ved among us, would banish the heroes
from the fellowship of honest men for ever; and all this is
uttered with a simplicity which sometimes led me to doubt if the
speakers knew what honour and honesty meant. Yet the Americans
declare that "they are the most moral people upon earth." Again
and again I have heard this asserted, not only in conversation,
and by their writings, but even from the pulpit. Such broad
assumption of superior virtue demands examination, and after four
years of attentive and earnest observation and enquiry, my honest
conviction is, that the standard of moral character in the United
States is very greatly lower than in Europe. Of their religion,
as it appears outwardly, I have had occasion to speak frequently;
I pretend not to judge the heart, but, without any uncharitable
presumption, I must take permission to say, that both Protestant
England and Catholic France show an infinitely superior religious
and moral aspect to mortal observation, both as to reverend
decency of external observance, and as to the inward fruit of
honest dealing between man and man.

In other respects I think no one will be disappointed who visits
the country, expecting to find no more than common sense might
teach him to look for, namely, a vast continent, by far the
greater part of which is still in the state in which nature left
it, and a busy, bustling, industrious population, hacking and
hewing their way through it. What greatly increases the interest
of this spectacle, is the wonderful facility for internal
commerce, furnished by the rivers, lakes, and canals, which
thread the country in every direction, producing a rapidity of
progress in all commercial and agricultural speculation
altogether unequalled. This remarkable feature is perceptible in
every part of the union into which the fast spreading population
has hitherto found its way, and forms, I think, the most
remarkable and interesting peculiarity of the country. I hardly
remember a single town where vessels of some description or other
may not constantly be seen in full activity.

Their carriages of every kind are very unlike ours; those
belonging to private individuals seem all constructed with a view
to summer use, for which they are extremely well calculated, but
they are by no means comfortable in winter. The waggons and cars
are built with great strength, which is indeed necessary, from
the roads they often have to encounter. The stagecoaches