ed them to
exhibit their energy and enterprise in those countless miles of rail and
telegraph, which bring the citizens of the most distant States into easy
communication with Washington and the Eastern cities. The difficulty of
procuring labour is no doubt one cause of the very inefficient way in
which many of these works are performed; and it also disables them for
executing gigantic works with the speed and certainty that such
operations are completed in England. The miniature Crystal Palace at New
York afforded a convincing proof of what I have stated; for although it
was little more than a quarter of the size of the one in Hyde Park, they
were utterly foiled in their endeavours to prepare it in time. In
revenge for that failure, the Press tried to console the natives by
enlarging on the superior attraction of hippodromes, ice-saloons, and
penny shows, with which it was surrounded, and contrasting them with the
"gloomy grandeur" of the palace in London. Gloomy grandeur is, I
suppose, the Yankee way of expressing the finest park in any city in the
world.

Among other remarks on Americans, I have heard many of my countrymen
say, "Look how they run after lords!"--It is quite true; a live lord is
a comparative novelty, and they run after him in the same way as people
in England run after an Indian prince, or any pretentious Oriental: it
is an Anglo-Saxon mania. Not very long ago, a friend of mine found a
Syrian swaggering about town, _feted_ everywhere, as though he were the
greatest man of the day; and who should the Syrian nabob turn out to be,
but a man he had employed as a servant in the East, and whom he had been
obliged to get bastinadoed for petty theft. In England we run after we
know not whom; in America, if a lord be run after, there is at all
events a strong presumption in favour of his being at least a gentleman.
We toady our Indian swells, and they toady their English swells; and I
trust, for our sake, that in so doing they have a decided advantage over
us.

I have also heard some of my countrymen observe, as to their
hospitality, "Oh! it's very well; but if you went there as often as I
do, you would see how soon their hospitality wears off." Who on earth
ever heard such an unreasonable remark! Because a man, in the fulness of
hospitality, dedicates his time, his money, and his convenience to
welcome a stranger, of whose character and of whose sociability he knows
nothing whatever, is he therefore bound t