1856.]

stantial dinner in the time which a well-bred Englishman would occupy in eating his soup and fish. The Englishwoman' speaks of the temperance as surprising. She very seldom saw any beverage but pure iced water. The wires of the electric telegraph, constantly attended by clerks, run into the principal hotels. Steam laundries are connected with all the large hotels. At American House the laundry is under the management of a clerk. The linen is cleaned in a machine moved by steam, and wrung by a novel application of the principle of centrifugal force. The articles are dried by being passed through currents of hot air, so that they are washed and ironed in the space of a few minutes. Thus the possessor of one shirt may travel from one end of the Union to the other, without portmanteau or carpet bag: for while he takes his bath his soiled shirt is reproduced, washed, starched, and ironed in the best fashion. Washing is however somewhat costly, as the charge varies for articles from six to ten shillings the dozen.

The hotels are among the most remarkable sights of New York. The principal are the Astor House, the Metropolitan, and the Saint Nicholas. The entrances to these houses are filled with groups of extraordinary-looking beings, smoking, whittling, and reading the newspapers. The Metropolitan Hotel has a frontage of three hundred feet, and is six stories high. It can

accommodate one thousand three hundred; while the St. Nicholas, more magnificent in its decorations, can accommodate one thousand visitors. There are two diningrooms at the St. Nicholas, which can hold

six hundred people each. As a proof that republican institutions do not exclude extravagance and luxury, it may be stated that the curtains and some of the sofa covers in the parlours cost each £5 per yard. One room is furnished with brocade at £9 per yard. About one hundred married couples reside permanently at the St. Nicholas. There is a monster establishment at Cape May, a fashionable summer resort in New Jersey, which is said to make up three thousand beds. Owing to

529

high rates of house-rent, the difficulty of procuring servants, and other causes, many married couples and families reside at hotels. Thus nomade, restless, and pleasureseeking habits are induced, which has led to the observation, that Americans are destitute of home life. But though this is the case to some extent, the Englishwoman' admits (and it is from her book we have generalized many of these details) that there are family circles in the New World as united and affectionate as those in the Old.

6

One of the most peculiar hotels in the States is Delaval's, at Albany. The fifty waiters at this comfortable hotel are Irish girls, neatly and simply dressed. They are under a coloured waiter, and their civility and alacrity are wonderful. As to charges at hotels, Miss Murray states that Mr. Robert Chambers was either much mistaken or grossly deceived when he published a letter stating the absence of imposition at the American hotels. For less real comfort, I have been made to pay everywhere far more than in England; upon an average, about £10 a week, for my maid and self, taking our meals at the public table, and without a private sitting room.' In another passage she says, I prefer European inns to the gorgeous American hotels, the expense of which equals, if it does not exceed, English hotels.'

At Chicago the hotels are very different from those of New York. The Englishwoman' saw laid on table at Chicago, eight boiled legs of mutton, nearly raw; six antiquated fowls; baked pork, with onion fixings;' with yams, corn-cobs, and squash. There were no carvingknives, so each person hacked the joint with his own, while some carved with bowie-knives taken from their belts.

New York is undoubtedly the receptacle not only of the enterprising and energetic merchant, but of the vagabondism, cheating, ruffianism, and vice of Europe. It contains a population of nearly a million. Broadway, the great thoroughfare, is one of the most remarkable streets in the world. runs along the centre of the city, and is crossed at right angles by in

It

numerable streets, which run down to the water at each side. The brick-building in New York is remarkably beautiful. The windows are large, and of plate glass, and the whole external finish of the houses is of a style never to be met with in street architecture in England. The houses are heated by air warmed by a subterranean stove, so that few chimneys are required, and these are seldom visible. Anthracite coal is almost universally used, so that there is an absence of the chocolate-coloured atmosphere of London. The hackney carriages are handsome, and are drawn by two horses, but the cabmen are licensed plunderers against whom there is no appeal. The police of New York are accessible to bribes, according to

the Englishwoman,' who also states that in no city in the civilized world is life so insecure. Desperate reprobates called Rowdies, infest the lower part of the town, and terrible outrages and murderous assaults are frequent. This evil may be traced to the system which prevails at the election of municipal officers,

who are often chosen from the lowest of the people, and are venal and corrupt in the highest degree.

