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, BIR”—CONVERSATION

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.

Dickens has written deliciously about this. According to him, the basis of American language is "Yes, sir," words which wound nobody, and which the citizens of the United States, repeat at every moment with diverse inflections. "1 have heard thisYes, sir,'" he says, "more than two thousand times a day. It rings like a bell, and like a bell expresses all emotions, fills up gaps in the conversation, understanding and leisure.

"Whenever the coach stops, and you can hear the voices of the inside passengers; or whenever any bystander addresses them, or any one among them, or they address each other, you will hear one phrase repeated over and over, and over again, to the most extraordinary extent. It is an ordinary and unpromising phrase enough, being neither more nor less than "Yes, sir;" but it is adapted to every variety of circumstance, and fills up every pause in the conversation. Thus : "The time is one o'clock at noon. The scene, a place where we are to stay to dine, on this journey. The coach drives up to the door of an inn. The day is warm, and thore are several idlers lingering about the tavern, and waiting for the public dinner. Among them is a stout gentleman in a brown hat, swinging himself to and fro in a rocking-chair on the pavement.

"As the coach stops, a gentleman in a straw hat looks out of the window.

Straw Hat. (To the stout gentleman in the rocking-chair). I reckon that's Judge Jefferson, a'nt it?

"Brown Hat. (Still swinging, speaking very slowly, and without any emotion whatever). Yes, sir.

"Straw IIat. Warm weather, Judge.

"Brown Hat. Yes, sir.

"Straw IIat. There was a snap of cold last week. "Brown Hat. Yes, sir.

"Straw Hat. Yes, sir.

"A pause. They look at each other very seriously. Straw Hat. I calculate you'll have got through that case of the corporation, Judge, by this tiuic, now?

"Brown Ilat. Yes, sir.

"Straw IIat.

How did the verdict go, sir?

"Brown Hat.

For the defendant, sir.

"Straw Hat. (Interrogatively). Yes, sir?

"Brown Ilat. (Affirmatively). Yes, sir.

sir.

"Both. (Musingly, as each gazes down the street). Yes,

"Another pause. They look at each other again, still more seriously than before.

I

"Brown IIat. This coach is rather behind its time to-day, guess.

"Straw Hat. (Doubtingly). Yes, sir.

"Brown Hat.

two hours.

(Looking at his watch). Yes, sir, nigh upon

"Straw Hat. (Raising his eyebrows in very great surprise). Yes, sir.

sir.

"Brown Ilat. (Decisively, as he puts up his watch). Yes,

"All the other Inside Passengers. (Among themselves). Yes, sir.

No it a'nt.

Well, I don't know,

"Coachman. (In a very surly tone). "Straw Hat. (To the coachman). sir. We were a pretty tall time coming the last fifteen mile. That's a fact.

"The coachman making no reply, and plainly declining to enter into any controversy on a subject so far removed from his sympathies and feelings, another passenger says, Yes, sir;' and the gentleman in the straw hat, in acknowledgment of his courtesy, says Yes, sir,' to him, in return. The straw hat

then inquires of the brown hat, whether that coach in which, he (the straw hat) then sits, is not a new one; to which the brown hat again makes answer, 'Yes, sir.'

"Straw Hat. I thought so. Pretty loud smell of varnish, sir?

"Brown Hat. Yes, sir.

"All the other Inside Passengers. Yes, sir.

"Brown Hat. (To the company in general). Yes, sir. "The conversational powers of the company having been by this time pretty heavily taxed, straw hat opens the door, and gets out, and all the rest alight also. We dine soon afterward with the boarders in the house, and have nothing to drink but tea and coffee."

SECTION V.

ENGLISH EXAGGERATION-DIALECT-NEW CITIES,

This feebleness of individual character, this fear of wounding any one; this apathy in conversation, this perpetual and insignificant consent ought to make American society lukewarm and fatiguing. One is gentle, hospitable, one dissembles, annoys oneself, yields individual right to the rights of all. Thus with the roughness and sharpness of natural character, one loses the wild naïveté, the originality and the piquant variety which result from contrasts. Miss Martineau, who never tires of praising her dear republic, is astonished that the Americans should thus pass their lives in flattering one another, and the disgust which this inspires, dictates a comparison somewhat hardy for an English woman. "I am

less disgusted," she says, "at the filthy habit of smoking and spitting everywhere, in parlor, boudoir, or Congress. The father flatters the son; the son the father. IIence comes a contempt for well merited praise, since praise is thus commonly awarded. Does a wretched bankrupt fraudulent and suspected of forgery, die, some one will preach a culogy at his funeral. The journals are full of panegyrics on worthless books. Orators flatter the people, people the orator. The pastor praises his flock, the flock are amazed at the superiority of their pastor professors admire their pupils, and these immeasurably exaggerate the merits of the professor. All this is puerile, vulgar, and what is worse, egoist. Everybody in this free country lavishes, the small change of praise, to purchase for himself the praise of another. They pitch into the maw of a cross Cerberus, a bit of eulogy which prevents his biting.

It is not only Miss Martineau, and the sailor Marryat who thus accuse America of lacking sincerity and liberty. In 1835 appeared at Boston a small volume entitled "Sober Thoughts on the state of the Times," from which we borrow the following passage. "The foolish vanity of our journals is incessantly repeating that we are the freest people on the earth; that with us, liberty of thought and opinion is complete. Well, I defy any observer to point out one state in which thought or opinion are free. On the contrary it is a deplorable fact, that intelligence is nowhere so enslaved as here. Never was there so hard and so crushing, a despotism, as public opinion, with us; surrounded with darkness, a monarch more than Asiatic, illegitimate in its source, tyrant which cannot be impeached nor dethroned; irresistible when it would strangle reason, repress action, silence conviction, and beat down timid souls, to make them perhaps leap up in admiration of the merest impostor. Be a cheat, get in your favor the pop