on of the
different characters of the States. Everywhere Massachusetts was
honored; everywhere I met the horror of the honest Englishman at the
slave system; but anything like a discriminating knowledge of our public
men I could not meet. Webster had been heard of everywhere. They assured
me that our _really great_ men were known, our really great deeds
appreciated; but this is not true. They make mistakes in their measure
of our men; second-rate men who have travelled are of course known to
the men whom they have met; these travellers have not perhaps thought it
necessary to mention that they represent a secondary class of people,
and they are considered our 'first men.' The English forget that all
Americans travel.

"I was vexed when I saw some of our most miserable novels, bound in
showy yellow and red, exposed for sale. A friend told me that they had
copied from the cheap publications of America. It may be so, but they
have outdone us in the cheapness of the material and the showy covers. I
never saw yellow and red together on any American book.

"The English are far beyond us in their highest scholarship, but why
should they be ignorant of our scholars? The Englishman is proud, and
not without reason; but he may well be proud of the American offshoot.
It is not strange that England produces fine scholars, when we consider
that her colleges confer fellowships on the best undergraduates.

"England differs from America in the fact that it has a past. Well may
the great men of the present be proud of those who have gone before
them; it is scarcely to be hoped that the like can come after them; and
yet I suppose we must admit that even now the strong minds are born
across the water.

"At the same time England has a class to which we have happily no
parallel in our country--a class to which even English gentlemen liken
the Sepoys, and who would, they admit, under like circumstances be
guilty of like enormities. But the true Englishman shuts his eyes for a
great part of the time to the steps in the social scale down which his
race descends, and looks only at the upper walks. He has therefore a
glance of patronizing kindness for the people of the United States, and
regards us of New England as we regard our rich brethren of the West.

"I wondered what was to become of the English people! Their island is
already crowded with people, the large towns are numerous and are very
large. Suppose for an instant that her commer