re is no childhood
in America--no youth--no freshness. We look in vain for the

"Ingenui vultus puer, ingenuique pudoris."

or

"The modest maid deck'd with a blush of honour,
Whose feet do tread green paths of youth and love."

DANIEL.

There is scarcely a step from the school to the forum--from the nursery
to the world. Young girls, who in England would be all blushes and bread
and butter, boldly precede their mammas into the ball-room; and the code
of a mistaken gallantry supplies no corrective to their caprice, for
youth and beauty are here invested with regal prerogatives, and can do
no wrong. In short, the Americans carry their complaisance to the sex
beyond due bounds--at least in little things--for we by no means think
that the real influence of their women is great, notwithstanding the
tame and submissive gallantry with which the latter are treated in
public. We doubt whether the most limited gynocracy would tolerate the
use of tobacco as an article of daily diet, or permit ferocious murders
to go unwhipped of justice under the name of duels. But the absorbing
character of the pursuits of the men forbids any strong sympathy betwixt
the sexes; and perhaps the despotism which the women exercise in the
drawing-room arises from the fact that all that relates to the graces
and embellishments of life is left entirely to them. We do not know
that this can be avoided under the circumstances of the country, but it
has a most injurious effect upon social intercourse. The Americans of
both sexes want tact and graciousness of manner, and that prompt and
spontaneous courtesy which is the child of discipline and
self-restraint. They are seldom absolutely awkward, because they are
never bashful; they have no _mauvaise honte_, because they are all on an
equality; hence they never fail to display a certain dry composure of
bearing, which, though not agreeable, is less ludicrous than the
_gaucherie_ so commonly observed in all classes of English society,
except the very highest.

It is curious to observe how the manners of two nations of the same
origin, and, in a great degree, of similar instincts, are modified by
their political institutions. Neither the British nor the Americans are
distinguished for that natural politeness and _savoir vivre_, which is
to be found more or less in all other civilised countries. They are both
too grave, too busy, and too ambitious to lay themselves out for
trifles, which