ngland. The
grown-up people often fancy that cold reserve, and an assumption of
great state, indicate high birth and breeding. The younger branches seem
frequently to think that there is no such thing at home as the period of
adolescence; consequently, you often see a pert young master deliver his
unasked opinion and behave before his seniors and superiors as though he
wanted to intimate that he was wiser in his generation than they.

In crossing to Niagara, we had a specimen of the precocious colonist of
1845. The table of the captain of the boat, like that of his respected
father, was good and decorously conducted, and there were several ladies
and some most respectable travelled Americans at dinner. A very young
gentleman, who boasted how much he had lost at the races, how much they
had gambled, and how much they drank of champagne the night
before--champagne, by the by, is thought a very aristocratic drink among
psuedo-great men, although it is common as ditch-water in the United
States--engrossed the whole conversation of the dinner-table, picked his
teeth, took up the room of two, called the waiter fifty times, and ended
by ordering the cheese to be placed on the table before the pies and
puddings were removed. The company present rose before the dessert
appeared, thoroughly disgusted; and I afterwards saw this would-be man
peeping into the windows of the ladies'-cabin, and performing a thousand
other antic tricks, cigar in mouth, for which he would in England have
met with his deserts.

The precociousness of Transatlantic children is not confined to the
United States--it is equally and unpleasantly visible in Canada.

The Americans who travel, I can safely say, are not guilty of these
monstrous absurdities. I have crossed the Atlantic more than once with
boys of from seventeen to twenty, who have left college to make the
grand tour, without ever observing any thing to find fault with. The
American youth is observant, and soon discovers that attempting to do
the character of men before his time in the society of English strangers
invariably lowers instead of raising an interest.

There is a good caricature of this in an American book, I forget its
title, written some time ago, to show the simplicity, gullibility, and
vindictivness of our Trollopean travellers. It is a boy of sixteen, or
thereabouts, cigar in the corner of his mouth, hat cocked on three
curls, and all the modern etceteras of a complete youth, sa