young ladies).  They appear to me to have clear heads and active intellects; are more ignorant on subjects that are only of conventional value, than on such as are of intrinsic importance; but there is no charm, no grace in their conversation.  I very seldom during my whole stay in the country heard a sentence elegantly turned, and correctly pronounced from the lips of an American.  There is always something either in the expression or the accent that jars the feelings and shocks the taste.

I will not pretend to decide whether man is better or worse off for requiring refinement in the manners and customs of the society that surrounds him, and for being incapable of enjoyment without them; but in America that polish which removes the coarser and rougher parts of our nature is unknown and undreamed of.  There is much substantial comfort, and some display in the larger cities; in many of the more obvious features they are as Paris or as London, being all large assemblies of active and intelligent human beings—­but yet they are wonderfully unlike in nearly all their moral features.  Now God forbid that any reasonable American, (of whom there are so many millions), should ever come to ask me what I mean; I should find it very difficult, nay, perhaps, utterly impossible, to explain myself; but, on the other hand, no European who has visited the Union, will find the least difficulty in understanding me.  I am in no way competent to judge of the political institutions of America; and if I should occasionally make an observation on their effects, as they meet my superficial glance, they will be made in the spirit, and with the feeling of a woman, who is apt to tell what her first impressions may be, but unapt to reason back from effects to their causes.  Such observations, if they be unworthy of much attention, are also obnoxious to little reproof:  but there are points of national peculiarity of which women may judge as ably as men,—­all that constitutes the external of society may be fairly trusted to us.

Captain Hall, when asked what appeared to him to constitute the greatest difference between England and America, replied, like a gallant sailor, “the want of loyalty.”  Were the same question put to me, I should answer, “the want of refinement.”

Were Americans, indeed, disposed to assume the plain unpretending deportment of the Switzer in the days of his picturesque simplicity, (when, however, he never chewed tobacco), it would be in bad taste to censure him; but this is not the case.  Jonathan will be a fine gentleman, but it must be in his own way.  Is he not a free-born American?  Jonathan, however, must remember, that if he will challenge competition with the old world, the old world will now and then look out to see how he supports his pretensions.