The American ladies, we are told, notwithstanding their republican institutions, wear very costly jewellery. The Englishwoman' saw in a New York shop a diamond bracelet, of a prodigious size and lustre, priced at the high figure of 25,000 dollars, or £5000. On inquiring who would purchase such a thing, the clerk replied, I •I guess

some

Southerner will buy it for his wife.' Some of the 'stores' in New York quite transcend our monster shops. Stewart's dry goods store in the Broadway is a building of white marble, six stories high, with a frontage of 300 feet. There are 400 people employed in it, and the business done is said to be above £1,500,000 per annum. There is a telegraph on the premises, where is a clerk perpetually flashing dollars and cents along the wires. In this establishment, republican citizens can find lace collars at forty guineas each, and flounces of Valenciennes lace, half-a-yard deep, at one hundred and twenty guineas a flounce. There are damasks and brocades

at almost fabulous prices, few gentlemen giving less than £3 a yard for such articles. Gold-embroidered brocade is sold at this establishment at £9 a yard, and some of the furniture of St. Nicholas Hotel is decked out with this costly fabric. There are stockings at Stewart's at a guinea a pair, and carpets at 228. the yard. With all this luxury and extravagance, there is a very large class living at New York in a state of squalid and abject poverty.

There are large theatres in the republican city, an opera house of gigantic proportions, al fresco entertainments, masquerades, concerts, restaurants, and oyster saloons. New York contained in 1853 the amazing number of 5980 taverns.

The oyster saloons are a feature in the city. In these saloons there are generally two or three persons, frequently blacks, who are busily engaged in opening oysters for their customers. So great is the passion for oysters at New York, that the consumption of them during the season is estimated at a value of £3500 per day:

Our republican cousins are as profuse in the expenditure for monuments for dead relatives, as in clothing and diet for themselves. Several of the marble mausoleums in the cemetery cost from £4000 to £5000, and there is a monument to a young lady who was killed coming home from a ball, which is said to have cost about £6000.

The newspaper press is an extraordinary feature in the United States. The influence of the broadsheet is immense. Every party in religion, politics, or morals, has its organ; some of them fifty and one hundred organs; and the Englishwoman' tells us every nicely-defined shade of opinion has its voices also. Every large town has from ten to twenty daily papers, every village has its three or four, and a collection of huts, to use the very words of one of the ladies, produces its one daily or two or three weeklies. Newspapers in America have neither stamp nor paper duty, and are a necessary, not a luxury of life. Since the Russian war the anxiety for English intelligence has increased, and Crimean and Baltic news was reprinted in American papers with

1856.] Slavery in the out abridgment, and devoured by Yankee readers with as much zest as in the United Kingdom.

Whigs, Democrats, Know-Nothings, Freesoilers, Fusionists, Hunkers, Woolly Heads, Dough Faces, Hard Shells, Soft Shells, Silver Greys, have their political organs; and the hundred so-called religious denominations and subdivisions have also their papers. There is the 'Woman's Right Movement,' the Spiritual Manifestation Movement,' &c. &c.

Miss Murray touches slightly on the Know-Nothings, and seems to disapprove of their objects and organization. The Englishwoman' having been at New York during the time of the elections, enters more at length into the strife between the Irish Roman Catholics and the Know-Nothings. The society being established with the object of changing the naturalization laws, and curbing the power of Popery, had in 1854 obtained a large share of the public attention. Great success attended the organization of the Know Nothings in Massachusetts and others of the States. The popularity of the sect arose out of the enormous spread of a recognised evil-the power exercised by the legislature upon foreigners, more especially Irish Roman Catholics. The great influx of aliens who had unscrupulously obtained the franchise had caused much alarm. The success of the organization of 1854 was therefore unprecedented. The avowed objects of the Know-Nothings were to establish new naturalization laws, prohibiting any from acquiring the franchise without a residence of twenty-one years in the States; to procure the exclusion of Romanists from offices; to guarantee religious freedom, a free Bible, and free schools. But the society contained the elements of dissolution within itself. Some of its principles savoured of intolerance, and of persecution for religious opinion, and in the last year, after stormy discussions and dissensions, the great Convention of Know-Nothings broke up into several branches, some of which totally altered or gave up the original objects of their association. By an abandonment of some of their

original aims the Know-Nothings succeeded, at the close of 1855, in placing several of their nominees in public offices, but it is yet to be learned whether much practical good will result from their future operations. It cannot be denied that a large number of Irish Roman Catholics surreptitiously obtain votes, and exercise a most mischievous influence upon the elections. It is by the declamatory vehemence and the noisy and ribald abuse of these men; that an ill-feeling has been generated against England.

