to feel yourself the object of a scrutiny, often somewhat coarsely conducted, and generally too apparent to be mistaken. I do assert, however, that in no other country I have ever visited, are the charities of life so readily and so profusely opened to a stranger, as in the United States. In no other country will he receive attentions so perfectly disinterested and benevolent, and in none, when he seeks acquaintances, is it so probable, that he will find friends.

"It has been often said-indeed said so often as to have passed into a popular apothegm, that a strong prejudice against Englishmen exists in America. Loooking back on the whole course of my experience in that country, I now declare that no assertion more utterly adverse to truth, was ever palmed by prejudice or ignorance, or vulgar credulity. That a prejudice exists, I admit; but instead of being against Englishmen, as compared with the natives of other countries, it is in their favonr. The Americans do not weigh the merits of their foreign visitors in an equal balance. They are only too apt to throw their own partialities into the scale of the Englishman, and give it a preponderance to which the claims of the individual have probably no pretensions."

Good as all this undoubtedly is, and creditable no less to the temper than the talent of the writer; yet there seems to us a want of directness and distinctness in it, which is a little unsatisfactory. The desire to be liberal in sentiment seems to be struggling with the desire to tell the plain truth as to facts. It seems as if the writer felt he had been too severe in his narrative, then he makes up for it by a dash of praise, and then again, as if he felt this was un peu trop fort, he gives us another fact; and, at last, that he may be sure of being steady for the future, he lashes himself down with certain solemn and very general asseverations on the side of liberality, and gratitude, and good-will towards the people of the United States. After all, we are somewhat in doubt whether Jonathan behaves considerably worse than he ought, or quite as well as could be expected. This, we say, is our impression; but the extract is before our readers, and they may judge for themselves.

cause.

One of the first public places visited by our author in New York was the law courts. What he says of them is certainly not calculated to raise our estimation of American character. It is impossible that even Americans can doubt that there is a dignity and decency of manner, suitable and useful, in the administration of solemn duties; and their neglect of this in their legal tribunals can only be attributed to a coarse slovenliness, which is indulged in from other motives than a sense that it is right. Our traveller found two judges on the bench, and a jury in the box, in the act of trying a Judges and barristers were without robes or external insignia of any kind, to conform with the solemn business they had in hand. They were dressed in garments of such colour and fashion as the taste of the individual might dictate. The witnesses seemed to give their evidence with indifference; and, as might be expected in such a court, without any apparent impression of the seriousness of what they were about. The first witness examined held the Bible in one hand, while he kept the other in his breeches pocket, and in giving his evidence stood lounging with his arm thrown over the bench.

Captain Hamilton, though he mentions these matters in a way that leaves no doubt upon the minds of his readers, that he thought them wrong, tells us presently, that the only unpleasant part of the spectacle-for he does not suppose that justice "could be administered in any country with greater substantial purity," was the incessant salivation going forward in all parts of the court. It seems that spitting is a favourite amusement in America; and on this occasion Judges, counsel, jury, witnesses, officers, and audience, all contributed to augment the mass of abomination; and the floor around the table of the lawyers presented an appearance, on which, even now, the author finds it not very pleasant for the imagination to linger." It would be very odd if he did. He calls this administering justice with "substantial purity;" if he had said with slippery filth, it seems, according to his own description, that he would have been nearer the mark. From the first court he had gone into, he adjourned to the supreme court of the state, where he had the luck to see and hear a jury come into

court from the room where they had been deliberating, and deliver their verdict. Three-fourths of the jurymen were engaged in eating bread and cheese, and the foreman actually announced the verdict with his mouth full, ejecting the disjointed syllables during the intervals of mastication! This verdict, if it were ever so just, must have been mixed justice, and not "pure," for the justice and the cheese were spluttered out together. We never before felt so convinced of the propriety of our starvation-rule when juries have to deliberate; it maintains decorum, to say nothing of the sweet savour of the jury-room, the jury-box, and the court.

But the best of the joke is, that the Americans pretend to be very proud of their superiority over us in having the philosophy to dispense with our forms. A very clever lawyer, says our author, asked me "whether the sight of their courts had not cured me of my John Bullish predilection for robes, wigs, maces, and all the other trumpery and irrational devices for imposing on weak minds." How the American character shines out in this assumption of the motive for our judicial and professional costume! Captain Hamilton, it seems, very gravely argued the point with him, espousing the cause of wigs and gowns, and assures us that the argument was conducted by his opponent with the utmost liberality and fairness. Liberality and fiddlestick! What liberality is there in assuming that the grave habits preserved through respect for their antiquity, and their association with professional solemnity, are devices adopted to gull the weak-minded! Our author is undoubtedly too liberal in his attributions of liberality.

