review of professor johnston’s travels. 
223 
which is blessed with a moderately moist and temper¬ 
ate climate. It is far too general in North America 
and the Provinces. Even among our home farmers, it 
is to be observed much more frequently than would 
be believed. Indeed, if we go a little out of the beat¬ 
en track, we may find either in England or Scotland all 
the vices of American farming.” So we should infer 
from the great number of indifferent farmers coming to 
us from those countries. We trust our southern breth¬ 
ren will take the opinion of an intelligent writer on the 
subject of sowing grass seed, for without the system¬ 
atic introduction of a rotation of grass crops into their 
own husbandry, we believe the renovation of their worn- 
out lands to be hopeless. 
Mr. Johnston ought to have supposed us a little less 
ignorant than he has, as he himself noticed the fifth 
American edition of his lectures. We believe there 
have been more copies of Liebig’s and his own standard 
agricultural works published and read within the 
United States, than in England, Scotland, and Ireland 
together. 
After considerable ingenious analysis of the taxes in 
this country, Mr. Johnston very rationally arrives at the 
conclusion, that “ the people of the state of New York 
pay only one third of the taxes paid per head in Ur eat 
Britain. But the property pays upwards of one fourth : 
more. Thus the great contrast between the two sections 
of the Anglo-Saxon race on the opposite sides of the At¬ 
lantic is, on the one side the masses rule and property 
pays, and on the other property rules and the masses 
pay. The Paradise of the poor is on one side, that of, 
the rich on the other ” Since the poor are the great 
majority of the human race, we may well rest content, 
that we have a government and institutions that make 
our country a Paradise for them. 
Mr. Johnston “was struck with the gravity and de¬ 
corum with which the discussions in our New-York 
State Agricultural Society meetings were carried on 
but ascribes it “ partly to the undisciplined and uncon¬ 
trolled way in which children are brought up.” Lucus 
a non lucendo is an adage that will aptly apply here. 
Much of the “great good that arises to the Union out 
of the numerous state legislatures is owing to the con¬ 
stant rivalry excited -among them, which strives to 
make them outdo each other.” We are thankful there '■ 
is one motive efficient enough to make legislators do 
their duty, though we think a better, and one with equal 
or with greater truth might have been cited. The igno¬ 
rant poor of England would have been thankful three 
or four years since, for as good a motive as the former, 
to induce parliament to vote for their public schools 
one half the amount it judged necessary for the repair 
of the queen’s stables, but which, in the same breath, 
it denied the pecuniary ability of government to grant. 
There was nothing left for suffering humanity, after 
providing for the pampered horses of Yictoria. 
There is little inclination in our author to admit too 
much of merit in the enterprise or intelligence of “ our 
transatlantic cousins,” as he delights to call us. But 
maugre the frequent cuts and sly innuendos he indulges 
in towards us, like most others of that heterogeneous 
blood, which is variously compounded of ancient Briton, 
piratical Northmen, Saxon, Dane, and Norman, which 
in modern times is self-christened Anglo-Saxon, we be¬ 
lieve he has a most pertinacious sneaking after his 
claim to a relationship. But true to that soi-disant 
Anglo-Saxonship, he says, “ It is to Europe not Amer¬ 
ica, therefore, that is due the rapid growth of the United 
States—European capital, European hands, and Euro¬ 
pean energy. If all the native-born Americans were 
to sit down and fold their hands and go to sleep, the 
progress would scarcely be a whit the less rapid.” 
The difference in the opinion of Mr. Johnston is not 
less marked among the females of the country than the 
males. “Ill go over to Canada for a wife when I 
marry,” quotes our author from a young American 
farmer, when he condescends to speak of the fair sex; 
“ and when I come home at night she’ll have a nice 
blazing fire on, and a clean kitchen, and a comfortable 
supper for me; bu£ if I marry a New-Yorker it’ll be, 
John, go down to the well for some water to make the 
tea ; go bring some logs to put on the fire,” <fcc. De¬ 
generate daughters of equally degenerate heroines of 
the revolution, behold your picture by a foreign artist! 
*' The native-born Americans ” do nothing, and their 
wives do even less, and this is the way that within 50 
years their oppressed population of 3,000,000, h'as 
grown to 20,000,000 of affluent people, enjoying more 
of the comforts, intelligence, and even the luxuries of 
life, than any other nation of equal population that 
has ever occupied any part of the globe: 
An amend to the American stupidity and inefficiency 
implied by the foregoing, is unwittingly given in re.- 
lating the comforts of a winter’s ride of nearly 300 
miles, between a late breakfast and early bed time, 
giving two full hours respite for dinner in Boston, in 
our glorious railway carriages, whieh are thus contrast¬ 
ed with an English first-class carriage. It is in them 
“ where the half-starved passenger would be wrapping 
in cloaks and rugs, that the superior comfort of the 
long American carriage, which, though common to 50 
or 60 passengers, yet carries a stove in the centre, be¬ 
comes feelingly evident.” The superior elegance and 
luxury of our best railway carriages vindicate them¬ 
selves to all who have ever tried them. 
Mr. Johnston, like Dickens and hosts of other Eng¬ 
lish travellers, cannot abide the neat, freshly-painted 
houses and out buildings that make up one of our pretty 
New-England villages; for, notwithstanding the good 
humor he had acquired by his delicious railway jaunt, 
on his arrival at Portland, he rails at “ the white houses 
and new towns disguised by fresh paint; they have all 
so much the air of having just been taken out of a 
bandbox or toy seller’s shop, that one is apt to see in 
them more signs of rapid and immediate improvement 
than really exists.” If our fastidious European voyag¬ 
ers would visit some of our older and more southern 
towns in the Old Dominion and elsewhere, such as 
Jamestown, &c., we will guarantee relief to their over 
sensitive vision, from staring paint and too vivid evi- 
