of refinement.
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