THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

ART. I.-1. Marie, ou l'Esclavage aux Etats-Unis, Tableau de Mœurs Américaines, par Gustave de Beaumont, l'un des Auteurs de l'ouvrage intitulé Du Systême Pénitentiaire aux Etats-Unis. Paris. 2 tomes. 8vo. 1835.

2. The Stranger in America. By F. Lieber, Editor of the Encyclopædia Americana. 2 vols., 12mo. London, 1835. 3. New England and her Institutions, by One of her Sons.

London.

THE

12mo. 1835.

HE French book now before us is the most interesting one that has ever yet been published on the subject of American society and manners by a native of the European continent. Indeed, we are of opinion that it is in some respects more curious than any work on the same topics that has lately issued from the British press. M. de Beaumont is fairly entitled to be placed, as regards intellectual powers and accomplishments, on as high a level as any English traveller of our time; and if he has fallen into some trivial blunders and mistakes to which no Englishman could have been liable, he seems, on the other hand, to have resided much longer in America than any one of our authors of the better order whose observations have as yet been made public; and, what is of even more importance, he must be universally allowed to have studied the social circumstances and peculiarities of the United States, not only uninfluenced by the slightest feeling of hostility or jealousy, but with the strongest predisposition to see in them every thing to admire and applaud. M. de Beaumont was in heart a republican when he arrived in the New World, and he has returned as good a republican as ever. He announces himself as on principle the enemy of aristocracy and of all aristocratical institutions; and he avows his belief that the democratic system of government, as now established in America, is the best machinery that ever was invented for developing the political independence and happiness of mankind. But here he stops. Admitting-as what sane traveller ever denied?-that in the United States of America there are to be found many gentlemen whose personal qualities would, in every respect, fit them for the most refined of European circles, he tells us, over and over again, that these are remarkable exceptions to the rule-that the merely utilitarian

VOL. LIII. NO. CVI.

U

animus,

animus, all but universally prevalent, is incompatible not only with the graces and elegancies of social intercourse, but with some of the real solid virtues of the individual character. He affirms, passim, that all the defects on which our travellers have expatiated are of trivial importance, when considered along with the political excellencies and advantages which have been the nobler fruits of the same soil; but, with regard to those defects themselves, he frankly and decidedly confirms by his own testimony almost every statement that had been denounced as false and absurd, or at all events grossly exaggerated and distorted, by the American censors of our Halls and Hamiltons.

M. de Beaumont has chosen to give his main tableau in the form of a novel; but he says in his preface, that, though his personages are fictitious, every trait of character has been sketched from the life, and that almost every incident in his tale may be depended on as a fact which had fallen under his own observation. The reader, after this statement, will be prepared to find the incidents few, and the commentaries copious; but, nevertheless, the tale is one of considerable interest, and displays in parts a larger share of the true genius of romance than we have recently met with in any production of its class. The composition is now and then deformed with some of those extravagancies which the example of the affected novel-wrights now flourishing in Germany-the drivelling caricaturists of her dead classics-has of late made popular at Paris; but it is, on the whole, characterized by merits of a distinguished order. In the portraiture both of natural scenery and of human passion the writer has occasionally attained high excellence; and his general strain of thought and feeling must be allowed, even by those who, on isolated points, differ from him the most widely, to be that of a scholar and a gentleman.

'The Stranger in America' is the work of another foreigner-a German, who has, however, lived nearly twenty years in the United States, and writes English almost like an Englishman. His book is a nondescript farrago of shrewd observations, piquant anecdotes, and melancholy sentimentalities; but it is particularly deserving of our attention as proceeding from a professed admirer, not only of the institutions-but of the manners of the Americans. Mr. Lieber had, indeed, shown on a previous occasion his lively sympathy with the people among whom he has domesticated himself; for, if we recollect rightly, in the modification of the Conversation-Lexicon, edited by him at New York, while Julius Cæsar occupies a column, and Napoleon Buonaparte a couple of pages, nearly a sheet is filled with the achievements of Andrew Jackson. On the present occasion we may probably be obliged to this liberal exile for a few extracts in corroboration or illustration of M. de Beaumont. The

