Cincinnati, and at a very easy rate; but, alas!
these go but a little way in the history of a day's enjoyment.
The total and universal want of manners, both in males and
females, is so remarkable, that I was constantly endeavouring to
account for it. It certainly does not proceed from want of
intellect. I have listened to much dull and heavy conversation
in America, but rarely to any that I could strictly call silly,
(if I except the every where privileged class of very young
ladies). They appear to me to have clear heads and active
intellects; are more ignorant on subjects that are only of
conventional value, than on such as are of intrinsic importance;
but there is no charm, no grace in their conversation. I very
seldom during my whole stay in the country heard a sentence
elegantly turned, and correctly pronounced from the lips of an
American. There is always something either in the expression or
the accent that jars the feelings and shocks the taste.

I will not pretend to decide whether man is better or worse off
for requiring refinement in the manners and customs of the
society that surrounds him, and for being incapable of enjoyment
without them; but in America that polish which removes the
coarser and rougher parts of our nature is unknown and undreamed
of. There is much substantial comfort, and some display in the
larger cities; in many of the more obvious features they are as
Paris or as London, being all large assemblies of active and
intelligent human beings--but yet they are wonderfully unlike in
nearly all their moral features. Now God forbid that any
reasonable American, (of whom there are so many millions), should
ever come to ask me what I mean; I should find it very difficult,
nay, perhaps, utterly impossible, to explain myself; but, on the
other hand, no European who has visited the Union, will find the
least difficulty in understanding me. I am in no way competent
to judge of the political institutions of America; and if I
should occasionally make an observation on their effects, as they
meet my superficial glance, they will be made in the spirit, and
with the feeling of a woman, who is apt to tell what her first
impressions may be, but unapt to reason back from effects to
their causes. Such observations, if they be unworthy of much
attention, are also obnoxious to little reproof: but there are
points of national peculiarity of which women may judge as ably
as men,--all that constitutes th