46 AX AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



ally nice and white, they have a pleasant effect upon the face. 

 The very poorest women look miserably. We see bruised eyes 

 not unfrequently, and there is evidently a good deal of hard 

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

 coarser features than any women we are accustomed to see. 

 There are neither as many pretty nor as many ugly faces as with 

 us ; indeed, there are very few remarkably ill-favored in that 

 respect, and almost none strikingly handsome. 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 neighborhood of fifty, they 

 had full, bright, unwrinkled faces, very ruddy cheeks, and a 

 cheerful expression. English women, generally, appear more 

 bold and self-reliant than ours ; their action is more energetic, 

 and their carriage less graceful and drooping. Those well dress- 

 ed, whom we have seen, are no exceptions. Those we have met 

 to converse with are as modest and complaisant as could be de- 

 sired, yet speak with a marked promptness, straightforwardness 

 and confidence which is animating and attractive. We met a 

 small company last night at the residence of a gentleman 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 our- 

 selves 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, than we should 

 expect ours to be to strangers.* 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 



* 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 "in 

 company," are singularly opposite characters. 



