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Untitled Article
centuries has sufficed to transform ^ from an unbroken forest * to the home of twelve millions of human beings , speaking the language of , and acknowledging their derivation from , an island , which , had we the desiderated lever of Archimedes , might be set down in one of its unoccupied prairie-meadows , without displacing a living thing—this country , as vast and as important in
its moral as in its physical aspect , presents to every intelligent mind a subject of contemplation and curiosity which constantly demand materials and knowledge . As yet this demand has been but scantily answered . It has unfortunately chanced that , with few exceptions , the descriptions of the United States have been
those of persons either of small intellect , and incapable , with their best efforts , of judging between that which is essential and that which is accidental , as instance Basil Hall ; or , worse , those whose prejudices make their principles , and whose long-formed habits of subserviency make them fancy servility refinement , and its absence coarseness : and of this latter class is the author before
us . We are always sorry to see any species of talent wasted ; and it was with this feeling we laid down the two volumes of Mrs . Troliope . The descriptions are spirited , and the style so easy and pleasant , that she would seem to possess every mechanical facility for recording , amusingly , any and all the adventures which fate or her own good pleasure may induce her to try . But here ends all of praise which can be accorded to this book * It abounds in
misrepresentations , which we cannot but think wilful , and the deductions from which are as spiteful as they are imbecile . To cover the rancour of her dislike to republicanism , the author makes a sort of confession that she had herself a leaning to what she wittily cjatlls sedition , before she saw in America the lamentable effects of freedom and competence ; which bad effect she makes to consist in certain coarsenesses of manner among the
middle and lower classes , which , as they do not happen to be of precisely the same sort as those of the corresponding rank here , excite the good lady ' s spleen to the utmost ; but which , after all , were the habits and manners of those good old times , of which Mrs . Troliope is , doubtless , an especial admirer . She admits that the best society in America equals , in refinement of manner , even that of the old countrie ; while in no class is to be found the
empty-headed ness , which forms the grand characteristic of our sleek-mannered aristocracy . * The total and universal want of manners , both in males and females , is so remarkable , that I was constantly endeavouring to account for it . It certainly does not proceed from want of
intellect . I have listened to much dull and heavy conversation in America , but rarely to any that I could strictl y call silly . 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 /—( Vol . i ., p . 63 . )
Untitled Article
402 Domestic Manners of the American ? .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1832, page 402, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1814/page/42/
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