an is a democrat--that is to say, he wishes
to be, and thinks he is one; but it occurs to him to forget it in his
relations with people of a different complexion from his own. John Bull
has a good heart, which at times he conceals in his fat and phlegm under
his well-wadded and buttoned-up coat. Jonathan has a good heart also,
but does not hide it. His blood is warmer; he has no corpulence; he
marches with coat unbuttoned or without one. Some persons maintain even
that Brother Jonathan is John Bull stripped of his coat, and it is with
this American saying that I take leave, for the present, of John Bull
and his brother Jonathan."

* * * * *

The manners and customs most opposed to European ideas found favour in
the eyes of Frederika Bremer, when she thought she detected in American
usages the elements of progress and liberty. It is, indeed, with too
light a touch that she glides by the more regrettable defects of the
American character, so fascinated, so dazzled is she by the brilliant
mirage of independence--independence of thought and action, often
verging upon or passing into licence--which the United States presented
to her. She reminds one of that Western patriot who, from the banks of
the Mississippi, watching the explosion of a steamship, exclaimed,
"Heavens! the Americans are a great people!" This exclamation she does
not repeat in so many words, but the idea which it embodies is present
in every page of her book.

But, in truth, she travelled under conditions which made it almost
impossible for her to form an impartial judgment of men and things. She
was everywhere received with so much enthusiastic hospitality, even by
Quakers, Shakers, Plungers, and other of those strange sects described
with so much unction by the late Mr. Hepworth Dixon, that her usual
keen powers of observation were necessarily obscured. She saw everything
through rose-coloured glasses. On the question of slavery, for example,
she, the ardent champion of the emancipation of humanity, who started
with the firm resolution to launch her heaviest thunderbolts at the
slave-owners, was led to give forth an uncertain sound. For the astute
Southerners got hold of her, feted her, complimented her, read her
works; how could she retain her impartiality when brought under such
powerful influences? Can any author inveigh against the men who read his
books? So it has not inaptly been said that she denounces the
slave-ho