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 trado, 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 reinarked 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 tho 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 pbilosopher could find a wofthier 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 aesthetics 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

World his English prejudices, avenges himself by epigrams for the ennui he feels in the land of material ameliorations. Dickens takes his part bravely; and his amiable pleasantry shows a graceful light upon some particulars of private life in America.

Tyrone Power is an actor. . His style is vivid, supple, easy, hazardous and discursive as that of a mimic who runs over the world. He has seen the Americans in their best light, and he judges them with the most sympathetic indulgence; they applauded him, he likes them for it. Nobody is more democratic than an actor. The habitude of a crowd: the subservience to the mass, the apparent worship which bends the knee of the noblest and worthiest of Talma, Garrick, Kemble, are all essentially democratic. You must oppose Power to Hall and Marryatt to learn the merits and qualities of the citizens of America, generally too severely judged by the English.

Captain Basil Hall is of that race, now perishing in England, which could only be produced on an island, and which we see in the earliest British civilization; a race which loves to see for the mere pleasure of seeing, to "see-sights," an exclusively English expression. "Since my infancy," said the Captain, "I determined to sec certain curiosities, and I have seen them." These curiosities were Japan, America, Egypt, and Polynesia. If all have badly understood and so superficially judged the United States, at least the parallel study of their narratives is importaut, they contradict and so explain one another.

The democratic element, detaching itself from the other elements of the British Constitution, took refuge in the 17th century in America. There, it does its work alono, and exhibits the singular spectacle at which we are looking. As the same clement, in the 18th century, became extrava

gant in France and produced moral effects by which we are still governed, it happened that on two sides of the Atlantic, the country of Franklin and that of Mirabeau and Camille Desmoulins walked in the same road. How can America not insult England? She represents the puritan, rebellious, democratic portion, which would not live at peace with the British aristocracy How could France help becoming fevered by hatred and ancient vengeance? She represents the Third estate, so long time in servitude, and now triumphant with a heart full of bitterest gall. The American Demoracy must cross the ocean to confront the old enemy; France need not go so far. In many things, especially in the least worthy, the two countries are alike.

The most of our defects are American. In that country as in ours words are large and phrases grandiloquent. We call an apothecary a pharmacien ; we have no more grocers, but in gilt letters on a red sign, we read "Universal Commerce of Colonial Products." The Americans, like us have two or three thousand men of genius in prose and verse; they speakproudly of their three hundred best poets. They despise, insult and manage each other as we do, like us they mutually fear and compliment each other. They have the inconveniences as well as the advantages of democracy of which they have too the reality-what for them is a cradle will be for us a tomb, if we be not careful.

There are some singular resemblances in pronunciation. The English say tchivalry, the French, chevalerie, the Americans shivalry. The identity of results prove that the identity of institutions merits close observation. Tyrone Power arrived at New York, fancied himself on some unknown portion of the Boulevard. All that we fear for France manifests itself already, in North America; levelling of capacities ; reign of money; boasting; deterioration of products to