e it. I would
willingly know myself, and confess to others, why it is that
neither its beauty nor its abundance can suffice to neutralize,
or greatly soften, the distaste which the aggregate of my
recollections has left upon my mind.

I remember hearing it said, many years ago, when the advantages
and disadvantages of a particular residence were being discussed,
that it was the "who?" and not the "where?" that made the
difference between the pleasant or unpleasant residence. The
truth of the observation struck me forcibly when I heard it; and
it has been recalled to my mind since, by the constantly
recurring evidence of its justness. In applying this to America,
I speak not of my friends, nor of my friends' friends. The small
patrician band is a race apart; they live with each other, and
for each other; mix wondrously little with the high matters of
state, which they seem to leave rather supinely to their tailors
and tinkers, and are no more to be taken as a sample of the
American people, than the head of Lord Byron as a sample of the
heads of the British peerage. I speak not of these, but of the
population generally, as seen in town and country, among the rich
and the poor, in the slave states, and the free states. I do not
like them. I do not like their principles, I do not like their
manners, I do not like their opinions.

Both as a woman, and as a stranger, it might be unseemly for me
to say that I do not like their government, and therefore I will
not say so. That it is one which pleases themselves is most
certain, and this is considerably more important than pleasing
all the travelling old ladies in the world. I entered the
country at New Orleans, remained for more than two years west of
the Alleghanies, and passed another year among the Atlantic
cities, and the country around them. I conversed during this
time with citizens of all orders and degrees, and I never heard
from any one a single disparaging word against their government.
It is not, therefore, surprising, that when the people of that
country hear strangers questioning the wisdom of their
institutions, and expressing disapprobation at some of their
effects, they should set it down either to an incapacity
of judging, or a malicious feeling of envy and ill-will.

"How can any one in their senses doubt the excellence of a a
government which we have tried for half a century, and loved the
better the longer we have known it." Such is the natu