"The prejudice which causes the men in America to have so great a repugnance to the state of domestic servitude, does not influence the women in the same degree; nothing is more common than to see young women of good families, in the situ ation of servants, during the first years of their youth. Even their parents engage them in this situation without shocking any idea. I have been told by M. de Eaubonne, a Frenchman, formerly a captain in the regiment of Auvergne (and whom the pride of independence induced to take up the business of a gardener for the support of his family, though he was forty-six years of age), that he had had in his service, as maid-servant, the niece of the mayor of the city of New York, a young woman very honest, and well brought up. Similar examples are very common: "In a country which has belong, ed to England for a long time, of which the most numerous and near est connections are yet with Eng land, and which carries on with England almost all its commerce, the manners of the people must ne. cessarily resemble, in a great degree, those of England. To the American manners particularly, those relative to living are the same as in the provinces of England. As to the dress, the English fashions are as faithfully copied, as the sending of merchandise from England, and the tradition of tailors and mantua makers will admit of. The distribus tion of the apartments in their houses is like that of England, the furni, ture is English, the town carriages are either English, or in the English taste and it is no small merit among the fashionable world to have a coach newly arrived from Lon don, and of the newest fashiona The cookery is English, and, as in England, after dinner, which is not very long, the ladies withdraw, and give place to drinking of wine in full bumpers, the most prominent pleasure of the day, and which it is, consequently, very natural to prolong as late as possible.co There are great dinners, na. merous tea-parties, invited a long time in advance, but no societies. So that these tea assemblies are every where a fund of amusement for the ladies. Balls and plays are much frequented. It is generally under stood that these kinds of dissipation belong only to the towns, and par ticularly to large cities. Luxury is very high there, especially at New York and Philadelphia, and makes a dangerous progress every year; but easily to be conceived, since luxury is, in some degree, the re presentation of riches, and that wealth there is the only distinction.. "There are some persons who surpass their neighbours, already. far advanced, in luxury; these injare the manners of the country, but while the people censure, they pursue these seductive paths; and frequent and sumptuous dinners are held in as high consideration in the new as in the old world; and this custom has its advantage very often. It has been seen that this consideration has raised to the place of tem porary president of the senate of the United States, a man who was not esteemed by any of those who elect ed him, or by any other, either for his talents, his qualities, or for his character, but he entertained his friends with sumptuous dinners. In the other towns, and especially in the country, luxury is less: preva lent, but it continually increases and often out of proportion with wealth. "The "The women every where posBess, in the nighest degree, the domestic virtues, and all others; they bave more sweetness, more good ness, at least as much courage, but more sensibility, than the men. Good wives, and good mothers, their husbands and their children engage their whole attention ; and their household affairs occupy all their time and all their cares; destined by the manners of their country to this domestic life, their education in other respects is too much neglected. They are amiable by their qualities and their natural disposition, but there are very few a mong them who are so from any acquired - accomplishments. What they esteem to be virtue in wives is the virtue of the whole sex; and if in the United States malice may throw out her suspicion upon twenty, there are certainly not above ten of them who can be accused justly, and all the rest treat these with great rigour. I have heard some husbands complain, that the urgency of their wives makes this irreproachable virtue cost them dear. But where in the world is there a place where evil is not found by the side of good.? The young women here enjoy a liberty, which to French manners would appear disorderly; they go out alone, walk with young men, and depart from them with the rest of the company in large assemblies; in short, they enjoy the same degree of liberty which married women do in France, and which married women here do not take. But they are far from abusing it they endeavour to please, and the unmarried women desire to obtain husbands, and they know that they shall not sueceed if their conduct becomes suspected. Sometimes they are abused by the men who descive them, but edT sa then they add not to the misfortune of having engaged their hearts to cruel man the regret of deserving it, which might give them remorse. When they have obtained a husband, they love him, because he is their husband, and because they have not an idea that they can do otherwise; they revere custom by a kind of state religion, which never varies. Je I do not know whether there be many badly-managed families in America; but none