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Almost every Episcopal church in New York has a chapel attached to it, exclusively for the use of the poor. This has been done because it has been found there, just as is the case with us, that in the cities the poor will not use the same churches as the rich. We have in London, in a few cases, attempted to cure the same evil with the same remedy. The remedy, however, has not been fairly applied, for a better class of persons has been allowed to appropriate to themselves a large proportion of the sittings in these chapels.

I will mention here a conclusion to which I was brought by my observation of what was going on in the Episcopal Church in different parts of the Union. Among ministers and congregations there are, just as with us, some High Church, some Low Church, some Ritualistic, and some Broad Church. I think the proportion of those that are High Church is greater with them than with ourselves. The real and important difference between us on this head is, that in the American Church every minister and congregation belongs distinctly to one or other of these parties, and that every Church is worked at high pressure.

One of the leading divines of America whom I met at New York remarked to me that the view taken in America of a minister's duty was, that he was a teacher. He occupied towards the adults of the congregation precisely the same position that the schoolmaster held with respect to the children. What he had to teach was the history and theory of religion; and to show how, as a rule of life, it bore on the ever-varying circumstances of the day. If he could not teach the people these things he was of no use to them.

This ignores altogether that view of the service which makes it an expression of the devotion and of the religious feelings of the congregation itself.

WHY AN UNREASONABLE FANCY WAS ACTED ON--THE HISTORY OF THE CAUSE OF AMERICAN PROGRESSIVENESS--WHAT PASSES IN AMERICA IMPORTANT TO US--THE NORTHERN STATES SOWN BROADCAST WITH HOUSES.

I had had good times at New York, and I was rather eagerly looking forward to good times at Washington, and so was somewhat disinclined to tarry on the way thither. Still I thought it would be unwise to lose an opportunity which offered itself for seeing something of the second city of the Union, which lay upon my route. I therefore stopped at the place, and having secured comfortable quarters at the best hotel , I sallied forth to get some idea of the external appearance of the town. There are occasions, it is said, when imagination overpowers our judgment, and makes fools of us all. I now became, I suppose, an illustration of this process. As I walked along the streets they appeared to me distressingly straight. Their nomenclature, too, was painfully dull and formal. This is a place, I began to think, where men and women profess a form of virtue too exalted for ordinary mortals. Such a city as this appears to be, must be inhabited by people who are not so human as to err, nor so divine as to forgive. If I had not been alone, it would probably have been impossible for so groundless a fancy to have taken possession of my mind. Still I was rational enough, when I had finished my breakfast the next morning, to think of delivering some of my letters of introduction. It seemed best to begin with one addressed to a gentleman whose official position need not now be mentioned. On finding the house I was in search of, I sent in my letter. The gentleman was not himself at home, but his wife opened the letter, and sent out to say that she would see me. I have not the slightest idea that she had any thought of being rude or discourteous. If so, I should not say anything about what passed; for then it would have been the only instance of discourtesy I met with in my travels through the United States, and a single instance of discourtesy would be obliterated by the recollection of helpfulness and kindness everywhere else. It was, however, an instance of precisely what my fancy had been suggesting of the kind of virtue which would be the natural growth of the place. 'Sir,' said the lady, without asking me to be seated, or taking a seat herself, and in a tone and with a manner which proclaimed that she belonged to the order of beings who cannot err, and who regard the disposition to forgive as one of the weaknesses of ordinary mortals: 'Sir, I will not attempt to conceal from you that our feelings are completely changed towards Englishmen. Formerly we used to think that England was always on the side of right. But since we found that, during the late war, she sided with the South, our opinion of England has been reversed; and the reversal of our feelings has accompanied the reversal of our opinion.'

'Madam,' I replied, 'it is true that there were many in England who felt towards the South, just as the schoolboy feels, while he reads Homer's "Iliad," about Hector, when he finds him battling manfully against destiny and a host of heroes. His sympathies, if he has any generosity in his character, are naturally enlisted on behalf of the brave man who is acquitting himself so well, and who must in the end he overwhelmed.'

With these two little speeches the brief interview ended. For the moment my fancies seemed hard and established facts. What could I gain by remaining longer in such a place?--and so I left it by the first train.

