CHAPTER IV.

AMERICANS IN EUROPE-EUROPEANS IN THE UNITED

STATES.

SECTION I.

ANGLO-AMERICAN TRAVELLERS.

MANY citizens of the United States have visited Europe and communicated their reflections to the public. Willis has given his "Pencillings by the Way ;" Cooper, his "Recollections of Europe: England, Italy, Excursions in Switzerland, Residence in France, Homeward Bound;" six volumes of criticism, or rather of prejudice. We have Sanderson's "American in Paris," and "Sketches of Paris;" J. D. Franklin's "Letters from Paris;" C. S. Stewart's "Sketches of Society in Great Britain."

Willis has spirit and fun, without good taste or good breeding: Cooper has bad humor changed into philosophy. The rest are not above mediocrity.

Americans have written a good deal about their own country; Cooper, whose "Democrat" greatly irritated his fellowcitizens; Channing, eloquent adversary of Slavery; George Waterton and Nicholas Biddle Van Zandt, good editors of Statistic Tables; the author of "A Voice from America," a

pamphlet remarkable for the justice and courage of its ideas; Sanderson, author of "America;" Jack Downing's Letters, by Davis, a raillery at the political manners of the Union; Washington Irving; James Hall's "Sketches of the West ;" "Dr. Reid's Tour ;" and above all, Audubon, painter of the immense forests and their inhabitants. Three Germans, Prince Puckler Muskau, F. Lieber and J. Grundt follow, the work of the last, as badly composed as written, tries to prove the reign of Aristocracy in the United States.

As for the English who have visited the United States to growl or mock, their name is legion. Mrs. Trolloppe, Fanny Kemble, Tyrone Power, Basil Hall, Hamilton, Miss Martineau, Marryatt, and Dickens, who has printed his voyage under the title "Notes for general circulation."

These works, so various, written with intolerable diffusion and carelessness, full of the pre-occupations and interests of their authors, compose one side of the process now pleading between the old and new civilization; between feudal Europe, who is losing her Past, and the United States, which have not yet gained their Future. Every year, fresh British travellers cross the ocean, to see the progress of their grand-children. These latter, in their turn, pass the Atlantic, when they can get leisure from their speculations, clearings, or bankruptcies, look closely at their old mother, and hope to avenge themselves on her, and to find in her, faults, vices and absurdities. Each does his work. The aristocrats try to prove that the democracy is vicious and vice versa: the young vainly battles with the old; Marryatt, Hall, Martineau, Trolloppe, Dickens, have fired upon Americans; Cooper, Willis, and others return it. Irving, the man of taste, treats his English fathers with

filial kindness.

Thanks to these sixty odd volumes, one can see America without going there, without quitting one's fireside.

borrow the spectacles of twenty people from different nations, Americans included. We listen, without taking all for Gospel, and we compare the reports. How can any phase of North America escape you, helped as you are by a German doctor, a Swedish diplomatist, an American novelist, a priest, a historian, a writer of statistics, not to mention a lady novellist, a sailor, a cavalry Captain, a writer on manners and a playwright. Points of view, epochs and localities are all diverse. The cleverest of all these, Charles Dickens, does not pique himself upon his philosophy or eloquence; he is gay and funny. He brought back from his travels a dozen of sketches, done with rapid pencil, without bad humor or pretension. Compare his sketches with the bitter caricature of Mrs. Trolloppe; the clumsy justifications of Miss Martineau, and the caustic accusations of Marryatt, who was hung in effigy by his hosts, and who in revenge has skinned and crucified them in his book, and you will obtain a curious result. This way of verifying the history of nations and of facts has always appeared to me infallible. Rectify one by the other, and you will get right; balance contradictory opinions and you will arrive at the truth. Amid these violent contradictions all the facts which continue to exist, are sure.

Nothing shows more clearly the bottom of the American character, and the social condition of the Union, than the singular aspect which our European countries present to these travellers of the United States, and their manner of judging us. They have incredible admirations, and unreasonable angers. They fall on their knees before a Vaudeville, and take no notice either of our great events or of our great men. The most distinguished member of this still swaddled society, scarcely comprehends the social phoenix of our world, which, since 1790, writhes upon its pyre, hoping one day to be born again. Willis, in England, watches how people eat;

Fennimore Cooper, in France, observes the manner of giving one's arm to a lady. This childishness provokes a smile; we fancy that it is a little girl, playing with the jewels, patchbox and toilette of her great-grandmother, without understanding them.

Fennimore Cooper's blindness in the midst of our émeutes, is singular. He sees only the Garde Nationale running about. the streets, and the boys who shout. He is especially pleasant, when, after having painted the émeute in very amiable colors, and after being caught by it in the streets of Paris, he puts himself under the protection of a body-guard and exclaims, "For once in my life, I have thought the justemilieu the best." We know Cooper's talent for narration, and we supposed that so picturesque a story-teller, should have found in Paris, in 1830, materials worthy of his pen. No; this observer passed 1830, 1831, 1832, the years of the cholera and of St. Mery, among us, without seeing anything. This happened to Mr. Cooper. One is frightened by this absence of observation in a man of genius, who can not see. Dickens, a man of charming sagacity and good humor, at least amuses and distracts us, when he speaks of the States, but Cooper at Paris, remarking only that the Tuilleries were built by Catharine di Medicis, and that a National Guard who passes him has a big corporation, afflicts us: of what use his talent and his glory!

Cooper, in revenge makes curious revelations about his native land. He alleges facts whose future value and importance are enormous. He values at 500,000, the annual increase of population, comprising emigration. One single State already is more thickly peopled than the kingdoms of Hanover, Wirtemburg and Denmark. Dissertations on the soupe au lait, on its identity with the pap given to infants; on casements and their origin; on Parisian gardens, and the

good bourgeois who like to dine in them; this is what he has. gathered in our world so old, so filled with young desires, this reservoir of mutually destructive ambitions, and of follies which betray wisdom-in Paris.

His political opinions and precepts are marked with a stamp peculiar and often profound. He wrote, in 1835, that the best government for France would be Henri V., at the head of a republic. An absolute monarch, son of absolute monarchs, commanding an all-powerful democracy, did not astonish him. One night, at the Tuilleries, during the fireworks, he met an old man who predicted that the revolution would recommence in 1840; it recommenced, or rather continued in 1848.

Another day he fell into raptures about a negro, a spy by trade, whom he found in an anti-chamber, dignified by the double virtue of blacking boots, and of having lied all his life. Some people love fraud for fraud's sake, and such was this negro, yet Cooper praises him highly, so much are his notions of probity altered by his political opinions. Harris had served as double spy, for the English under Cornwallis, for the Americans under the Marquis de Lafayette. When Cornwallis surrendered, he found in his conqueror's anti-chamber, on paying a visit there, this nigger traitor cleaning the boots of the Marquis.

"Bah," cried the British General," is it you, Harris! I did not expect to find you here!"

"Oh," said the spy, "one must do something for one's country."

And this false nigger, who had no other country than the purse of the two adversaries, nor patriotism than his shameful cupidity, has probably served as model for Cooper's Spy.

To read eight or ten American travellers in Europe is