REVIEW OF PROFESSOR JOHNSTON’S TRAVELS. 
225 
own, who has long pandered to a depraved taste. He 
has come fairly down to the level of his subject, in the 
following choice morceau. “ If anything I have said in 
the preceding pages might be likely to rile our trans¬ 
atlantic readers, I hope they will think we Britishers 
are abundantly paid by this set down of the (Hew- 
York) Herald.” 
We are chagrined to find in the pages of a man of 
Professor Johnston’s respectability, a quotation from 
Fennimore Cooper, against the character and hospital¬ 
ity of the people of Connecticut—a character so utterly 
untrue, and so contemptibly derogatory, if it were not 
that no American except Fennimore Cooper could in¬ 
dite, and no tourist but an Englishman quote. We 
have knoAvn a good deal of this people, and we venture 
the assertion, that the history of the world has never- 
shown a state so equably and so happily poiged in its 
political, social, and religious organisations, nor pos¬ 
sessing more enlightened and liberally-supported be¬ 
nevolent public institutions. Absolute, almost unli¬ 
censed freedom is allowed to all excepting the vicious 
and the vagrant; a free toleration of religion; educa¬ 
tion accessible, and even compelled upon all; and with 
habits of sobriety, industry, and economy inculcated on 
every member of the community, we believe she has 
fewer paupers and less convictions for crime, than any 
other equal population. She has sent her sons and 
daughters over the whole earth, carrying with them 
everywhere the germs of civilisation and progress. We 
remember looking over the origin of the members, then 
constituting our national legislature, some years since, 
and though entitled to only six or seven representatives 
of her own, yet Connecticut furnished about thirty who 
had been returned from the various states to which 
they had emigrated. Such had been the tendency and 
result of the early principles instilled into them. Most 
of our splendid packet ships and steamers have been 
commanded by Connecticut sailors, and a nobler set of 
fellows never strode a quarter deck, every one a Nel¬ 
son, save in his vanity and vices. South street is full 
of them; the pulpits, the bar, the bench, the profession¬ 
al chairs of the country everywhere contain them, and 
yet they are indiscriminatingly maligned, and without 
the slightest provocation, too, by an intelligent traveller, 
under the cloak of an “ if” and a “ Cooper” yet he has 
the candor to acknowledge he discovered no signs of 
these imputed traits. Could it be that the “ Maryland 
apple toddy for a winter drink,” for which the learned 
professor has given us a full and minute receipt, or “ the 
mint juleps of summer,” were wanting at the. hospita¬ 
ble board of his friend, that prevented “ the stranger’s 
chance of living according to his humor, as among these 
jovial Middle Statesmen, (of Maryland,) which the de¬ 
termined temperance-upholding people of the north¬ 
eastern states scarcely permit ?” 
We did not know before that it is common to judge 
of the capacity of our legislators and horses by their 
avoirdupois weight, but it seems so from the authority 
of our author. 
We are treated to the author’s ideas of New-Eng- 
landers in the following:—“ 1 have already adverted to 
their tendency to hero worship in reference to the pil¬ 
grim fathers ; and to their habit of investing these men 
with perfections, moral and intellectual, beyond their 
contemporaries, to which they have in reality no claim. 
Unfamiliar with the social condition of Europe in the 
times of the revolution, New-England writers assume 
that whatever superiority in mental freedom and fore¬ 
sight the first emigrants to North America exhibited, 
beyond the people at home, as a whole, was their ow r n 
especial possession, and marked their individual supe¬ 
riority to those to whom they left behind. But they 
in reality brought with them only a few ideas, which, 
for nearly a century, had been fermenting in the lead¬ 
ing minds of reforming Europe,” (fee. Yes, Mr. Johns¬ 
ton, this is just what the Pilgrim fathers did. They 
brought with them a few, that is, every practical, valua¬ 
ble idea that had for a century been fermenting in the 
leading minds of Europe, without the possibility of 
their giving it vent. Neither embodiment nor form, 
under any government then existing, could they give 
to their beautiful mental images, of “ freedom to wor¬ 
ship God.” Nor could they establish equal and fair 
representative and responsible government; universal 
education; nor, finally, had they the unrestricted, in¬ 
alienable privilege to establish and maintain just such 
social, educational, religious and political associations 
as they might deem most adequate to secure the great¬ 
est well being to themselves and their posterity for all 
time to come. 
We do not claim for our New-England ancestors a 
distinct and original creation, as is asserted by pro¬ 
fessor Agassiz, for some of the races of mankind; nor 
so decided and abrupt an advancement, both physical 
and mental, as from a mite to a tadpole, from a tad¬ 
pole to a monkey, from the monkey to an Ethiop, and 
thence to a Caucasian, as intimated by the author of 
“Vestiges of Creation;” though we are inclined to ad¬ 
mit the quaint and rather boasting claim of old Cotton 
Mather, that “ God sifted three kingdoms to procure the 
seed for planting one.” What we insist on in our fore¬ 
fathers is, that they were, as a body, among the most 
enlightened, well-educated, moral and religious people 
of Old England, and that it was because they were far 
better than the mass of Englishmen, and those who 
controlled the government and the hierarchy of Eng¬ 
land, that they emigrated to this country. They left a 
land which might have been to them, a land of abun¬ 
dance and luxury, and sought an inhospitable wilder¬ 
ness for'the sake of cultivating and enjoying political, 
religious and intellectual priviliges denied them at home. 
Tins fact, alone, would give a form and impress to their 
character and national organisations, that would last 
for ages, and which are maintained in all their pristine 
vigor at the present moment. The original band has 
since been steadily augmented by men of similar char¬ 
acter from all nations, and especially by great num¬ 
bers of intelligent Englishmen who are yet constantly 
resorting to our shores for a future home for themselves 
and their posterity; and it is most especially for this 