After a time the day arrives for another movement, for another winnowing and sifting, far more searching than any of the previous ones. Greater hardihood and enterprise are needed than were ever called for in any of their past movements. The sea has now to be crossed--a new form of danger to be confronted. Those who venture in their open and half-open boats on this great enterprise, to establish a new home for themselves on the other side of the storm-swept waste of waters, must be men who know no fear, and in whom the instinct of moving onward is irrepressible. The result of this supreme effort is the great English nation--the product of all that is best in Angles, Jutes, Saxons, Danes, and Northmen. Such was the long process by which the men were formed who fought at Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt; at Blenheim, and Ramilies, and Malplaquet; at Trafalgar, and at Waterloo; on the Ganges, the Nile, and the St. Lawrence; who produced a Bacon, a Shakespeare, and a Newton; who first tried men by their peers, and first governed themselves by their representatives; who broke the papal yoke, and established freedom of religion, of speech, of the press, and of commerce. In their little island they proved themselves the grandest race the world had seen.

But the great drama was not yet complete. The original impulse had ever been gaining strength, and now appeared to culminate. But it was not so. One more effort had to be made. In grandeur and hardihood it transcended all that had yet been achieved. Not a narrow sea, but the broad Atlantic had to be crossed; not a small island, but a new world had to be occupied. The English race must itself be sifted, and none but those who have nerve as firm as that of the Pilgrim Fathers, and the most active instinct of progression, can take part in this mighty enterprise. And so it comes to pass that America is peopled with that which is most enterprising and progressive in that race in which these qualities had been most highly developed. In these respects she receives the cream of the cream, the purest selection of that which was most select.

The long series is now completed. The circuit of the world has been made. The hardy, the inventive, the go-ahead American looks out on the Pacific and towards that side of the old continent from which his first ancestors started on the long career which in his person is now consummated.

The like of this has not been done by any other race of men, or in any other part of the world. In human history it is something quite unique. It is the main stream in the history of man. All other series of events--as, for instance, that which resulted in the culture of mind in Greece, and that which resulted in the empire of Rome--only appear to have purpose and value when viewed in connection with it, or rather as subsidiary to it. Their true place in history is that of affluents to this main stream. And even Christianity itself, which so loudly proclaims its indifference to all national or ethnological distinctions, and its equal regard for every branch of the human family, while it has been rejected by the race to which it was first revealed, has become to the more advanced parts of the Teutonic race, in a greater degree than to any other people, their educator and their strength.

A moment's comparison of the tone in which we write and speak about America with the tone in which we write and speak about other countries, and of the feelings with which we regard what is passing there with the feelings with which we regard what is passing elsewhere, will show that we look upon American events as fraught with a greater amount of good and of evil to ourselves, than what is happening in all the world besides. Much, for instance, has of late been said and written about what is called the resurrection of Italy, but who expects from that resurrection anything that will affect either the hopes or the fears of mankind? Everybody, however, feels that the future of humanity will be greatly influenced by, and in no small degree depend upon, what is going on in America. Or if we turn to that country which has hitherto been more influential than any other in disturbing, or, which it claims as its right, of directing the course of events on the Continent of Europe, we do not find any causes now in operation which we can suppose likely to result in improving the material circumstances of the French petty proprietors, that is, of the bulk of the French nation, or in giving them more freedom and intellectual energy than they at present possess. The form and character of their government, their church, the division of property that obtains among them, the accepted arrangements and spirit of society, all tend to immobility. In America everyone understands that the stream is all the other way. Mental activity is universal. Public opinion is the opinion of those who in the open arena of public discussion are able to influence the greatest number; and public opinion sweeps away every obstruction.

The aspect of the country between Philadelphia and Baltimore took me very much by surprise, as I suppose it would anyone whose previous travels had been confined to Europe. I had imagined that old and densely peopled countries, like England and France, must necessarily present to the eye of the traveller an appearance of their being more closely inhabited than a new country like America. But the very reverse of this is the case, and most strikingly so. All the way from Philadelphia to Baltimore I found the country sown with houses. This arises from the fact that every 100 or 150 acres belong to a separate proprietor who has his house upon his small farm, which he cultivates with his own hands and the assistance of his family. As far as the eye can range over the country you see these white farmhouses. And you may now see them all the way from New York to Omaha on the Missouri, 500 miles beyond Chicago, and 1,500 from New York. The traveller in the United States generally derives his idea of the wealth of the people from what he sees in the towns. The rapidity of their growth, the amount of business done in them, the dimensions of their shops, the goodly appearance of the houses of their merchants, justify him in supposing that the Americans are a very wealthy people. But all this wealth of the towns is in fact only a measure of the wealth of the country. The towns become wealthy and flourishing in proportion to the wealth of the country. These tens of myriads, then, of farmhouses, each of which is evidently the home of a well-to-do family, and of which one is never out of sight in the settled districts of the North, are the truest and most interesting indications of the nature and of the amount of the riches of the United States.

