gross as those of the Frenchman who published it as a general fact that
people in London always have, at dinner parties, soup on each side, and
fish at four corners? Which of us would undertake to classify the morals
and manners of any hamlet in England, after spending the summer in it?
What sensible man seriously generalizes upon the manners of a street,
even though it be Houndsditch or Cranbourn-Alley? Who pretends to
explain all the proceedings of his next-door neighbour? Who is able to
account for all that is said and done by the dweller in the same
house,--by parent, child, brother, or domestic? If such judgments were
attempted, would they not be as various as those who make them? And
would they not, after all, if closely looked into, reveal more of the
mind of the observer than of the observed?

If it be thus with us at home, amidst all the general resemblances, the
prevalent influences which furnish an interpretation to a large number
of facts, what hope of a trustworthy judgment remains for the foreign
tourist, however good may be his method of travelling, and however long
his absence from home? He looks at all the people along his line of
road, and converses with a few individuals from among them. If he
diverges, from time to time, from the high road,--if he winds about
among villages, and crosses mountains, to dip into the hamlets of the
valleys,--he still pursues only a line, and does not command the
expanse; he is furnished, at best, with no more than a sample of the
people; and whether they be indeed a sample, must remain a conjecture
which he has no means of verifying. He converses, more or less, with,
perhaps, one man in ten thousand of those he sees; and of the few with
whom he converses, no two are alike in powers and in training, or
perfectly agree in their views on any one of the great subjects which
the traveller professes to observe; the information afforded by one is
contradicted by another; the fact of one day is proved error by the
next; the wearied mind soon finds itself overwhelmed by the multitude of
unconnected or contradictory particulars, and lies passive to be run
over by the crowd. The tourist is no more likely to learn, in this way,
the social state of a nation, than his valet would be qualified to speak
of the meteorology of the country from the number of times the umbrellas
were wanted in the course of two months. His children might as well
undertake to exhibit the geological formation