Our traveller cites another elegant and sensible question of the Americans, touching nearly the same point. It is a custom, he says, to ask, and generally with some triumph, whether an Englishman supposes there is wisdom in a wig, and whether a few pounds of horse-hair set on a judge's skull, and plastered with pomatum and powder, can be imagined to bring with it any increase of knowledge to the mind of the person whose cranium is thus disagreeably enveloped? We mention such questions as signs and tokens of the ill manners and childish conceit of

those who made them; but Captain Hamilton, in his book, argues the matter, and proves his case completely. No man was ever better entitled to put his Q. E. D. to the end of a demonstration than our author is to affix these conclusive letters to his vindication of the outward shows which add to the solemnity of our administration of justice.

It appears, however, that notwithstanding the profound wisdom of the legal worthies of New York, which actually enables them to pronounce that there is no intellectual capacity in a white wig or a black gown, the judges of the supreme court of the United States in the capitol at Washington, are so far behind these sages as to permit themselves to be robed upon the bench. They wear black Geneva gowns, and, it is added, without a "notwithstanding," that the proceedings of the tribunal over which they preside, are conducted with a degree of propriety, both judicial and forensic, which leaves nothing to be desired. "I certainly witnessed," says our author, "none of those violations of public decency, which in the state courts are matters of ordinary occurrence. There was no lounging either at the bar or on the bench, nor was it apparently considered necessary to sink the gentleman in the lawyer, and assume a deportment in the discharge of professional duty which would not be tolerated in private society."

We have found Captain Hamilton so agreeable a companion in our journey with him through his book, that we have lingered longer over his descriptions than we intended, and we find that we must either meet him in another article, or make this a much longer one than we are in the habit of inditing. We shall chuse the former alternative, and we should hope that what our readers find in this, will not indispose them to give their attention to another paper on the peculiarites of American life. There is however one passage more, which ere we close for the present, we would wish, for the honour of "ould Ireland," to dilate a little upon.

Captain Hamilton travelled from New York to Providence, by the steam-boat, in which it appears he found the company rather too American even for his liberality. Nor do wonder at it, for the

cabin was very hot, and very crowded, and after the meal called tea, the odour of fish, onions, and grease, mingling with "the discarded breath of about a hundred passengers," made atmosphere any thing but delectable. Neither was the company of the most agreeable description. Our author ordered his writing materials, and began to manufacture M.S. If, he says, I wrote in bad humour, there was really some excuse for it. "Close to my right were two loud polemics engaged in fierce dispute on the Tariff Bill. On my left, was an elderly gentleman, without shoes or slippers, whose cough and expectora tion were somewhat less melodious than the music of the spheres. In the berth immediately behind, lay a passenger, whose loud snoring proclaimed him as happy as a complete oblivion of all wordly cares could make him. Right opposite was a gentleman without breeches, who, before jumping into bed was detailing to a friend the particulars of a lucky hit he had just made, in a speculation in Train Oil. And beside me, at the table, sat a baptist clergyman reading sotto voce, a chapter of Ezekiel, and casting at the conclusion of each verse, a glance of furtive curiosity at my paper."

There is no part of Captain Hamilton's graphic book, half so graphic as his sketches of this steam-boat company. How well the cabin passengers are hit off, our readers have already seen. now for our countryman, the steward of the vessel.

"There was a fair breeze, and a smooth sea, and an Irish steward, who was particularly active in my behalf, and made my berth very comfortable, by the fraudulent abstraction of sundry pillows from those of my American neighbours. This he has done he told my servant so-because I am from the old country, and yet one would suppose," (you do not understand the heart of an Irish peasant, Captain Hamilton) "that in such a man the claim of mere national affinity could have little influence. I talked a good deal with him about his former circumstances, and soon collected that, that what is called living in Ireland, is usually entitled starving in other countries. Though rather chary of confession, I gathered too, that the world was not his friend, nor the world's laws, and that he came to the United States to avoid a gaol,

and without a shilling in his pocket. The day on which he left Ireland, should be marked in his annals with a white stone. He now enjoys a comfortable situation-confesses he can save money; eats and drinks well, is encased in warm clothing; is troubled very little with the tax-gatherer, and not at all with the Tithe-proctor. And what is there in the countenance of an Englishman that it should excite in such a man, the feeling of benevolence and kindred? In his memory, one would suppose, the past would be linked only with suffering, while the present is undoubtedly associated with the experience of a thousand comforts, to which in his days of vassalage and Whiteboyism, his imagination never ventured to soar. Yet, believe the man, and he regrets having left home! He thinks he could have done as well in Ireland. He has no fault to find with America-it is a good country enough for a poor man. Whiskey is cheaper here, and so is bread and mate, but then his ould mother, and his sisters-and Tim Regan, he would like to see them again, and please God, if ever he can afford it, he will return, and have his bones laid in the same Churchyard with theirs.”