THE LOCOMOTIVE IN THE STREETS--IN BALTIMORE PUBLIC OPINION FIRST BECOMES SOUTHERN--GROWTH AND PROSPECTS OF BALTIMORE--ON TRADING POLITICIANS AND ILL WILL TO ENGLAND--WHY AN AMERICAN TUTOR THOUGHT NECESSARY FOR AN ENGLISHMAN--REPUDIATION--THE MASSES AND MIDDLE CLASSES IN FAVOUR OF IT--ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF IT--AN ARGUMENT USED 2,000 MILES FROM WALL STREET--WHY REPUBLICANS BOUND TO REPUDIATE--AMERICANS ADDICTED TO ABSTRACT REASONING--INSTANCES.

We very often find a difficulty in getting our horses to take quietly the sound of a railway train in motion. It was at Baltimore that I first saw the locomotive dragging a train along the main street of a city. All the precaution that was taken was merely to ring a bell on the top of the engine to warn foot-passengers and drivers of carriages. Many horses were passed, and many crossed the moving train, but I did not observe that in any instance they took the least notice of it. I afterwards saw the same arrangement at Chicago, at New York, and at many other places, and did not anywhere hear that accidents resulted from it.

Baltimore was the first place in which I found the general sentiment strongly Southern. Balls and bazaars were being got up, while I was there, for the openly avowed purpose of collecting funds to support those families in the South which had been reduced to poverty by the late war. This made me feel as if I were among another people; for in the North I had heard the South spoken of very vindictively, as 'that they needed more suffering to take their pride out of them;' and 'that nothing could be done with the South till the present proprietors had all been swept away, and Northern men substituted for them.' I am not aware, however, that I ever heard any remarks of this kind made by persons whom we should describe as of the upper class.

There has been a large emigration to Baltimore, from the States of the late Southern Confederacy, of people who would not live under negro domination as long as they had the means of living elsewhere. Many Northern men also had lately settled there, in expectation that the business of the place would rapidly increase. As it has a fine harbour, and the development of the railway system is now connecting it with the whole of the interior, there appears to be no reason why it should not, at no very distant day, become a dangerous rival of Philadelphia and even of New York. I understood that as many as 4,000 houses were built here in the last twelve months.

'Sir,' said a Maryland planter to me, 'many Americans, of whom I am one, think that the English government is the best in the world. No system of government which, like ours, can breed nothing better than trading politicians, can be either generous or just; and must sooner or later fall, overwhelmed by the hatred of some and the contempt of other sections of the community.' The same gentleman was of opinion that the animosity felt towards England after the revolutionary war had now almost died out among native-born Americans; for instance, there is, he said, not one Fenian lodge in the whole of New England. Whatever ill-will there may be existing at present originates in the Irish, and radiates from them, if in any instances it has spread beyond them. An Englishman who had been long settled in America, and who took part in the conversation, thought differently. He was of opinion, that at all events a strong prejudice existed in the minds of native-born Americans against the English.

While at dinner at my hotel, a gentleman who was seated opposite to me--he was one of the few stout men, I believe the only one, I saw in America--accosted me with the remark 'that he could not believe what he understood me to say, that I had not yet been a month in the country, because'--for this was his reason--'I spoke the language so well. Or if I am to believe it,' he went on, 'I suppose you had an American tutor to teach you our language.' I assured him that he had understood me rightly, and that I had never had the advantage of the instruction he considered necessary, nor was there such a great difference between the language of America and that of England as to make Englishmen feel the need of American tutors. 'That, sir,' he replied, 'is by no means in accordance with my experience. I have myself conversed with Englishmen, and found their language very unlike our own. They seldom know where to use and where not to use the initial H. And their language is full of ungrammatical and vulgar expressions, from which ours is entirely free.'

This gentleman's mistake can be easily explained; and the explanation will show that it is one into which an American may very possibly fall. It is a remarkable fact that the English spoken in America is not only very pure, but also is spoken with equal purity by all classes. This in some measure, of course, results from the success of their educational efforts, and from the fact which arises out of it that they are, almost to a man, a nation of readers. But not only is it the same language without vulgarisms, in the mouths of all classes, but it is the same language without any dialectical differences over the whole continent. The language in every man's mouth is that of literature and of society; spoken at San Francisco just as it is spoken at New York, and on the Gulf of Mexico just as on the great lakes. It is even the language of the negroes in the towns. There is nothing resembling this in Europe, where every county, as in England, or every province and canton, has a different dialect. Of this the philological observer I was dining with was ignorant. He only knew that all Americans spoke uniformly one dialect. He naturally therefore supposed that all Englishmen must do the same; and as his acquaintance with Englishmen was confined to poor immigrants, he imagined that their dialect was the language of all Englishmen.

