VII. 



A TALK ABOUT PUBLIC PARKS AND GARDENS. 



October, 1848. 



EDITOR. I am heartily glad to see you home again. I almost 

 fear, however, from your long residence on the continent, that 

 you have become a foreigner in all your sympathies. 



Traveller. Not a whit. I come home to the United States 

 more thoroughly American than ever. The last few months' resi- 

 dence in Europe, with revolutions, tumult, bloodshed on every side, 

 people continually crying for liberty— ^who mean by that word, the 

 privilege of being responsible to neither God nor governments — 

 ouvriers, expecting wages to drop like manna from heaven, not as a 

 reward for industry, but as a sign that the millennium has come ; 

 republics, in which every other man you meet is a soldier, sworn to 

 preserve " liberty, fraternity, equality," at the point of the bayonet ; 

 from all this unsatisfactory movement — ^the more unsatisfactory be- 

 cause its aims are almost beyond the capacities of a new nation, and 

 entirely impossible to an old people — I repeat, I come home again 

 to rejoice most fervently that " I, too, am an American." 



Ed. After five years expatriation, pray tell me what strikes you 

 most on returning ? 



Trav. Most of all, the wonderfiil, extraordinary, unparalleled 

 growth of our country. It seems to me, after the general, steady, 

 quiet torpor of the old world (which those great convulsions have 

 only latterly broken), to be the moving and breathing of a robust 

 young giant, compared with the crippled and feeble motions of an 

 exhausted old man. Why, it is difficult for me to "catch up" to 