There is one question of great and vital importance on which the two ladies, of whose works we have been giving a summary, conscientiously and diametrically differ, and that is the very thorny and difficult question of slavery. The Hon. Miss Murray went to America with the strong feelings which the generality of all our countrymen and countrywomen entertain against slavery in the abstract. But after having been some time in the Slave States, and having made a particular study of the negro and slave character, this amiable and most accomplished lady has seen cause to modify her opinions. The results of her observations are, that the negro race in general is idle, irregular, unthrifty, excitable, impulsive, unreflecting, tricky, and deceitful. Miss Murray maintains that well-intentioned and hot-headed zealots have damaged the cause of civilization, checked the progress of individuals of the black race, done irreparable mischief to property, and postponed the ultimate emancipation of the slave by rash and ill-judged interference. Admitting that the negro has a sense of justice, can be attached, and made honest and useful, she stoutly contends that these objects can only be obtained by judicious management and early training. She avers that negro Christians left to their own guidance, fall sooner or later again into pagan habits; that the free blacks are profligate and irreligious, and far less happy than their brethren in servitude. She also states, on competent authority, that the free black people die out rapidly, in one or two generations after having obtained their freedom. She contends also that there is a great attachment

between the negroes and their masters, in spite of the facts detailed in Uncle Tom, and that instances have come to her knowledge where liberated slaves have entreated to be sent back to that South where the black people are free.'

As to Liberia, Miss Murray is of the opinion of a clergyman who had been long in the employment of the Colonization Society, that there has been too hasty an emancipation, and that the Liberian plan has been much injured by a want of discrimination in the choice of the blacks sent out there.

Miss Murray speaks of the consideration of the masters for the blacks, and, without going the length of saying there are no abuses, no tyranny, she repeats over and over again that in the mass the Southern slave-owners are conscientiously fulfilling their trying and painful duties. 'I have,' she says, seen more of comfort, cheerfulness, contentment, and religious principle among negroes of the Southern States, than among any other working population of the same amount.'

Whilst the Englishwoman' admits that, according to general opinion in the States, Uncle Tom's Cabin has thrown the cause of slave emancipation back for years, and concedes also that slavery was permitted under the Mosaic dispensation, yet she at the same time argues that slavery is contrary to the whole tenor of Christianity that it is a system which lowers man as an intellectual and responsible being, and that it is no less morally than politically wrong. That slavery is a political mistake too, 'the Englishwoman' says, is evidenced by the retarded development and apparent decay of the Southern States as compared with the ceaseless material progress of the North and West. The system of slavery, she eloquently remarks, is one which has for its object the transformation of reason into instinctthe lowering of a rational being into a machine scarcely more intelligent than some of our own ingeniouslyconstructed steam-engines.'

The following observations so fairly and fully embody the views of the Englishwoman,' and so generally reflect the opinions of

A third and very large class of slaveowners is to be found, who, having inherited their property in slaves, want the means of judiciously emancipating them. The negroes are not in a condition to receive freedom in the reckless way in which some abolitionists propose to bestow it upon them. They must be prepared for it by instruction in the precepts of religion, by education, and by the reception of those principles of self-reliance, without which they have not the moral perception requisite to enable them to appreciate the blessings of freedom; and this very ignorance and obtuseness is one of the most telling arguments against the system which produces it. The want of this previous preparation has been frequently shown, particularly in Kentucky, where whole bodies of emancipated slaves, after a few days' experience of their new condition, have entreated for a return to servitude. These slaveowners of whom I now speak deeply deplore the circumstances under which they are placed, and, while wanting the spirit of self-sacrifice, and the moral manumitting their slaves, to enter into courage, which would lead them, by a novel competition with slave-labour on other estates, do their best to ameliorate the condition in which the Africans are placed, encouraging them by the sale of little articles of their own manufacture, to purchase their freedom, which is granted at a very reduced rate. I had opportunities of conversing with several of these freed negroes, and they all expressed attachment to their late owners, and spoke of the mildness with which they were treated, saying that the great threat made use of was to send them down south.'

Yet,

The slaves in the Northern Slave States are a thoughtless, happy set, spending their evenings in dancing or singing to the banja; and 'Oh, carry me back to Old Virginny,' or Susannah, don't you cry for me,' may be heard on summer evenings rising from the inaize and tobacco grounds of Kentucky. whether naturally humane instincts may lead to merciful treatment of the slave, or the same result be accomplished by the rigorous censorship of public opinion in the border States, apart from the abstract question of slavery, that system is greatly to be reprobated which gives power without responsibility, and permits