appear so, though indeed they do not bear the image of the most desireable happiness. In the inferior classes of society, where the manners of the women are as exempt from reproach as in the more elevated classess, it is said that those of the young women are more easy. Yet according to all which I have been able to collect, it is the illusion of a marriage, which they believe to be decided, which engages them to give further liberties than they otherwise would do without this false hope. The fault therefore lies entirely in the men, who deceive the young women; unless it can be just to accuse those of libertinage who have not the prudence to guard themselves against it. "There formerly was a custom in New England, and particularly in Connecticut, which various American travellers, in their accounts, attribute to vicious manners'; bat who, I confess, ought to accuse me of dalness, because it always appeared to me, on the contrary, to be the effect of the purest manners, and the most innocent intentions. A traveller arrived at the house of a friend, and the beds of the fami ly were engaged. He was put to bed with the family with the boys, if there were any, and with the girls, if there were no boys. It may be conceived, that it is easier for Eu prevented them from desiring it, and would not have hindered them from avowing it. tha ropeans to compose pleasant tales, and to draw merry inferences from this custom, than to examine it in its native simplicity, and the bene." There probably may have been ficence of its intention. examples to the contrary; but they could only be reckoned as excep tions, and too few to have autherised writing travellers to have played so much upon this custom,which, when it is considered at what peri od it took place, and with what-intention it was established, is a credit to the manners of the country, and to the times in which it was practised. Be this as it may, the custom has ceased long ago, so that there is no more truth in the ac count of those writers who represent it to exist at present, than there is of justness and goodness in their judgment when they attack the morality of it, or pervert the intention. Hospitality among this new people was one of the virtues the most regarded as a duty, and the most religiously observed. Their houses were few and small. A traveller to whom an entrance into one of these had been denied at the end of the day, was not able to find another lodging near; their hospita.ble manners could not suffer him to be refused; and the idea of disorder did not enter the head of the parents, or that of their daughters, and the guest was admitted into the hospitable roof; and it was not remarked that he arrived inconveniently. The part of the clothing which was not thrown off, was rather a homage paid to the difference of sexes than a necessary means of security; and the next day the tra veller departed, to find on the next evening another hospitable lodging. This custom, known by the name of bondelage, ceased, in proportion as houses became larger, the roads more frequented, and taverns established; but the day when the idea of modesty entered to make this reform, the manners had lost their innocence. "I have heard it said by men who had been admitted to this species of hospitality, and whose man.ners were certainly not very scrupulous, that the slightest attempt which they had ever made to abuse this reception had been received with violent repulses, and had caused them sometimes to be turned out of bed, and sometimes even out of the house; and no one ever told me that he had ever succeeded in attempting to take advantage of this custom; but their delicacy had not "But the custom which exists still, and which may shock the manners of an European, is that of being admitted to sleep upon mattresses and upon blankets in the same chambers where the husband and wife sleep in their bed, and the children of the family, boys and girls in theirs. This custom is also to be attributed to the scarceness of houses, and their smallness, which is generally reduced to one chember, which renders this practice necessary in those parts of the United States which are thinly inhabited. I have more than once found myself in such a lodging, when I have been travelling alone, or with com panions of my journey, and when I have met with travellers to whom F was a stranger. The chambers are very small; and men often sleep near the bed of young and handsome girls, whose simplicity is not sufficiently alarmed to make any change in their customary nightdress. If the stranger so lodged has his sleep so retarded or broken by by the ideas suggested by a situation to which he is so little accustomed, it is neither the fault nor intention of his good and kind hosts. "As to the large towns, and particularly commercial ones, the means of libertinism there are perhaps more numerous than in Europe, and I hear say that a great many husbands make use of these means. As in Europe, poverty and vanity of dress are the determining motive which lead the women into the paths of prostitution ;-so it is in the great towns of America: and among the married women, those whom the long absence and inat tention of their husbands leave without sure means of subsistence, particularly the wives of seafaring men, are, if not absolutely the only ones, the most frequently accused of this illicit practice. "I ought to add farther, that the condition