Our country! oh! our country!with all thy faults we love thee still. Still must our hearts soften at the recollection, that notwithstanding the hardships and sorrows that have hung upon the lot of her sons at home, that home is not forgotten when far away across the foaming main, but is still

green in the soul," even of the prosperous exile. We would not give this touch of feeling for all the excellent philosophy in Captain Hamilton's excellent book. But he reasons coldly on what he describes so well. Why should he feel surprise that the voice of one from the "ould country" touched the heart of the poor Irishman, and made him think of his mother, and his sisters, and his friends at home; and while the tide of affection worked strong within him, made him look upon the advantages of greater worldly prosperity as nothing? The man's heart was back again with all he loved in that season of life when love is strong-the home of his youth, rose again before him.

Our author says, "If Pat ever gets back to Ireland, I venture to prophecy, that his stay will not be long there.

A pleasant jest there is, concerning what happened to a certain vain tailor in his youth who, coming to sojourn for a space in the household of our said Mayor, bred much perplexity to all therein; the substance whereof is this: our Juvenal of the lap-board being of a brisk and amorous complexion, light, jolly, frolicksome, and full of many pranks was so sought after to wakes and junkets, and there so jealously entertained of contending wenches, that shortly beginning to despise what was so well within his reach, (for it is a noted truth, that over-great familiarity breedeth contempt,) he must forsooth set himself to ponder on some means of turning his fair parts to worthier

account.

"What!" he would cry, as he sat stitching his seam, "must I spend my vigorous prime, frisking with frowzy jades and bare-legged milk-maidens? Pierce Bodkin, man, rouse thyself! There is never a lady in the land hath gallant with a daintier leg than is thine own." With that he would jerk out his feet from underneath his hams as he sat, and stretch forth one leg over the table, "never a one of them all, Pierce, hath a purtier calf or a cleaner-turned ankle, yet walk they side by side with fair gentlewomen rustling in silks, and smelling all as though they were but newly taken out of lavendered boxes. Ah! truly, they are fair sights to look at with their taffetas and linseys, their frills, and flounces; Oh, the loveliness of the silken hose upon their swelling insteps! Oh, the beauty of their chains and broaches! Oh, the fairness of a hat of velvet, how it setteth off the whiteness of young Mistress Ellen's forehead! Ah, Pierce, Pierce, I warrant thee she did cast an eye upon thee, as thou camest out of church last Sunday! but

wherefore talk? If thou hadst such a coat upon thy back as now lieth on thy knee, and which thine own hands have but now finished for that proud young puny popinjay, her cousin, Master Marmaduke Sendale; or such a waistcoat below it as this one of figured green silk, which the Squire Jones hath to-day sent thee for a mending of the lappet button-hole; aye, if thou hadst but such a pair of trunkhose on thy legs, as these that thou hast now completed for Humphry Drake, the porter; and sure the pity is to see such marvellous fine plush going on the shrunken limbs of that cripple. I say, Pierce, and thou hadst but workmanly justice done thy natural parts, fair Mistress Ellen would not pass thee by."

Thus would he sit, talking to himself underneath the little window of the garret wherein he lodged, till from constantly considering what a handsome figure he would make, if fitly apparelled, he came at last to be so filled with the desire of making good his notion of it, that on a certain day, having bolted his door and pinned an ancient rug across his skylight, he fairly cast his ragged garments beneath the table, and clad himself from head to heel in the very choicest of such vestments as he had on hand. Drawing on first, the aforesaid trunk-hose, which having been cut to fit the limbs of an old man and one who had never been of much lusty proportion, were truly somewhat of the tightest for so able bodied a roysterer; nevertheless with much hitching and pulling, he at length thrust himself into their embraces, and albeit he did feel so straightened that to bend his knees was a toil, yet so aptly did the stuff sit to his well proportioned calves, and so cleanly did it exhibit his thigh's bravery of muscle, (for Bodkin was, to say the truth, a fellow of marvellous