The outline of Marie may be given in few words. A young Frenchman-disgusted with the degraded condition of his own country, under the disappointment of the Three Glorious Daysdetermines to seek for himself an establishment in the great sanctuary of liberty, equality, and philosophy beyond the Atlantic. He arrives at Baltimore, and is hospitably received by Mr. Daniel Nelson, a leading citizen of that town, president of its Bible Society, its Temperance Society, and its Colonization Society, who, after realizing a fair fortune in commerce, and aspiring to the first political stations of the Republic, had, towards the decline of life, assumed the office of minister in a Presbyterian congregation there, and who is throughout represented as a pure and dignified specimen of the genuine descendants of the Puritan Pilgrims. Mr. Nelson's family consists of a son and a daughter, a high-spirited youth and a most enchanting girl, the former of whom becomes the chosen friend of the French stranger, while the latter is, of course, the heroine of his heart and of this novel. The progress of the love-story is energetically sketched; and in due time M. Ludovic solicits the worthy Nelson's consent to his marriage with the charming Marie. The father, after much hesitation, avows that this connexion would be in every respect agreeable to himself, but that, in justice to Ludovic, he must forbid it. In a word, Mr. Nelson had married, while engaged in commerce at New Orleans, a lady, one of whose ancestors a century back was a Mulatto no one at Baltimore knew this circumstance-no trace of African descent could be detected in the noble features and radiant complexions of the young Nelsons-but still the fact might some day or other transpire, and in that case the French lover must be assured that, though a marriage between him and Marie would be perfectly valid according to the laws of the country, the usages of the country, more powerful than any law, would denounce it as an abomination-his wife, his children, to the remotest generation, must be excluded from the society of the American people as outcasts and Parias.

The bankrupt of Massachusetts finds honour and fortune in Louisiana, where no one inquires of what miseries he has been the cause in another place. The inhabitant of New York, on whom the fetters of a first wedlock press disagreeably, leaves his wife on the left bank of the Hudson, takes a new one on the right bank, and lives a tranquil bigamist in New Jersey. The thief and the forger, branded by the severe code of Rhode Island, discover, without difficulty, both employment and consideration in Connecticut. There is but one crime of which the culprit carries everywhere with him the punishment and the infamy: it is that of belonging to a family reputed to be of colour. The colour washed out, the disgrace remains; it seems as

if they could divine it long after it has ceased to be visible; there is no asylum so sacred, no retreat so obscure, as to afford it shelter or shade.'-Marie, vol. i. p. 177.

The youthful enthusiast at first thinks the venerable Presbyterian is jesting with him- but by degrees his eyes are opened to a full perception of the tyrannical injustice with which all, in whose veins there is one drop of black blood, are systematically treated by the nation whose first maxim is the equality of all mankind in the sight of God and man. Ludovic, of course, disdains to be thwarted by a prejudice which he considers as alike absurd and cruel-and would either run all risks with his Mary in America, or abandon his own original plans and carry her to France. On the latter of these alternatives Daniel Nelson sets at once his determined veto. His ancestors had been driven from Europe by religious persecution he nor no child of his, with his consent, shall ever set foot on the shores of the old world. As to the former scheme, he demands that Ludovic should spend six months in travelling through the different states of the Union, and observe for himself, in city, town, and hamlet, the manners of the people, and most especially the actual treatment of the coloured race, before the negociation goes farther. Ludovic sets out on his travels accordingly, being accompanied or soon joined by his future brother-inlaw, George Nelson. In consequence of the malevolence of a dark half-Spanish scoundrel, whose path in life and love had been many years ago crossed by Mr. Daniel Nelson, the unhappy taint in George's blood is betrayed to the audience of a theatre in Philadelphia, where he and Ludovic are seated together in the pit. The man of colour is immediately kicked out of the playhouse with every wantonness of contumely ;* and his friend discovers that no court, either of law or of honour, can be expected to afford any redress whatever for such an injury. George parts from his friend-and is mixed up in an insurrection of slaves in South Carolina, which is for a season successful. Meanwhile, Ludovic continues his travels until, the term of his probation being at length expired, he rejoins the elder Nelson, who is now at New York, and, unchanged in his resolves by all the miseries he had witnessed, claims the hand of his affianced beauty. Nelson no longer refuses his consent. The bridal party repair to the Catholic church, where the nuptial ceremony is, in the first instance, to be performed, according to the religion of the bridegroom-the Presbyterian formula to succeed in the course of the morning. But scarcely has the benediction of the Romish priest been pronounced, when the famous émeute of August, 1884, attains its height. The

* M. de Beaumont witnessed such an occurrence.