After a sound sleep of two or three hours, I rose and went to the drawing-room. A lady was in it, seated in a way to allow me to see no more than a small part of her side-face. In that little, I saw the countenance of your aunt's family. It was the sister whom we had never seen, and who had hastened out of Hertfordshire to meet us. There are obvious reasons why such a subject cannot be treated in this letter, but the study of two sisters who had been educated, the one in England and the other in America, who possessed so much in common, and yet, who were separated by so much that was not in common, was to me a matter of singular interest. It showed me, at a glance, the manner in which the distinctive moral and physical features of nations are formed; the points of resemblance being just sufficient to render the points of difference more obvious.
A new and nearer route to Netley had been discovered during my absence, and our unpractised Americans had done little else than admire ruins for the past week. The European who comes to America plunges into the virgin forest with wonder and delight; while the American who goes to Europe finds his greatest pleasure, at first, in hunting up the memorials of the past. Each is in quest of novelty, and is burning with the desire to gaze at objects of which he has often read.
The steam-boat made but one or two voyages a week between Southampton and Havre, and we were obliged to wait a day or two for the next trip. The intervening time was passed in the manner just named. Every place of any importance in England has some work or other written on the subject of its history, its beauties, and its monuments. It is lucky to escape a folio. Our works on Southampton, (which are of moderate dimensions, however,) spoke of some Roman remains in the neighbourhood. The spot was found, and, although the imagination was of greater use than common in following the author's description, we stood on the spot with a species of antiquarian awe.
Southampton had formerly been a port of some importance. Many of the expeditions sent against France embarked here, and the town had once been well fortified, for the warfare of the period. A good deal of the old wall remains. All of this was industriously traced out; while the bow-windows, long passages, and old maids, found no favour in our eyes.
One simple and touching memorial I well remember. There is a ferry between the town and the grounds near Netley Abbey. A lady had caught a cold, which terminated in death, in consequence of waiting on the shore, during a storm, for the arrival of a boat. To protect others from a similar calamity, she had ordered a very suitable defence against the weather to be built on the fatal spot, and to be kept in repair for ever. The structure is entirely of stone, small and exceedingly simple and ingenious. The ground plan is that of a Greek cross. On this foundation are reared four walls, which, of course, cross each other in the centre at right angles. A little above the height of a man, the whole is amply roofed. Let the wind blow which way it will, you perceive there is always shelter. There is no external wall, and the diameter of the whole does not exceed ten feet, if it be as much. This little work is exceedingly English, and it is just as unlike anything American as possible. It has its origin in benevolence, is original in the idea, and it is picturesque. We might accomplish the benevolence, but it would be of a more public character: the picturesque is a thing of which we hardly know the meaning; and as for the originality, the dread of doing anything different from his neighbour would effectually prevent an American from erecting such a shelter; even charity with us being subject to the control of the general voice. On the other hand, what a clever expedient would have been devised, in the first instance, in America, to get across the ferry without taking cold! All these little peculiarities have an intimate connexion with national character and national habits. The desire to be independent and original causes a multitude of silly things to be invented here, while the apprehension of doing anything different from those around them causes a multitude of silly things to be perpetuated in America; and yet we are children of the same parents! When profit is in view, we have but one soul and that is certainly inventive enough; but when money has been made, and is to be spent, we really do not seem to know how to set about it, except by routine.
LETTER IV.
Quit England.—Approach to France.—Havre.—Our Reception there.—Female
Commissionnaire.—Clamour of Drums.—Port of Havre.—Projected
Enterprize.—American Enterprize.—Steam-boat
Excursion.—Honfleur.—Rouen.—French Exaction.—American
Porters.—Rouen Cathedral.—Our Cicerone.—A Diligence.—Picturesque
Road.—European Peasantry.—Aspect of the Country.—Church at
Louviers.—Village near Vernon.—Rosny.—Mantes.—Bourbon Magnificence.
—Approach to Paris—Enter Paris.
To R. COOPER, ESQ., COOPERSTOWN.
On quitting England, we embarked from the very strand where Henry V. embarked for the fruitless field of Agincourt. A fearful rumour had gone abroad that the Camilla (the steam-boat) had been shorn of a wing, and there were many rueful faces in the boat that took us off to the vessel. In plainer speech, one of the boilers was out of order, and the passage was to be made with just half the usual propelling power. At that season, or indeed at any season, the only probable consequence was loss of time. With a strong head-wind, it is true, the Camilla might have been compelled to return; but this might also have happened with the use of both the boilers.
Our adventurers did not see things in this light. The division of employments, which produces prices so cheap and good, makes bad travellers. Our boat's cargo embarked with fear and trembling, and "She has but one boiler!" passed from mouth to mouth amid ominous faces. A bachelor-looking personage, of about fifty, with his person well swaddled in July, declared in a loud voice, that we were "all going on board to be drowned." This startled A——, who, having full faith in my nautical experience, asked what we were to think of it? It was a mere question between ten hours and fifteen, and so I told her. The females, who had just before been trembling with alarm, brightened at this, and two or three of them civilly thanked me for the information they had thus obtained incidentally!—"Boat, sir! boat!" "Thank 'ee, sir; thank 'ee, sir."
We found two or three parties on board of a higher condition than common. Apprehension cast a shade over the cold marble-like polish of even the English aristocrat; for if, as Mrs. Opie has well observed, there is nothing "so like a lord in a passion as a commoner in a passion," "your fear" is also a sad leveller. The boat was soon under way, and gradually our cargo of mental apprehensions settled into the usual dolorous physical suffering of landsmen in rough water. So much for excessive civilization. The want of a boiler under similar circumstances, would have excited no feeling whatever among a similar number of Americans, nineteen in twenty of whom, thanks to their rough-and-tumble habits, would know exactly what to think of it.
I was seated, during a part of the day, near a group of young men, who were conversing with a lady of some three or four and twenty. They expressed their surprise at meeting her on board. She told them it was a sudden whim; that no one knew of her movements; she meant only to be gone a fortnight, to take a run into Normandy. In the course of the conversation I learned that she was single, and had a maid and a footman with her. In this guise she might go where she pleased; whereas, had she taken "an escort" in the American fashion, her character would have suffered. This usage, however, is English rather than European. Single women on the Continent, except in extraordinary cases, are obliged to maintain far greater reserve even than with us; and there, single or married, they cannot travel under the protection of any man who is not very nearly connected with them, domestics and dependants excepted.
The debates about proceeding at all had detained