Often, in parts of the country most remote from each other, in wooden shanties and the poorest huts, I had this interesting fact of the purity and identity of the language of the Americans forced on my attention. And at such times I thought, not without some feelings of shame and sorrow, of the wretched vocabulary, consisting of not more than three or four hundred words, and those often ungrammatically used, and always more or less mispronounced, of our honest and hard-working peasantry. As language is the vehicle of ideas, these poor fellows have not been fairly used, and are being deprived of a large portion of the rich intellectual patrimony of Englishmen.

Before I went to America, I felt as certain as one can feel about any future event, that the Americans would pay every cent of their debt. I think still they possibly may. For their own sakes and for the honour of the race I hope they will. But I am not now so positive on this point as I was. Wherever it was allowable in conversation, I introduced the subject of the debt. At first, to my surprise , I never met a single person in railway cars, or in hotels, who was in favour of complete payment. Many were in favour of complete repudiation; but far the greater number advocated the plan of immediate payment, by an issue to the public creditors of, as I heard it sometimes put, cartloads of greenbacks. This, of course, would not be very far from repudiation pure and simple: though nominally a payment in full, it would really be only the payment of a few shillings in the pound, as so large an issue would enormously depreciate the value of the greenbacks. This is the plan of Mr. Pendleton of Ohio, who is now the democratic candidate for the next presidency. It must therefore be approved generally by his supporters. The people, at a knowledge of whose sentiments I arrived in the way I have just mentioned, belonged chiefly, I suppose, to the class of storekeepers and travelling traders; though I have sometimes heard persons whose position I knew was better announce the same opinions. On the other hand, however, I never met with any flourishing and respectable merchant, and I may almost say with anyone whom we should describe as belonging to the upper class of society, who admitted for a moment the possibility of repudiation in any form. It seems, then, that in forecasting the probabilities of this question, the class that has numbers on its side must be regarded as pitted against the class that has on its side cultivation, intelligence, and wealth. But even from these few, some, as was once observed to me, ought probably to be discounted; because it is possible that some may be making a cheap profession of honesty, which they know will not, and have no wish ever should, be acted on. And the more certain they may feel of ultimate repudiation, the louder they may declare themselves in favour of payment. The South, whenever it shall have resumed its place in the councils of the Union, will, as most people seem to think, be in favour of the use of the sponge; for how can people be expected to tax themselves to pay for what was the instrument of their humiliation, conquest, and ruin? The question, then, between payment and repudiation, complete or partial, cannot now be decided so clearly and peremptorily against the latter as one could wish.

Of course the argument most commonly used against payment is, that it necessitates such a burden of taxation as is no longer tolerable, that it is impoverishing the whole community, destroying both the home and the foreign trade, and pressing with peculiar and insupportable weight on the humbler classes.

Again, it is urged by many that the amount of their taxation is the one undoubted cause, both of the cost and of the corruption of their government. If they go back to their old amount of taxation, there will be no work for, and, what will be more to the purpose, no funds to maintain, these armies of official bloodsuckers.

I found, too, that there was floating before the minds of some an entrancing vision of what would be the wealth of the country if production were cheapened and trade revived, and if everybody had twice as much money to spend as at present.

Another argument I frequently heard, was made to rest on an attempt to separate in idea the bondholders and public creditors of all kinds from the people; and while it spoke of them as an extremely wealthy class, living in luxury, and doing nothing , it suggested the idea that their wealth was derived from the burdens, that is to say, the sufferings, of the masses of the people, who, all the while, were struggling very hard for a bare subsistence. The object of this comparison is to make the bondholder an object of odium, and the tax-payers of the humbler classes objects of commiseration, in the hope that by so doing a rankling sense of injustice might be implanted in the breast of the latter.

At an hotel in a town on the very frontiers of civilisation, two thousand miles away from Wall Street, I heard the question of 'to pay or not to pay' debated, and the conclusion in favour of the latter alternative was clinched by the proof of the impossibility of paying. The speaker was an ex-judge, and was a man who spoke and reasoned well,--I mean in such a way as to carry his hearers along with him. His argument on this point was very concise. 'Just before the war,' his words were, 'the Government of the United States published a return, collected by its own officers, of the value of all the property of the people of the United States. The correctness of this return is unquestioned. We know from it both the saleable value of the property of the people and the annual income of that property. The property of the whole people is for purposes of taxation a single estate, but the debt we have incurred, plus the capital represented by our ordinary taxation, is greater in amount than the value of the whole of the property of the people of the United States; and the interest to be paid on the debt, plus the taxation required for other purposes, general and local, is greater than the income of the property of the whole people. And as no private estate can carry a debt greater in amount than the value of the estate, so no country can bear burdens that represent a property, if they were capitalised, greater than the property of the country, and an annual amount of taxation greater than the income of that property. I will not say, then, that the debt must be repudiated, for that would imply that we had some option in the matter; I will only say that it is impossible that it should be paid, either capital or interest. The estate can't do it. It is an impossibility.' Both the statements of this argument and the inference drawn from them appeared to the audience unquestionable. There was a murmur of assent, and conviction was expressed on every face.

