are terrible in their terseness. "No Quaker shall receive nourishment or lodging. Whosoever shall turn Quaker shall be banished, and if he return be hanged." "Art. xvii. No one shall run on the Lord's day, nor walk in his garden nor elsewhere, but shall only walk to and from church with gravity." "Art. xviii. No one shall travel, nor cook, nor make the beds, nor sweep the house, nor cut hair, nor shave on the Lord's day." "Art. xxxi. All are forbidden to read the English Liturgy, to keep Christmas, to make mince pies, to dance, to play upon any instrument except the drum, the trumpet, or the jewsharp."

This is clearly not the civilization which would institute courts of love. The cruelty of the Blue Laws, which considered it very evil for the young people to have such ideas, was gradually mitigated, yet its influence still exists. To day the American woman, physically so well treated, is morally kept down. One stands before her, lowers the voice, is careful not to wound nor displease her; she has the best place at table or in a public coach, and possesses neither influence, confidence, nor sympathy. She is disposed of as something incomplete, yet necessary and to be honored, since the existence of humanity is confided to her; to be cared for, because from her deterioration comes that of races; but not as a partaker of the intellectual and moral rights of man. Sunday's sermon, the newspaper's common-place, the talk with a neighbor, shopping, these are the only episodes which give variety to her restrained and monotonous existence. As there is not in the air of society any of those elements of intellectual curiosity with which Europe is filled; and as the men think only of eating, drinking, and becoming millionaires or bankrupts, so the women think only of getting married as soon as possible, bring up numerous children, and die with a mind enfeebled by a constant repetition of the same half

servile duties, and the same objectless amusements. Such are the fruits of that austere severity, which, recognizing woman as the type of pleasure and of grace, condemns her because she is so.

In the American puritanic moral, the woman, it is true, ceases to be an object of barter—a material thing—but she is passive, timidly docile, without resource, without motive. She is tolerated rather than accepted, and if humanity could continue to exist without her, one could do without her well enough.

In the South and West, girls are married very young. One sometimes finds a woman of twenty-three a widow for the second time. Neither is rare to find double or even triple divorces. All the laws and customs tend to the relaxation of the bond between the sexes, or to the rendering them independent of one another. It is enough that the woman show some moral danger to her judges to be relieved of the bond which galls her. "Her husband is a gambler, or too lazy to support his children, or he gives them a bad example and evil precepts." So marriages are broken.

So an independence is established which maintains the woman in her inferior rights, the man in his hard superiority. Hence comes a cold liberty, a mutual indifference, and an almost entire destruction of vivid affections and durable attachments. I know not if morality gain by it; Miss Martineau thinks not. If we are to believe her, American marriages are mercenary, founded upon interest, which would induce secret corruption, passionless, pleasureless. In New England the majority of women are married to men who might be their fathers; everywhere speculation chokes the sentiments of the heart; everything is immolated to the rules of arithmetic. Miss Martineau, with her woman ardor calls it legal prostitution, and speaks bitterly of the "sanctity of

marriage being profaned by interest." I do not blindly adopt. the romantic vehemence of this lady-philanthropist; I merely report an accusation which I will examine hereafter.

A collateral result of this space existing between the two sexes, the destruction of household and family. They go to live at a hotel; the husband goes to his business, the woman remains in her boudoir. They dine at table d'hôte, and this common life, without home, domicile, or domestic hearth, this wandering life displeases no one. These hotels contain sometimes fifty households, if we may use that word, for the accidental re-union of a husband and wife, who see each other twice a-day, at dinner and at breakfast. One can imagine the education of young persons who pass their lives in these crowded parlors, at these tables so variously attended; the life of a hotel must produce the same effect upon them as barroom or club-life upon men. Besides, it is hard to have a household where servants are so rare.

The word is not in use. The person whom you employ, and whom you call your help, will dress as well as her mistress, in silk, with plumed hat, or will stand behind her chair at dinner, with her hair dressed with flowers or a golden comb. "I saw one," says Miss Martineau, "who, to her other charms of dress, added a pair of green spectacles." For the least word, these helps will threaten you with the magistrate, and make their employers their slaves. Therefore, they prefer the hotel waiter, who is active, obedient, and ready.

The American woman then attaches herself to nothing; has no house to keep, nobody to talk to, and her pretensions to originality of thought would be rather a source of irritation and discontent to others, than of honor to herself. In household, the husband goes to market, perhaps by economy.

These are the pictures drawn by the travellers whom I have cited, and of which I by no means accept the personal

responsibility. According to them, American women read much and reflect little. They know generally several languages, though they lack activity of thought; the faculty which they most cultivate is the humblest of all-memory. Pretty, fresh, delicate, and showy in youth, endowed with finesse, and with all that goodness and gracefulness which God has given to their sex, with leisure to cultivate their minds and to elevate their souls, and with wealth to surround themselves with elegance-what more do they want? society less absorbed by commerce, more chivalric, more impetuous, more in love with the ideal, less concentrated upon interest. They want judges to stimulate, to recompense them.

A.

The Old World, in spite of its democratic bearings, differs from young America. It owes the intellectual culture and the exquisite delicacy of women to the ineffaceable traces of its ancient institutions, mixtures of vice and greatness, light and shade, incomplete, irregular, and often evil, as all that is human is. To-day, the American institutions which repulse chivalry and encourage personal interest, produce contrary effects.

After all, the future of this novice nation is so vast, and its situation so evidently transitory, that it would be unjust to believe all that the British travellers say. They judge a growing country as though it were ripe and formed. They do not see that the most amiable and appreciated qualities of the Old World would be vices and dangers in the New. They say that American women are more instructed and polite than their brothers and husbands. How could it be otherwise? What need have the Americans of to-day of refinement and politeness? Of what use to them a Danté, a Raphael, a Molierè? They have something harder to do. For them, rude ambition, ardent and pitiless trade. If individuals lose, the country gains.

Unfortunately, exaggerated activity brutalizes. Repose, revery, forgetfulness of daily care, give birth to graces and delicacies. Hope not for poetry from that pivot of hot iron called a business-man, rolling eternally in a circle of egotist activity; if you get in the way of his interest, he will tear you to rags.

SECTION III.

POLITENESS OF THE DEMOCRACY- YES,

SIR"

-CONVERSATION

BETWEEN TWO HATS.

Some coteries in New York and Philadelphia endeavor to model their customs upon those of London and Paris; it is that portion of American manners, which Mr. Grundt has noticed well enough, but a little grossly. As to Dickens, much more sly, his portraits are distinguished by a fineness and gaiety often profound. He is not foolishly angry with the democracy, but he picks out their good points, and the benevolent germs which they develope, and sets them in full relief. Among the qualities which the American institutions have evidently protected, are activity, patience, mutual complaisance and gentleness. The crowd is a grand master of philosophy. This blind mass, sightless and mute by instinct, compels the community not to exaggerate its own value, and to esteem a fellow-creature. Therefore, they help one another, and endure each other's neighborhood.

The democratic habit has produced among the Americans a sort of empty politeness, a complaisant habit of assent which becomes insipid. Everybody agrees with everybody else, and common-place becomes a refuge for all.