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 e; 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

rather piquant for a Frenchman. The absurdity of our pretensions, the illogical character of our habits and manners seldom escape them. Cooper has well remarked in France that dangerous mixture of facts resulting from old despotism, and laws or desires born of young democracy. "Centralise is to despotise," said Napoleon after Louis XIV. "Individualise and scatter," says the liberty of the journals, and the books repeat it. Absurd union of contradictory terms! A government is not a juxtaposition of contraries, but a fertile strife of interests, each of which yields a little in order to gain more. In France, the habits come from extreme servitude; they tend towards extreme liberty.

Our old world, in its struggle to grow young again, necessarily resembles, at least in intention, that young and scarcely formed world, which desires to aid it. The France of Mirabeau and Voltaire strives to identify itself with the new republic made by Washington and Locke. We coincide in several points with this new, strange creation, born of English Puritanism, a democratic egg, laid in the world in the seventeenth century, and hatched in the eighteenth, by Voltarian philosophy. You must read the sixty travellers among whom I have named the chief, to recognise how much of actual France there is in North America, how much of the United States in France. They start from the same principle, march towards the same goal; believe in the equality of men, which is dangerous, and in the natural goodness of man, as if he had neither passions nor interests, which is madness. They regard material and industrial labor as an all-sufficient panacea-which is false.

But, at least, this exclusive preponderance of industry and commerce, dangerous for advanced states, is beneficial to the United States. North America is not yet a country, it is a sketch; nor a government, but a trial; nor a people, but a

thousand peoples. There, to the eye of the philosopher, all is transformed, like the substances mixed in a vase when the chemist's eyes watches and sees the change. This civilization which developes itself on so enormous a scale, merits an attentive contemplation. It is not yet far advanced; the laboratory is a bizarre as vast, and no philosopher could find a worthier subject.

SECTION II.

ENGLISH TRAVELLERS IN AMERICA.

Unfortunately, the majority of visitors to the States are not philosophers. Mrs. Butler, a distinguished and clever actress, describes very well the singularity of manners, and the vivid impressions produced by the great landscape upon a sensitive and feminine mind. Captain Hamilton appreciates nicely the diplomatic relations and political tendencies of the Union. The German Prince, Puckler Muskau, is light like a Dutchman who tries to be light, i. e., too much so. The other German, Grundt, a sort of paradoxical doctor, mixes up all ideas into a confused assemblage of European souvenirs and philosophic affectations. Audubon, the poet and the friend of birds, bothers himself little about men, cities, or villages. Miss Martineau, quitting England with a firm resolution to admire the States, according to the laws of æsthetics and political economy, is quite surprised at being obliged to moderate her admiration; and the shadows of involuntary blame, which her preconceived enthusiasm, produce an amusing effect. Marryatt, bringing to the New