tly
guarded in England; but it would be unreasonable to impute as a fault what
is a dictate of prudence, or to infer that coldness and incivility must of
course lurk under forms which have been manifestly imposed by the
necessity of constant circumspection.

Duly impressed with these considerations, the stranger will be less
disposed to complain when arriving at any place of fashionable resort in
England; at Tonbridge, for instance, one of the most aristocratic; he
finds himself consigned to the solitary comfort of his own apartments,
without the prospect of any of those periods of social reuenion, which
elsewhere tend so strongly to break down the barriers of reserve and
facilitate the process of introduction and acquaintance. Cardinal de Retz
has told us, that the dinner-bell never fails to disperse a mob in France,
and if English travellers are to be believed, it seldom fails to bring one
together in an American hotel; but as a social summons, no such tocsin
breaks the uniformity of the English _menage_. The traveller may dine
indeed in the public room, but it is at a separate table, on his separate
repast; he is served with what viands, at what hour, he pleases, but no
contiguity of position or interchange of friendly offices can remove the
impalpable but impassable partition which divides him from his neighbors.
He feels something of the air of the _penitentiary_ in the very
refinements of his luxurious _hostelrie_. But these are incidents not
without their attendant advantages. If the stranger is thus separated from
his fellows, he is at least saved, in turn, from the attempts of fraud,
and the contact of impertinence. This is, in fact, the meaning of such
arrangements, and if not exactly palatable, they are at any rate
protective. But there are restrictions with regard to the fairer part of
creation, and his correspondence with them, which admit of no such topics
of comfort and alleviation. We nowhere find it stated, by what steps it is
permitted to the English suitor to proceed from the distant bow to the
morning call, always in the presence of the mother, the aunt, or other
watchful guardian; and thence by regular gradations to the heart and hand
of the object of his wishes. But it is enough for our stranger to know,
that whatever may be the laws of strategy, provided for such cases in
other lands, here it is necessary to begin his approaches with the father,
and to lay his lines of earliest circumvallation arou