I do not mean that a well-educated American would be at all more disposed to accept this kind of argument than a well-educated Englishman, but that it goes down with multitudes of Americans who have from their youth up had very little time for acquiring any knowledge but that of their business, yet feel themselves called on by the circumstances of American life to form and express opinions on almost every subject; and this is a call to which few are slow in responding.

WASHINGTON--STYLE OF SPEAKING IN CONGRESS--CONGRESS NO NURSERY FOR STATESMEN--SOCIETY IN WASHINGTON--EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN WASHINGTON--SOME OPINIONS OF AN AMERICAN BISHOP--COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE--USE OF THE DEPARTMENT--ITS MUSEUM GIVES AN IDEA OF THE VASTNESS OF THE COUNTRY--ITS NATURAL ADVANTAGES--WHAT VARIETY OF PRODUCTIONS HAS DONE FOR ENGLAND WILL BE REPEATED IN AMERICA--SPECIAL EXCELLENCE OF CALIFORNIAN PRODUCTIONS--THE CALIFORNIAN HIMSELF--CALIFORNIA COMPARED WITH ITALY--WHY COLOURED WAITERS PREFERABLE TO WHITE--NEGRO FUNERAL WITH MASONIC HONOURS--AMERICAN BIRDS' NESTS--BILL FOR MAKING EDUCATION COMPULSORY--COLOURED SCHOOLS--COMPARATIVE INTELLIGENCE OF THE NEGRO--VULGAR ERRORS ABOUT AMERICANS--NIGHT ATTENDANTS AT HOTEL READ 'OLIVER TWIST'--CAPITOL--TREASURY--PATENT OFFICE--WHAT OUR DIPLOMACY IN AMERICA SHOULD BE--USE OF ICED WATER.

While at Washington I was frequently present at the debates in both Houses. I was not much impressed by the style of speaking either in the Senate or in the Chamber of Representatives. I heard much good common sense, and many of the attacks and defences which are necessary in party warfare, but I heard no eloquence, and nothing even that on this side we should call good speaking. Where eloquence was attempted, it seemed to me to result in declamation. I went away with the idea that both senators and representatives spoke, not like persons who were in the habit of addressing cultivated audiences, but whose style had been formed by the practice of canvassing-speeches and mob-oratory.

The most striking difference between our parliamentary system and the American Congress is, that ours is as perfect a school as is conceivable for statesmanship, while theirs can never be anything of the kind, except accidentally and in a very slight degree. With us a man who is destined for public life enters Parliament while still young. If there is anything in him, he is generally able to retain his seat. Thus he is all his life through learning the routine of administrative practice and the science of statesmanship. All along every word he utters is set down in black and white, to stand in evidence for or against him, and to be weighed by the House and by the public. And it is the opinion of the House and public, thus formed, that assigns him his place in the hierarchy of party. If he is capable of becoming a statesman, with time and training he becomes one. If the House and the country know that he has shown himself one of the ablest men of his party, high office is his right. He has to thank no one for it but himself. If he has proved himself the ablest man of his party, the first place is his. He has established his claim to it in the face of the world. Nothing of this kind goes on in the American Congress. It may be said to have no personal continuity. A large proportion of Congress--and this happens every fourth year--are new men, thrown up to the surface by the action of local political causes in their respective States; and most of these new men will themselves be superseded by other new men in the ensuing Congress. The idea of forming statesmen does not at all enter into the aim of the American Congress; it hardly seems to regard itself as standing in need of statesmanship, wherever and however acquired. It is rather a machine for ascertaining and carrying out the opinions of the people. A successful local politician, be he a grocer or a shoemaker, a rail-splitter or a tailor, will find his way into the Senate.

On attending morning service at the Church of the Epiphany at Washington, I found on the seat a printed paper containing a letter from the congregation to the minister, announcing that they begged that for the future he would consent to receive an increase to his salary, raising it to ?800 a year; and one from the minister to the congregation, thanking them for their liberality. In addition to this salary they had presented him with a furnished house.

