On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    the United States . We do not mean that there are any profound disquisitions in his book ; he picks no quarrel with Moses ; he attempts no history of pre-Adamite ages ; we really do not know whether he is a Neptunist or a Vulcanist ; he may be either Wernerian or Plutonian ; but he attends to facts , and records phenomena . Whenever he found himself in a favourable situation , he seems always to have had his eyes in his head , and his hammer in his pocket ; we should rather say , in his hand . His pages are not overloaded with specimens , but what he does mention is to the purpose ; he jots down what he saw , in a brief and business-like way .

    Another peculiarity , and a source of more general interest in these travels , is , that Mr . Finch had personal and familiar intercourse with several of the ex-presidents , and has preserved various opinions expressed to him in conversation , by Adams , Madison , and Jefferson . Fragments of the conversation of the two last mentioned , fill several pages , which will be read with curiosity and pleasure . These men , and whoever else may follow them in their high office , ought to be studied . They are one of the results of the great experiment . The old theory was , that chaos would come again , whenever the chief magistracy was made elective . It was even piously surmised , that Providence had especial care over the fecundity of royalty , in order to save a nation from the calamity of being called upon to make a choice . And yet the Americans have gone on making kings , and

    powerful ones , too , each for a shorter period than we choose a member of Parliament , without having yet made a single blunder of any moment . Of different characters , intellectually and morally , they have yet all been men fitted for their work . Not one ot ^ them unworthy of the glory of being so chosen ; not one of them but would have been a royal phoenix in the longest line of hereditary succession . Only think how Jackson has turned out ! of whom , in this country , we expected nothing less than that immediately

    on his election he would have seized the bank , to bribe the militia , and have crowned himself emperor with a grenadier ' cap . The fact was , that we knew nothing about Jackson . A circumstance which we began to suspect , as soon as we found that the quakers of Philadelphia were voting the old soldier into the chair . Nature will wonderfully mend her manners , before she produces n similar succession of able men . It would never have been thus , had they come in the kingly way , and had the history been , of Jackson , which was the son of Quincey Adams , which was ( he son of Monroe , which was the son of Madison , which was the son of Jefferson , which was the son of John Adams , which was the son of Washington , the father of his country . It also deserves mentioning , for the sake of many in whose eyes this circumstance will confer value on Mr . Finch ' s book , that he is the grandson of Dr . Priestley ; and that one object of

    Untitled Article

    Finch ' s Travels in America . 847

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1833, page 847, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2628/page/43/