y the Eighth's forts; and we caught a glimpse of a fine
ruined Gothic window in passing Netley Abbey.

We landed on the pier at Southampton about one, and found ourselves truly
in England. "Boat, sir, boat?" "Coach, sir, coach?" "London, sir,
London?"--"No; we have need of neither!"--"Thank'ee, sir--thank'ee, sir."
These few words, in one sense, are an epitome of England. They rang in our
ears for the first five minutes after landing. Pressing forward for a
livelihood, a multitude of conveniences, a choice of amusements, and a
trained, but a heartless and unmeaning civility. "No; I do not want a
boat." "Thank'ee, sir." You are just as much "thank'ee" if you do not
employ the man as if you did. You are thanked for condescending to give an
order, for declining, for listening. It is plain to see that such thanks
dwell only on the lips. And yet we so easily get to be sophisticated;
words can be so readily made to supplant things; deference, however
unmeaning, is usually so grateful, that one soon becomes accustomed to all
this, and even begins to complain that he is not imposed on.

We turned into the first clean-looking inn that offered. It was called the
Vine, and though a second-rate house, for Southampton even, we were
sufficiently well served. Everything was neat, and the waiter, an old man
with a powdered bead, was as methodical as a clock, and a most busy
servitor to human wants. He told me he had been twenty-eight years doing
exactly the same things daily, and in precisely the same place. Think of a
man crying "Coming, sir," and setting table, for a whole life, within an
area of forty feet square! Truly, this was not America.

The principal street in Southampton, though making a sweep, is a broad,
clean avenue, that is lined with houses having, with very few exceptions,
bow-windows, as far as an ancient gate, a part of the old defences of the
town. Here the High-street is divided into "Above-bar" and "Below-bar".
The former is much the most modern, and promises to be an exceedingly
pretty place when a little more advanced. "Below-bar" is neat and
agreeable too. The people appeared singularly well dressed, after New
York. The women, though less fashionably attired than our own, taking the
Paris modes for the criterion, were in beautiful English chintzes,
spotlessly neat, and the men all looked as if they had been born with
hat-brushes and clothes-brushes in their hands, and yet every one was in a
sort of seashore _c