Washington, with a population of 120,000, has in the city eight Episcopal churches, and four in the suburb of George Town. There were when I was there two additional congregations in process of formation. At that time they were meeting in an upper room, but it was expected that they would soon be strong enough to build churches for themselves, and to become fully organised. An effort is being made to obtain a bishop for the district of Columbia, and, if possible, to get the consent of the bishops to his being made an archbishop and metropolitan of the American Church.

At the service I attended, there was not a seat vacant in the Church of the Epiphany; but they were all filled with well-dressed persons. In the afternoon of the same Sunday I went to the church of St. John's, to be present at a Bible class held by the Adjutant-General of the United States army, a man whom any church might be thankful to have among its members, and to hear the catechising conducted by the rector. The children catechised were those of the upper class, for here also I found no ill-dressed people among the congregation. In the evening I went to Trinity Church, where I was told I should see a congregation of the humbler classes. I heard a clergyman conduct the service and preach, who I thought possessed just the qualities which would adapt him for obtaining an influence over those classes, but I saw very few of them in the church.

As I am not aware that any bishop of the American Episcopal Church was at Washington while I was there, I will take this opportunity for offering to the consideration of English Churchmen some remarks that were made to me elsewhere by an American bishop. I run the risk of doing this without permission, because I believe that here at home we are far too ignorant of, not to say indifferent about, what is passing in the minds and hearts too of our American brother-churchmen. He thought that the Episcopal Church in America was the natural, or at all events now the chief, bond of union between the old country and the United States. With very few exceptions, and they are exceptions that are not worth considering, the Episcopalians cherish the recollections of the old country most fondly; whereas it is notorious that the American churches which are connected with English dissent are more or less actuated by feelings, if not of animosity, yet certainly of coldness towards the old country.

The Episcopal Church is a great power in the United States, and is more respected, and more influential in forming and guiding public opinion than even the government and legislature. Its members comprise the great bulk of the most refined and educated class in the country. Those who join us from that class come to us because they regard Romanism as a religion not for men, but only for women and children, while they look upon the other churches as having little devotion and less stability.

The Episcopal Church was opposed to the late war, and though pressure was put upon it, it would not give in to the fierce mania of the moment. This was the case in both sections.

The clergy of the different churches, but more particularly of the Episcopal Church, are, in the existing state of things on this continent, the natural and only aristocracy. The lawyers come next. The politicians are nowhere. The American people have had plenty of time and opportunities enough for weighing the latter, and have found them wanting in everything for which man respects his fellow-man: all the while their respect for the clergy of the Episcopal Church has constantly been becoming deeper.

The five Yankee States, with the exception of Connecticut, which is the most Episcopal State in the Union, are rapidly becoming Unitarian and Universalist. This in some degree accounts for the equivocal character of their acuteness, and for their singular want of magnanimity.

When he was in England, he was struck with the fact that the members of the Government took no notice of the American bishops. In this they showed their ignorance of the public mind in America. They also showed their disregard of the advance of the church to which they profess to belong. He did not suppose they neglected them because they were afraid of giving offence to the other religions communities of America, but simply because they were ignorant about America, and careless about their own church.

The Americans, being a practical people, have established, in connection with the general government at Washington, a department of agriculture, presided over by a commissioner. One of the objects of this department is to form a perfect museum of the agriculture of the United States. This is the act of a practical people, because as America is a new country, in the process of settlement, there must always be immigrants starting, some for one locality and some for another, who are in need of information as to what kinds or varieties of grain, vegetables, and fruit would be most suitable for the soil and climate of their proposed new home; and as to the best methods of cultivation for each crop; and what will be the difficulties they will have to contend with, and what have been ascertained to be the best remedies for these evils. It is possible that each year the value of the information distributed throughout the Union by this department may be many times greater than the cost of the department. If so, the cost is a small price to pay for a very great advantage.

My reason, however, for mentioning this museum of agriculture, is that it contributes very much towards making distinct in one's mind the idea of the vast extent of the territory of the United States, and its great range of climate. This it does by ocular demonstration. Here are collected into one view specimens of the agricultural and horticultural produce of every State in the Union, from Maine to Florida, and from Massachusetts to California. These specimens range through all the products of the temperate regions of the earth, and descend far down into the list of the products of tropical climes. All the cereals we grow in this country, Indian corn in many varieties, the grape, every description of European fruit--in some cases, as in that of the apple, greatly improved by its transference to America--tobacco, rice, the sweet potato, the sugar-cane, the orange, the banana, ending with the cocoa-nut of the South of Florida.

