4 UNRESTRAINED AND EQUAL INTERCOURSE. 



scene of festivity. We crossed the bay in a steamboat 

 crowded ahiiost to suffocation ; and it was here, and 

 among the thousands whom I saw on the island, that I 

 was enabled to judge of the adaptation of the northern 

 climate to the complexions of our island population. 



In Europe, it is in countries which, like Great Britain, 

 Ireland, and Holland, are surrounded by an atmosphere 

 rarely arid or dry, either from excessive cold or from 

 excessive heat, but which, more or less loaded with mois- 

 ture, always softens and expands the minute vessels of the 

 skin, that health and freshness of complexion in both sexes 

 is most conspicuously perceived and most permanent. 

 To the fogs and rains, therefore, which so frequently visit 

 this and other parts of the North American coast, lying 

 within the influence of the Gulf Stream, the healthy looks 

 of the people are probably In some measure to be ascribed. 



I was early struck, on this my first day's residence in 

 North America, -with the less constrained and more equal 

 intercourse which appeared to prevail between what we 

 should call the different classes of society. The servant 

 and the mistress, the mechanic and the barrister, with 

 little distinction of dress or behaviour, discoursed on a 

 perfect equality, and persons filling the highest political 

 offices were jostled about as unceremoniously, and were 

 as familiarly hailed, as the humblest of the crowd. The 

 secret is, that every one feels what I understood when 

 my friend said to me, " That girl may marry, and be 

 better off than her mistress to-morrow ; and the lowest of 

 these men may rise to the highest civil office in the pro- 

 vince." As the ermine of the bench, and the mitre of 

 the archiepiscopal seat, secure to the humblest member 

 of two of our learned professions in England a portion 

 of that respect with which we look upon a future Lord 

 Chancellor or a possible Archbishop, so I suppose the 

 sense of equal opportunities being open to all entitles each 

 man in these provinces to a more equal consideration. 



