344 Letters J'rom the United States of North America. [March, 



are, if not altogether French, as like the French as any other people 

 could be. So is it, all the way along, from the north to the south. If 

 you travel toward the north, you find the people more and more 

 decidedly British, or English rather, at every step ; and if you travel 

 toward the south, you find them, if not more and more French, at every 

 step, at least more and more unlike the true English. 



But again : there is yet another capital reason for the over-estimate 

 of which I spoke. The more wonderful the increase hitherto, the 

 greater the likelihood of increase hereafter. The reputation of thriving 

 has made people thrive, before to-day; and, if people, why not large 

 towns, or cities, or empires ? The reputation of wealth is wealth. 

 But, in addition to all these, which I take to be admirable reasons, I 

 should observe that, as the people here have not been officially counted 

 since 1810 (I believe), and as the city which they occupy is connected 

 with half a score of little towns — ^by bridges, or highways thickly 

 planted with large trees and large houses, thereby furnishing a very 

 good opportunity for exaggeration, with little or no opportunity for 

 detecting it, every thing to justify a bouncer, and almost every tiling 

 to excuse it : we must not be over-hard with such of tliem as believe 

 that, of a truth, Boston does hold from sixty to seventy thousand inha- 

 bitants. 



The town is wealthy — so wealthy, indeed, that a large part of the 

 capital, with which the great business of New York is carried on, 

 belongs, they do say here, to the Boston people. I have no doubt of the 

 fact ; for the merchants of Boston were charactei-ized for their wealth 

 half a century ago ; and they are, to this day, remarkable for good faith, 

 enterpfize, and caution. You would be struck, at every step, with the 

 appearance of the streets and wharves, the houses and churches. The 

 streets are very narrow and very crooked for this part of our earth, 

 being but a little wider and a little straighter than the average of wide and 

 straight thoroughfares of London ; but one or two entire streets, and half 

 a score of quarter streets, are built of a superb granite, which, as they 

 burn wood here, and little or no coal,* except in a very few of the 

 counting-houses, on a very few of the wharves, will continue bright for an 

 age, in this clear, cold, brilliant atmosphere ; the wharves and warehouses 

 will abide a comparison with your — I was going to say, with your great 

 India docks ; but I will say with your Liverpool docks, whatever you 

 may say in reply : the churches are often very beautiful, and a few of 

 the houses, particularly a few that are perched about, near the top of 

 that liill on which the state-house above-mentioned is built, are — it is 

 not saying too much of them — a sort of palaces. They would be so 

 regarded with you — they would be so looked upon, if they stood near 

 the Regent's Park. They are solid stone too, not grey plaster ; real, 

 not counterfeit. N.B. The Boston madeira is the best in the world, the 

 port of America is good for nothing : they do not know how to make it, 

 here. 



A word or two, now, of the national character. I was in company, 

 two nights ago, with a literary man, who, after visiting every part of 

 Europe, has returned with a deep and settled persuasion (what is your 



* They are beginning to burn coal now, in some parts of the country ; at Wash- 

 ington (the seat of the federal government) in Baltimore and at Philadelphia, where 

 gi-ates begin to appear in parlours ; and at Pittsburg, a great manufacturing place for 

 America, Coal is found wherever it is looked for, now. — X. X. 