Here is a region larger than the whole of Europe, which if it were transferred to the part of the globe which Europe occupies, only retaining its latitude, would reach down to the Sahara of Africa, covering the whole of the Mediterranean. This vast territory contains an inland navigation which is the grandest in the world, and has in no way taxed the labour of man. From its extremest point at the north, at the head of the navigable stream of the Missouri, to its southern point at New Orleans, there is an open course of three thousand miles without a single break, a distance as great as the space which separates London from Timbuctoo, or from Bokhara. And this main artery of communication, the value of which is enhanced a thousand fold by the fact that it runs from north to south, enabling the produce of so many climes to be exchanged, instead of running along the same line of latitude, where there would be little or nothing to exchange, is supplemented on the right and left by 23,000 miles more of the natural navigation of its great affluents. And the vast valley which this system of rivers opens to traffic and travel is so extensive and fertile that it could support the whole population of Europe, and probably will support some day as large a population in far greater material well-being, and with far more highly cultivated intelligence.

If everything throughout this vast territory had been arranged by the most intelligent of mankind, with a view solely to the convenience of its inhabitants, we cannot imagine how it could have been made to contribute to those ends in a higher degree than it does at present. Not only is it capable of producing to a practically unlimited extent every plant that man cultivates, but it is also inexhaustibly rich in the precious and the useful metals, and in mineral fuel. The configuration too of the continent is such as to aid man in many ways in subduing and utilising the soil, for on each side of the grand central valley rises a long range of mountains, the one descending to the Pacific, the other to the Atlantic, which give birth to multitudes of rivers, which connect these vast districts with the two oceans, and supply harbours for carrying on intercourse with all the world.

One of the causes that has most contributed to the wealth and commercial aptitude of the inhabitants of the old country is, that the productions of no two districts in it are precisely similar. The districts, for instance, that breed cattle and sheep are not always those that fatten them, and never those that consume them. So with cereals, one district is good for wheat, another for barley, another for oats, another for beans and peas. Fish that is taken on the coast is consumed in the interior. A similar remark may be made of the various kinds of minerals with which different parts of the island have been enriched. Even the granite of Scotland is wanted in London for its streets. Every town must get its flag-stones from a distance. Each kind of manufacture has certain requirements which render one district more suitable for it than another; so that for the article produced in each manufacturing locality there must be trade between that locality and all others. Hence it comes about that there is a larger interchange of home productions in this country than in any other in the world. In this respect compare Italy with ourselves. All its districts have much the same productions; the result of which is the minimum of home trade. How enormous must be the differences which must result to Italy and ourselves from this dissimilarity in our respective circumstances! I apply this to the United States of America. The cause which has contributed so much to make us wealthy, intelligent, and commercial, is to be found in the United States--with the difference, however, that what has been done here on a very small scale, is there done, and has yet to be done, on an enormous scale. Their variety of products is far greater than ours, and will have to be exchanged to far greater amounts, and so will employ a proportionately greater number of agents. What a vast traffic will it be when the wheat consumed throughout the Union shall be supplied by what are now the North-western States and California, and the mutton and beef shall be supplied by the Western prairies, and the pork by the maize-growing States, and the various metals, precious and useful, and the different forms of manufacture, each by different localities to all the rest!

This Museum of Agriculture and Horticulture gives one the means of comparing the size and quality of the fruits, vegetables, and cereals grown in different parts of the Union. The effects of climate and soil are, as might have been expected, very perceptible. A variety of the apple, for instance, that produces very large and good fruit in Illinois and Michigan, will deteriorate as one goes farther south, till at last it becomes not worth cultivating; while one sees specimens of other varieties, which their nature adapts to the sunnier States. The variety and excellence of the produce of the whole country is very striking, for everywhere in the United States there is light and heat enough and to spare; but what strikes one most of all is, the peculiar and extraordinary excellence of everything that comes from California; for instance, the pear La Belle Angevine, without any of the minute attention that is bestowed on its culture in France, very commonly attains the almost incredible weight of between three and four pounds. And all other kinds of fruit, and every kind of vegetable, grow in the same luxuriant manner. This is something that must be seen to be believed; but when seen, it enables one to understand how in the short space of twenty years this State has passed from an uninhabited wilderness to one of the richest and most powerful States in the Union. With such a climate and soil, to say nothing of its enormous mineral wealth, 'it is bound,' to use the local word, to leave New York, and Pennsylvania, and all the old leading States of the Union far behind, and, indeed, every other part of the world, whether new or old.