of the girls who are kept in the houses set apart for prostitution, is viewed by the lower orders of the American people with weak er prepossessions than in Europe, and is looked upon merely in the same manner as every other trade: there are many examples of this description of women, who leave those situations, place themselves as servants, or are married, and make faithful domestics and honest wives. The municipal police connives at this kind of houses; but if the neighbours complain of any exterior scan dal, they are instantly shut, and the inhabitants carried to the house of correction. "The Americans marry young, especially in the country: the oc casion which the young inen, who generally establish themselves very eatly either in some new lands or in songe trade, have for a wife to assist them in their labours, conduces to these early marriages as much as the purity of manners. "In the villages marriages are less frequent and not so hasty, especially since the introduction of luxe ury renders an acquired fortune moré necessary; and the young men hardly feel the necessity of loving, with the project of marriage, till they have already satisfied, or are in the way of satisfying, the more imperious necessity of gaining money. But however good the marriages may be, the wife who dies is readily replaced by another. In the country she is, as in Europe, a nez cessary friend to the management of domestic affairs-she is the soul of the family. In town she is so too. She is an indispensable resource for domestic affairs, while her husband is engaged in his own affairs, as every one is in America; she is an assiduous companion, and a society ever ready to be found in the country where they are no other but that of the family, and where the children soon quit their paternal abode. "To the sketch which I have just given of the manners of the people of the United States, I could add some features more, but which would augment but little the knowledge which I have tried to give of them collectively, or of them ex-. semble: besides, I am pressed to finish this article, which appears too long already. An European coming into the new world, and bringing with bin the need of the usage of the policr attentions of that which he has quitted; be, above all, who brings with him the need of what we call in France the charms of society, which we know so well how to appreciate; of which we know how to par ticipate, and which affunds, us so mank many moments of happiness, such a man will not find himself satisfied in America, and his recollections will be continually sprinkling his life with melancholy. He cannot, if his heart has an occasion for a friend, hope to find there the sweet ness of a constant and atowed: friendship. The inhabitants of the United States have been hitherto too much engaged in their respec tive occupations for the enticements of polished society, to be able to withdraw their attention from them; they have not leisure to consecrate to friendship. S ཆོསཏེ། per to Soch an European ought to have for a long time forgotten Eu rope, in order to live quite happy in America. But if he can readily lose the remembrance of itytoritake with him there the dearest objects of his affection, he will lead dimave mérica happy and tranquil life He will those enjoy the blessing of liberty in the greatest extent which it is possible to desire in any polish. ed country? He will see himself with an active people, easy in their circumstances, and happys Every day will bring him to observe knew progress of this new countrya He will see it every day take a step to wards that strength and greanca which it is called: towards that real independence which is for nation the result of having the means of satisfying itself, a fos MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS and ANECDOTES, illustrative of the CORPORBAL and MENTAL QUALIFICATIONS. DISPOSITIONS, MANNERS of the modern NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. M [From the second Volume of TRAVELS through the STATES of NORIS AMERICA, by ISAAC WELD, Junior, HE Indians, as I have alrea "THE dy remarked, are for the most part, very slightly made, and from a survey of their persons one would imagine that they were much better qualified for any pursuits that required great agility than great bodily strength. This has been the general opinion of most of those who have written on this subject, I am induced, howeyer, from what I have myself been witness to, and from what I have collected from others, to think that the Indians are much more remarkable for their muscular strength thau for heir agility. At different military posts on the frontiers, where this subject has been agitated, races, for the sake of experiment, have frequently been made between soldiers and In dians, and, provided the distance was not great, the Indians have almo always been beaten, but i ju a long race, where strength of muscie wa required, they have without exce fiou been victorious: in leaping al so the Indians have been infal beaten by such of the soldien possessed common activity: ba strength of the Indians is most con spicuous in the carrying of burdens on their backs, they esteem it no thing to walk thirty miles a day for several days together under a load of eight stone, and they will w an entire day under a load without taking any refre hment carry ing burdens they make use of of fraaie, somewhat similar to th walk |