or is
restrained, according to the traveller's own apparent humour. Such
characteristics of the general discourse may be noted as a
corroboration of suppositions drawn from other facts. They may be taken
as evidence of the respective societies being catholic or puritanic in
spirit; crude or accomplished; free and simple, or restrained and
cautious; self-satisfied, or deficient in self-respect. The observer
must be very careful not to generalize too hastily upon the discourse
addressed to him; but there are everywhere large conclusions which he
cannot help making. However wide the variety of individuals with whom he
may converse, it is scarcely likely that he will meet in Spain with any
number who will prose like the Americans; or in Germany with many who
will treat him with the light jests of the French. Such general
tendencies of any society as he may have been informed of by the study
of things, he will find evidenced also by the general character of its
discourse.

Another way in which discourse serves as a commentary, is by showing
what interests the people most. If the observer goes with a free mind
and an open heart, not full of notions and feelings of his own, but
ready to resign himself to those of the people he visits,--if he commits
himself to his sympathies, and makes himself one with those about him,
he cannot but presently discover and appreciate what interests them
most.

A high Tory in America will be more misled than enlightened by what is
said to him, and so will a bigoted Republican in England. A prim Quaker
will not understand the French from half a year of Parisian
conversation, any more than a mere dandy would feel at home at Jena or
Heidelberg. But a traveller free from gross prejudice and selfishness
can hardly be many days in a new society without learning what are its
chief interests. Even savages would speak to him of the figure-head of
their canoe; and others would go through, in time, each its own range of
topics, till the German had poured out to him his philosophical views,
and the Frenchman his solicitudes for the amelioration of society, and
the American his patriotic aspirations, and the Swiss his domestic
sentiment. Whatever may be the restrictions imposed by rulers upon
discourse, whatever may be the penalties imposed upon particular kinds
of communication, all are unavailing in the presence of sympathy. At its
touch the abundance of the heart will gush out at the lips. Men are so
m