One cannot become acquainted with half-a-dozen Californians without seeing that man himself has been improved in this wonder-working region--the finest, not only that the Anglo-Saxon race, but that any race of man has ever inhabited. There is a quickness and determination of mind, and a calmness of manner, a quickness of eye and a cleanness of limb about a Californian that you cannot but notice. They have in a thousand ways shown enterprise which astonishes even Americans themselves. But in nothing have they shown it to such an incredible degree as in their agriculture. Their wines are of many kinds, as may be seen in this museum, and some of them are very good. Their garden produce is quite unrivalled. But I will only mention what they have done in the culture of wheat. Twenty years ago there was no agriculture in this State. Twenty years are not time enough here to enable us to make up our minds as to whether we will use the steam-plough. But in these twenty years the clear-sighted and undaunted Californian has learnt how to grow enough wheat to feed the inhabitants of his own State, and in a great degree of the neighbouring States of Oregon and Washington, and the whole population of our British Columbia. And not content with this, he has undertaken the supply of Chili and Peru, and the other republics on the seaboard of the Eastern Pacific. This comes to a great deal--to what is almost beyond belief. To the Californian, however, it is nothing at all. He has for several years been sending wheat the length of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans to England. Eight years ago, I saw cargoes of Californian wheat selling at a profit in Liverpool. And last year he capped even this, for he sent both flour and wheat to New York, selling the former at eleven dollars a barrel--that is, two dollars a barrel cheaper than the great millers of Richmond can afford to lay it down at, whose mills are, as it were, just outside the gates of New York. And the latter they sold at a price which, had there been enough of it, would have completely excluded Chicago and the great wheat-producing States of the North-west from the market, and so would have swept away, at a single stroke, the chief part of the business of the great Erie Canal.

Any little change at our own door appears great to us, while the mightiest changes at a distance affect us little: if, however, we are disposed to weigh events in accordance with their intrinsic and real importance, we might compare the rising of the star of this extraordinary community with the lately recovered unity and independence of Italy, which has of late engrossed so much of our attention and interest. California at the present moment contains a population of between six and seven hundred thousand souls--Italy one of twenty-four millions. But if the old Nation and the new State were to try their strength against one another, I believe that this handful of keen-witted and intrepid men would go just where they pleased, and do just what they pleased in any part of Italy; while the Italians, however much of their strength they might put forth, would find themselves quite unable to do anything of the kind with California. How much would a Californian population of twenty-four millions make of Italy! They would have no armies of officials, no brigandage, no debt; their ships would sail on every sea; their influence would be felt all over Europe and throughout the world.

At Washington, as at Philadelphia and Baltimore, I found the waiters at the hotels were coloured men. I very much preferred this to having the white waiters I had fallen in with at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York: the latter, I thought, felt the degradation of their position. In America, waiting in hotels and railway cars, being domestic servants, and keeping barbers' shops, are the only employments, with the exception of field-labour in the South, which are really left open to the coloured race. For a white man, therefore, to become a waiter at an hotel, is to sink himself to the level of the black. It is impossible to conceive a native American placing himself in such a situation. It is too poor an employment for him; it is of a servile character; and it is one which, in public opinion and by general practice, has been assigned to the African. Even here, in England, one pities the man whom circumstances have made a footman--when one sees the hosts of men occupied in this way in London and elsewhere, and compares what they are, and their sad prospects, with the fine manly fellows they might have been, and the independence they might have secured for themselves and their children in Canada, the Western States, Brazil, on the Rio Plata, in Natal, Australia or New Zealand, or in other places where the climate is fine, land a drug, and the only thing wanted is men who can work as Englishmen and their descendants alone can and do. The feelings, however, of commiseration with which in England we regard the man whom circumstances have placed in such a position, become in America dashed with somewhat of contempt for the whites who voluntarily place themselves in it. One does not feel in the least degree in this way towards the coloured waiters. It is not in the nature of the black that he should ever work hard enough to cultivate the soil, where the climate is such that the European is capable of labouring in it. He has it not in him to become, and never has become, a settler. One cannot imagine half-a-dozen negroes voluntarily submitting for half-a-dozen years to the incessant toil--the ploughing, the sowing, the weeding, the harvesting, the threshing, the cattle-tending of a Northern farm. It is not only that they are constitutionally lazy, but that they are also of too volatile a disposition for such a life. Nature, however, has fitted them for such employments as domestic service and waiting in hotels. In their case there is an obvious congruity between the employment and the person. When you thank the willing and cheerful black for changing your plate, or ministering in some way to your personal wants, and get in return the almost universal 'Vara welcome,' you do not feel in the slightest degree that a good and likely man is being wasted and degraded just for the promotion of your own comfort and convenience.

Wherever in the South I mentioned this negro funeral, the same remark was made on the Freemasonry of the negroes. Everyone professed himself ignorant of how the negroes had come by it. No one knew who had admitted them; and no one would acknowledge them as brother-Masons.

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