nclave of
Swiss insurgents, met in a pine wood on a steep, on the same kind of
errand: and both are as little like as may be to the heroes of the last
revolution in Paris, or to the companies of Covenanters that were wont
to meet, under a similar pressure of circumstances, in the defiles of
the Scottish mountains.--In the manners of all classes, from the highest
to the lowest, are forms of manners enforced in action, or dismissed in
words? Is there barbarous freedom in the lower, while there is formality
in the higher ranks, as in newly settled countries? or have all grown up
together to that period of refined civilization when ease has superseded
alike the freedom of the Australian peasantry, and the etiquette of the
court of Ava?--What are the manners of professional men of the society,
from the eminent lawyer or physician of the metropolis down to the
village barber? The manners of the great body of the professional men
must indicate much of the requisitions of the society they serve.--So,
also, must every circumstance connected with the service of society: its
character, whether slavish or free, abject or prosperous, comprehensive
or narrow in its uses, must testify to the desires and habits, and
therefore to the manners of a community, better than the conversation or
deportment of any individual in the society can do. A traveller who
bears all this in mind can hardly go wrong. Every thing that he looks
upon will instruct him, from an aqueduct to a punch-bowl, from a
penitentiary to an aviary, from the apparatus of a university to the
furniture of an alehouse or a nursery. When it was found that the chiefs
of the Red men could not be impressed with any notion of the
civilization of the Whites by all that many white men could say, they
were brought into the cities of the Whites. The exhibition of a ship was
enough for some. The warriors of the prairies were too proud to utter
their astonishment,--too noble to hint, even to one another, their fear;
but the perspiration stood on their brows as they dumbly gazed, and no
word of war passed their lips from that hour. Another, who could listen
with calmness to the tales of boastful traders in the wilderness, was
moved from his apathy by seeing a workman in a glasshouse put a handle
upon a pitcher. He was transported out of his silence and reserve: he
seized and grasped the hand of the workman, crying out that it was now
plain that he had had intercourse with the Great Spirit