194 AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



I had rather ride smoothly, swiftly, and safely in a 

 luggage-van, than be jerked and jolted to destruction 

 in the velvet and veneering of our palace cars. Uphol- 

 Bter the road first, and let us ride on bare boards, until 

 a cushion can be afforded ; not till after the bridges are 

 of granite and iron, and the rails of steel, do we want 

 this more than aristocratic splendor and luxury of 

 palace and drawing-room cars. To me there is no 

 more marked sign of the essential vulgarity of the 

 national manners than these princely cars and beg- 

 garly, clap-trap roads. It is like a man wearing a 

 ruffled and jeweled shirt-front, but too poor to afford 

 a shirt itself. 



I have said the English are a sweet and mellow 

 people. There is, indeed, a charm about these an- 

 cestral races that goes to the heart. And herein was 

 one of the profoundest surprises of my visit, namely, 

 that, in coming from the New World to the Old, from 

 a people the most recently out of the woods of any, to 

 one of the ripest and venerablest of the European na- 

 tionalities, I should find a race more simple, youthful, 

 and less sophisticated than the one I had left behind 

 me. Yet this was my impression. We have lost 

 immensely in some things, and what we have gained 

 is not yet so obvious or so definable. We have lost 

 in reverence, in homeliness, in heart and conscience 

 in virtue, using the word in its proper sense. To 

 some the difference which I note may appear a differ- 

 ence in favor of the greater 'cuteness, wideawakeness, 

 and enterprise of the American, but is simply a differ 



