he is recommended to Waterloo Bridge; and he cannot take an airing in Hyde Park but there is the Duke of Wellington, under the guise of Achilles, with legs and arms "eternally extended," frowning defiance at him, from a pedestal labelled with satire on France. In vain would he declare that he had forgotten all about these matters, "out and out;" that a chivalrous Frenchman scorned to retain animosity, and that it almost maddened him to see so many images, "hundreds, I may say thousands," of "The Conqueror of Napoleon," on sign-posts, snuff-boxes, coffee-pots, and pocket handkerchiefs. It would be equally in vain for the Spaniard to ask that the tapestry of the House of Lords should be taken down as commemorative of "by-gone" hostility, and as having furnished so many irritating allusions against his country.

But the most alarming disclosure as to the Captain's temper is in the following confession, after he had been only a few weeks in the country: "I acknowledge fairly that after some experience in the embarrassing science of travelling, I have often been so much out of humour with the people amongst whom I was wandering, that I have most perversely derived pleasure from meeting things to find fault with; and very often, I am ashamed to say, when asking for information, have detected that my wish was rather to prove my original and prejudiced conceptions right, than to discover that I had previously done the people injustice."

"It

He visited one of the watering places, but it was after the season had passed; and the building seems to have been hastily run up to accommodate an unexpected crowd of company. is true we were at the Springs after the season was over, and, therefore, saw nothing in the best style; but I must describe things as I found them, in spite of the explanations and apologies which were showered upon me whenever anything, no matter how small or how great, was objected to." He wished one of the windows of the dining-room to be kept open, "but there had not been time to place any counterpoises, nor even any bolt or button to hold it up; the waiter, however, as usual, had a resource at hand, and without apology or excuse, caught up the nearest chair, and placing it in the window seat, allowed the sash to rest upon it". The poor people must have had a hard time, with a guest,

who, in the same breath, damns them because they shower apologies on him, and because they do not offer an apology for complying, as far as could be done, with his wishes. Again: "When the chambermaid was wanted, the only resource was to proceed to the top of the stair, and there pull a bell-rope, common to the whole range of apartments."

It is not until near the close of the book that we are let into a secret as to the bodily condition of Captain Hall, which may, perhaps, serve as a clue to many of his irregularities of temper. Certain expressions occur, which lead us, charitably, to frame for him the apology which has been made for his countryman and prototype as a traveller-Smelfungus. Thus he speaks of a tourist being "so entirely out of conceit, as it is called, with the whole journey, and every thing connected with it, that he may wonder why he ever undertook the expedition, and heartily wish it over. At such times all things are seen through a bilious medium," (vol. 3, pp. 306, 7.) With an amiable frankness he lets us into all the little personal peculiarities, which self-examination or the close observation of others had detected. Thus: " I have not much title, they tell me, to the name of gourmand or epicure." Yet in the very same page he is seen heedlessly running into an excess, which any body could tell him would bring on his complaint. The only expression of enthusiasm in his book is about his meals. "A thousand years would not wipe out the recollection of our first breakfast at New York" and again he speaks of the glorious breakfast" and finally declares it was "as lively a picture of Mahomet's sensual paradise, as could be imagined ; nothing but shame, I suspect, prevented me from exhausting the patience of the panting waiters, by further demands for toast, rolls, and fish" (the very worst things he could take). Of course after such a piece of indiscretion he is as heavy, miserable, and peevish, as that Sophy whom Byron commemorates, and whose savage cruelty of temper is referred to the like derangement of the digestive organs.

We may advert to another of the topics of conversation by a perpetual introduction, of which Captain Hall sought to render himself agreeable.

"The practical difficulty which men who become wealthy have

to encounter in America, is the total absence of a permanent money-spending class in the society, ready not only to sympathise with them, but to serve as models in this difficult art.” “A merchant, or any other professed man of business, in England, has always before his eyes a large and permanent money-spending class to adjust his habits by. He is also, to a certain extent, in the way of communicating familiarly with those, who, having derived their riches by inheritance, are exempted from all that personal experience, in the science of accumulation, which has a tendency to augment the difficulty of spending it well."

If the reader has had the patience to follow this exposition of Captain Hall's temper and course of conduct, it will scarcely be deemed a matter of surprise, that, in these discussions, his antagonists did not deem it their part to pay extravagant compliments to the institutions cast up to them in the way of disparaging contrast. He represents himself as uttering, on all occasions, and in every company, the severe things he has here printed, and worse. Surely, then, a gentleman or a lady, forced to be "always on the defensive," might well leave the other side to a champion whose voice, gestures, and "expression of countenance," were all enlisted. It appears that Captain Hall is a Scotchman. Let us suppose that he were to travel over England in the same temper, and holding pretty much the same language as that in which his countryman, Sir Archy Mac Sarcasm, makes love:

"Sir Archy. Why, madam, in Scotland, aw our nobeelity are sprung frai monarchs, warriors, heroes, and glorious achievements; now, here, i' th' South, ye are aw sprung frai sugar hogsheads, rum puncheons, wool packs, hop sacks, iron bars, and tar jackets; in short, ye are a composition of Jews, Turks, and Refugees, and of aw the commercial vagrants of the land and sea -a sort of amphibious breed ye are."

