been completed, and the vast results were beginning to attract
attention in Europe. At first, it was thought, as a matter of course,
that engineers from the old world had been employed. This was disproved,
and it was shown that they who laid out the work, however skilful they
may have since become by practice, were at first little more than common
American surveyors. Then the trifling cost was a stumbling-block, for
labour was known to be far better paid in America than in Europe; and
lastly, the results created astonishment. Several deputies affirmed that
the cause of the great success was owing to the fact, that in America we
trusted such things to private competition, whereas, in France, the
government meddled with everything. But it was the state governments,
(which indeed alone possess the necessary means and authority,) that had
caused most of the American canals to be constructed. These political
economists knew too little of other systems to apply a clever saying of
their own--_Il y a de la Rochefoucald, et de la Rouchefoucald_. All
governments do not wither what they touch.

Some Americans have introduced steam-boats on the rivers of France, and
on the lakes of Switzerland and Italy. We embarked in one, after passing
two delectable nights at the Hotel d'Angleterre. The boat was a
frail-looking thing, and so loaded with passengers, that it appeared
actually to stagger under its freight. The Seine has a wide mouth, and a
long ground-swell was setting in from the Channel. Our Parisian
cockneys, of whom there were several on board, stood aghast. "Nous voici
en pleine mer!" one muttered to the other, and the annals of that
eventful voyage are still related, I make no question, to admiring
auditors in the interior of France. The French make excellent seamen
when properly trained; but I think, on the whole, they are more
thoroughly landsmen than any people of my acquaintance, who possess a
coast. There has been too much sympathy with the army to permit the
mariners to receive a proper share of the public favour.

The boat shaped her course diagonally across the broad current, directly
for Honfleur. Here we first began to get an idea of the true points of
difference between our own scenery and that of the continent of Europe,
and chiefly of that of France. The general characteristics of England
are not essentially different from those of America, after allowing for
a much higher finish in the former, substituting hedge