62 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



quently&amp;gt; and there is evidently a good deal of hard drinking 

 among them. They are larger and stouter, and have coarser 

 features. There are neither as many pretty nor as many 

 ugly faces as with us ; indeed, there are very few remarkably 

 ill-favoured in that respect, and almost none strikingly hand 

 some. The best faces we have seen were among the fish- 

 stalls in market. With scarcely an exception, the fish-women 

 were very large and tall, and though many of them were in 

 the neighbourhood of fifty, they had invariably full, bright, 

 unwrinkled faces, beautiful red cheeks, and a cheerful expres 

 sion. English women, generally, appear more bold and self- 

 reliant, their action is more energetic, and their carriage less 

 graceful and drooping than ours. Those well dressed that 

 we have seen, while shopping, for instance, are no exceptions. 

 Those we have met to converse with are as modest and com 

 plaisant as could be desired, yet speak with a marked prompt 

 ness and confidence which is animating and attractive. We 

 met a small company last night at the residence of a gentle 

 man to whom we had a letter, and spent the evening precisely 

 as we should at a small tea-party at home ; we might easily 

 have imagined ourselves in New England. The gentlemen 

 were no way different, that we noticed, from cultivated men 

 with us, and the ladies only seemed rather more frank, hearty, 

 and sincere-natured than we should expect ours to be to stran 

 gers.* There was nothing in their dresses that I can think of 

 as peculiar, yet a general air, not American a heavier look 

 and more crinkles, and darker and more mixed-up colours. 

 We see many rather nice-looking females, probably coming 

 in from the country, driving themselves about town as if 

 they understood it, in jaunty-looking chaises and spring-carts. 



* These ladies were Irish. The remark hardly applies to English ladies, 

 certainly not unless you meet them domestically. The English in their 

 homes, and the English &quot; m company,&quot; are singularly opposite characters. 



