CHAP. XL.] RETURN TO BOSTON. 269 



rapidly carry heat to the interior. The mass then goes on thaw 

 ing within as well as without, and at temperatures below 32 ; 

 whereas pure and compact Wenham ice can only thaw at 32, 

 and only on the outside of the mass. 



Boston, May, 23. Sir Humphrey Davy, in his &quot; Consola 

 tions in Travel,&quot;* 1 has said, that he never entered London, after 

 having been absent for some time, without feelings of pleasure 

 and hope ; for there he could enjoy the most refined society in 

 the grand theater of intellectual activity, the metropolis of the 

 world of business, thought, and action, in politics, literature, and 

 science. 



I have more than once experienced the same feelings of hope 

 and pleasure after having wandered over the less populous and 

 civilized parts of the United States, when I returned to Boston, 

 and never more so than on this occasion, when, after traveling 

 over so large a space in the southern and western states, we 

 spent ten days in the society of our literary and scientific friends 

 in the metropolis of Massachusetts, and in the flourishing univer 

 sity in its suburbs. They who wish to give a true picture of the 

 national character of America, what it now is, and is destined to 

 become, must study chiefly those towns which contain the great 

 est number of native-born Citizens. They must sojourn in the 

 east, rather than in the west or south, not among the six millions 

 who are one half African and the other half the owners of negroes, 

 nor among the settlers in the back-woods, who are half Irish, 

 German, or Norwegians, nor among the people of French origin 

 in Louisiana ; for, however faithfully they may portray the pecu 

 liarities of such districts, they will give no better a representation 

 of America, than an accurate description of Tipperary, Conne- 

 mara, the West Indies, French Canada, Australia, and the vari 

 ous lands into which Great Britain is pouring her surplus popu 

 lation, would convey of England. 



Among other scientific novelties at Boston, I was taken to see 

 two magnificent skeletons, recently obtained, of the huge masto 

 don, one of them found in Warren County, New Jersey, which a 

 farmer had met with six feet below the surface, when digging 



* P. 168. 