"Charlotte. Ha, ha, ha! we are a strange mixture, indeed nothing like so pure and noble as you are in the North.”

"Sir Archy. O, naithing like it, madam; naithing like it—we are of anaither keedney. Now, madam, as yee yoursel are nai weel propagated, as yee hai the misfortune to be a cheeld o' commerce, yee should endeavour to mack yeer espousals intul yean

D

of oor auncient noble famalies of the North; for yee mun ken, madam, that sic an alliance will purify yeer blood, and gi yee a ronk and consequence in the world that aw your palf, were it as muckle as the Bank of Edinburgh, could not purchase for you." The nature of his quarrel with the Irish Sir Callaghan, about a matter so far by-gone as the mode in which Scotland was peopled, may be gathered from his denunciation, "Though yeer ignorance and vanety would make conquerors, and ravishers of yeer auncestors," &c.; and these are his parting words of advice, Sir Callaghan, let me tell ye, ass a friend, yee should never enter intul a dispute about leeterature, history, or the anteequity of fameelies, frai ye ha' gotten sick a wecked, aukard, cursed jargon upon your tongue, that yee are never inteelegeble in yeer language."

"But now,

Imagine a Scotchman, in this temper, protruding on every company in England, into which he might gain admittance, a loud and vehement preference of the institutions, society, and manners of his part of the Island, over those of the Sister Kingdom. Such conduct would, in the first instance, be gently parried, as only silly and ill-bred; but if his letters of introduction were such as to cause his frequent reappearance in society, and he were found there perpetually indulging in the language of disparagement— putting on a harsh and contemptuous "expression of countenance" towards the lady next to him at table, who might venture to question his opinions, it is scarcely possible to believe that he could escape rebuke. Had he lived in the days of Dr. Johnson, and found his way to the Club, what a glorious day for Boswell! Writing to his Biographer (æt. 66), the great Lexicographer says, My dear Boswell, I am surprised that knowing as you do, the disposition of your countrymen to tell lies in favour of each other, you can be at all affected by any reports that circulate among them." Boswell adds, in a shy, timid note, "My friend has, in his letter, relied upon my testimony, with a confidence of which the ground has escaped my recollection." Even from gentler spirits he would be very apt to hear of some of those matters of sarcasm which Junius, and Macklin, and Wilkes, and others, so abundantly supply as to their effrontery-their pushing tempertheir meanness their "booing" sycophaney-their absurd preju

66

dices,&c.; and as Captain Hall tells us of his " much acquaintance" with "all classes of society in England," he would certainly have been assailed amongst the lower orders with all sorts of scurrilous allusions to their beggarly disposition, their want of cleanliness, with more than one unpleasant consequenee which may not be named. Goldsmith speaks of a Scotchman, in London, who refused to take remedies for a cutaneous eruption, declaring that so far from being an annoyance, the constant necessity for friction tended to make him "unco thoughtful" of the wife and bairns he had left at home. Last, though not least, of the vulgar charges, would be the origin of Burkeing.

Unquestionably such a traveller would return from his finished tour, grown ten times more prejudiced than he started. He would assure his friends that it was high time to dissolve the Union-that he had not heard, during his whole journey, a word of compliment to his native country, but that every allusion to it was in a sneering, disparaging temper. And why was this the case? Simply because, with a person so utterly rude and illbred as to advert to such topics, merely for the purpose of making insolent comparisons, there was neither necessity nor inclination to enlarge on the many admirable qualities of Scotchmen-their bravery, their energy of purpose, their intelligence, their honour, their patriotism. Just so it must be in America, and in every other country, visited by a traveller in the same absurd temper. Captain Hall certainly did not behave thus amongst the savages of Loo-Choo, whom he represents to us as so amiable and sentimental; but having been egregiously duped by them, he really seems to have settled down into the melancholy conclusion of Sir Peter Teazle, when his sentimental friend stood exposed:" "It's d bad world we live in, and the fewer we praise the

a dbetter."

Probably the great matter of surprise to the reader will be, that amidst all these heats, he never got into a downright quarrel. But he declares, "I must do the Americans the justice to say, that they invariably took my remarks in good part." Even in Kentucky, whence the English reader would scarcely expect such a traveller to escape without, at least, the loss of an eye, bis