REVIEW. 



delivered my address, in a large open tent, to several thousand people, by whom it was 

 warmly and kindly received." 



Now, we intend to deal fairly with Professor Johnston. A man of respectable at- 

 tainments — a chemist by profession — a lecturer in a school of some local celebrity, by oc- 

 cupation—and in the connection which his subject of teaching has to the agriculture of hia 

 own country, a farmer and a horticulturist, in theory at least, — and as a matter of course, 

 supposed to be a gentleman in manners, we had, in our simplicity, supposed that we 

 should obtain much information at his hands. We hoped — although against heavy odds, 

 we admit — that our country, in the observations made upon it by an intelligent and truth 

 loving spirit, would be fairly examined — so far as examined at all, and that if he presum- 

 ed to indite a book of two stout volumes upon us and our institutions, both our people and 

 their country would, at least, be treated with justice. It will be seen in what way and 

 manner all these have been done. 



We say presume to write a book upon the people of the United States and its institu- 

 tions. Not that these subjects are so lofty and abstruse that they may not be touched by 

 the pen of a foreigner, and that foreigner not a first class man either, by any means; but 

 it is a matter of some presumption we humbly submit, for a closet man, cooped up for the 

 greater part of his professional life within the walls of an ancient Saxon town, to take a broad 

 leap across the Atlantic, " steam" over a portion of the bays and rivers, and lakes; trun- 

 dle over a few of the railways of a country thousands of miles in extent; dive into a che- 

 mical laboratory here; attend a private entertainment there; partake in a set, or a cas- 

 ual conversation elsewhere; and make a thorough examination of nothing, — all within the 

 space of four months, and then square himself deliberately to the composition of a work 

 which he is to put forth with all the authority and self-complacency of a teacher in the 

 sciences, physical, political, and ethical, as applied by a people, and to a country he 

 had never before seen! This, at least, would be called presumption in an American who 

 should dare to take such liberty with Old England, or any part of Great Britain, although 

 somewhat less extensive in territory and population, than the United States. But it may 

 be called condescension by the modest author himself, to the less enlightened curiosity of 

 his " traus-atlantic cousins." 



To be precise and in order: Professor Johnston arrived at Halifax on the 7th day of 

 August, 1849. On the 4th of September he took the steamboat at St. John, and arriv- 

 ed the following morning, at Portland, in the state of Maine, in time for the railway to 

 Boston, where he arrived at 2 P. M., and after two full hours of keen observation, (a 

 large share of it at the dinner table,) in that promising little town, again took the cars 

 for New-Haven, where he ari'ived at 11 o'clock the same night. 



"In this rapid run through New-England, only three things made a permanent impres- 

 sion on my mind. These were, first, that the general rudeness of the people which tra- 

 velers r-peak of [what travelers? we would humbly inquire,] is not perceptible in New- 

 England ge.~"'raiZ(/. It may be more strikiag in the western states." But after all, our 

 Professor doubts that even in Old England, if «// classes of travelers were indiscriminately 

 mixed up by fifties and sixties together in a train of cars, the passengers might not behave 

 so ivell as those of New-England do. A precious, although a grudging confession, truly. 

 " The second t'ling was the numerous country boxes or cottages, of all fa.shions and sizes, 

 with their white painted walls and green jalousies, which skirted the railway during the last 

 twenty m'les of our ride to Boston. This is a peculiarly English feature, and indicates 

 the existence among our trans-atlantic kindred, of that love of green fields, and of 

 country life which characterizes so much our own island-home." Surprising! did our 



