themselves, their manners, or their institutions.

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_Note_--That a guest, partaking of their hospitality, should give his
opinions unasked, and find fault, would be in very bad taste, to say the
least of it. But the fault in America is, that you are compelled to
give an opinion, and you cannot escape by a doubtful reply: as the
American said to me in Philadelphia, "I wish a _categorical_ answer."
Thus, should you not agree with them, you are placed upon the horns of a
dilemma: either you must affront the company, or sacrifice truth.

END OF DIARY.

VOLUME THREE, CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN.

REMARKS--LANGUAGE.

The Americans boldly assert that they speak better English than we do,
and I was rather surprised not to find a statistical table to that
effect in Mr Carey's publication. What I believe the Americans would
imply by the above assertion is that you may travel through all the
United States and find less difficulty in understanding or being
understood, than in some of the counties of England, such as Cornwall,
Devonshire, Lancashire and Suffolk. So far they are correct; but it is
remarkable how very debased the language has become in a short period in
America. There are few provincial dialects in England much less
intelligible than the following. A Yankee girl, who wished to hire
herself out, was asked if the had any followers or sweethearts? After a
little hesitation, she replied, "Well, now, can't exactly say; I bees a
sorter courted and a sorter not; reckon more a sorter yes than a sorter
no." In many points the Americans have to a certain degree obtained
that equality which they profess; and, as respects their language, it
certainly is the case. If their lower classes are more intelligible
than ours, it is equally true that the higher classes do not speak the
language so purely or so classically as it is spoken among the well
educated English. The peculiar dialect of the English counties is kept
up because we are a settled country; the people who are born in a county
live in it, and die in it, transmitting their sites of labour or of
amusement to their descendants, generation after generation, without
change: consequently, the provincialisms of the language become equally
hereditary. Now, in America, they have a dictionary containing many
thousands of words, which, with us, are either obsolete or are
provincialisms, or are word