of the parallels of latitude on globes and maps; and we wondered why
people who had once gratified a natural curiosity to see this land
should ever travel over it again, unless with the hope of making money
by their labor. Health, certainly, no one can expect to get from the
tough upper-leathers and sodden soles of the pies offered at the
ten-minutes-for-refreshment stations, nor from their saturated
spongecakes. As to pleasure, I said to Thompson,--"the pleasure of
travelling consists in the new agreeable sensations it affords. Above
all, they must be new. You wish to move out of your set of thoughts and
feelings, or else why move at all? But all the civilized world over,
locomotives, like huge flat-irons, are smoothing customs, costumes,
thoughts, and feelings into one plane, homogeneous surface. And in this
country not only does Nature appear to do everything by wholesale, but
there is as little variety in human beings. We have discovered the
political alkahest or universal solvent of the alchemists, and with it
we reduce at once the national characteristics of foreigners into our
well-known American compound. Hence, on all the great lines of travel,
Monotony has marked us for her own. Coming from the West, you are
whirled through twelve hundred miles of towns, so alike in their outward
features that they seem to have been started in New England nurseries
and sent to be planted wherever they might be wanted;--square brick
buildings, covered with signs, and a stoutish sentry-box on each flat
roof; telegraph offices; express companies; a crowd of people dressed
alike, 'earnest,' and bustling as ants, with seemingly but one idea,--to
furnish materials for the statistical tables of the next census. Then,
beyond, you catch glimpses of many smaller and neater buildings, with
grass and trees and white fences about them. Some are Gothic, some
Italian, some native American. But the glory of one Gothic is like the
glory of another Gothic, the Italian are all built upon the same
pattern, and the native American differ only in size. There are three
marked currents of architectural taste, but no individual character in
particular buildings. Everywhere you see comfort and abundance; your
mind is easy on the great subject of imports, exports, products of the
soil, and manufactures;--a pleasant and strengthening prospect for a
political economist, or for shareholders in railways or owners of lands
in the vicinity. This 'unparalleled