theatres, operas, concerts, coaches, chariots, cabs, vans, waggons, steam-boats, railway carriages, and air-balloons, will all be open to him as the daylight. He may repose on cushions of down or of air; he may charm his ear with music, and his palate with luxuries of all sorts. He may travel en prince or en roturier, precisely as his fancy dictates, and may enjoy even the honours of a crowned head if he will only pay like one. In short, so long as he carries certain golden ballast about with him, all will go well. But when that is done, God help him! He will then become familiar with the provisions of the vagrant act, and Mr Roe or Mr Ballantine will recommend exercise on the tread-mill for the benefit of his constitution. Let him but show his nose abroad, and a whole host of parish overseers will take alarm. The new police will bait him like a bull; and, should he dare approach even the lowest eating-house, the master will shut the door in his face. If he beg charity, he will be told to work; if he ask for work, he will be told to get about his business; if he steal, he will be found a free passage to Botany Bay, and be dressed gratis, on his arrival, in an elegant suit of yellow; if he rob, he will be found a free passage to another world, in which, as there is no paying or receiving in payment, we may hope that his troubles will be at an end for ever.

CHAPTER V.

NEW YORK.

HAVING moved since my arrival in a tolerably wide circle, I now feel qualified to offer some observations on the state of society in New York. The houses of the

better order of citizens are generally of brick, sometimes faced with stone or marble, and in the allotment of the

HOUSES-DEFICIENCY IN POINT OF ELEGANCE. 59

interior very similar to tenements of the same class in England. The dining and drawing-rooms are uniformly on the ground floor, and communicate by folding-doors, which, when dinner is announced, are thrown open for the transit of the company. The former of these apartments, so far as my observation has carried me, differs nothing in appearance from an English one. But the drawing-rooms in New York certainly strike me as being a good deal more primitive in their appliances than those of the more opulent classes in the old country. Furniture in the United States is apparently not one of those articles in which wealth takes pride in displaying its superiority. Every thing is comfortable, but every thing is plain. Here are no buhl tables, nor ormolu clocks, nor gigantic mirrors, nor cabinets of Japan, nor draperies of silk or velvet; and one certainly does miss those thousand elegancies with which the taste of British ladies delights in adorning their apartments. In short, the appearance of an American mansion is decidedly republican. No want remains unsupplied, while nothing is done for the gratification of a taste for expensive luxury.

This is as it should be. There are few instances of such opulence in America as would enable its owner, without inconvenience, to lavish thousands on pictures, ottomans, and china vases. In such a country there are means of profitable outlay for every shilling of accumulated capital, and the Americans are too prudent a people to invest in objects of mere taste that which, in the more vulgar shape of cotton or tobacco, would tend to the replenishing of their pockets. And, after all, it is better, perhaps, to sit on leather or cotton, with a comfortable balance at one's banker's book, than to lounge on damask, and tread on carpets of Persia, puzzling our brains about the budget and the ways and means.

One cause of the effect just noticed is, unquestionably, the absence of the law, or rather the custom of primogeniture. A man whose fortune, at his death, must be

60

CUSTOM OF PRIMOGENITURE- -SERVANTS.

divided among a numerous family in equal proportions, will not readily invest any considerable portion of it in such inconvertible objects as the productions of the fine arts, and still less in articles of mere household luxury, unsuited to the circumstances of his descendants. It will rarely happen that a father can bequeath to each of his children enough to render them independent. They have to struggle into opulence as best they may; and assuredly, to men so circumstanced, nothing could be more inconvenient and distasteful than to receive any part of their legacies in the form of pictures or scagliola tables, instead of Erie Canal shares, or bills of the New York bank.

Another circumstance, probably not without its effect in recommending both paucity and plainness of furniture is the badness of the servants. These are chiefly people of colour, habituated from their cradle to be regarded as an inferior race, and consequently sadly wanting both in moral energy and principle. Every lady with whom I have conversed on the subject, speaks with envy of the superior comforts and facilities of an English establishment. A coloured servant, they declare, requires perpetual supervision; he is an executive, not a deliberative being. Under such circumstances, the drudgery that devolves on an American matron I should imagine to be excessive. She must direct every operation that is going on, from the garret to the cellar. She must be her own housekeeper; superintend all the outgoings and comings in, and interfere in a thousand petty and annoying details, which in England go on like clock-work, out of sight and out of thought.

If it fare so with the mistress of an establishment, the master has no sinecure. A butler is out of the question. He would much rather know that the keys of his cellar were at the bottom of the Hudson than in the pocket of black Cæsar, with a fair opportunity of getting at his Marston or his Bingham. Few of the coloured popula

SERVANTS IN AMERICA.

61

tion have energy to resist temptation. The dread of punishment has been removed as an habitual motive to exertion, but the sense of inextinguishable degradation yet remains.

The torment of such servants has induced many families in New York to discard them altogether, and supply their places with natives of the Emerald Isle. It may be doubted whether the change has generally been accompanied by much advantage. Domestic service in the United States is considered as degrading by all untainted with the curse of African descent. No native American could be induced to it; and, popular as the present President may be, he would probably not find one of his constituents who, for any amount of emolument, would consent to brush his coat or stand behind his carriage. On their arrival in this country, therefore, the Scotch and English, who are not partial to being looked down upon by their neighbours, very soon get hold of this prejudice; but he of that terrestrial paradise, flower of the earth and first gem of the sea," has no such scruples. Landing often at the quay of New York without hat, shoes, and sometimes less dispensable garments, he is content to put his pride in his pocket, where there is always ample room for its accommodation. But even with him domestic service is only a temporary expedient. The moment he contrives to scrape together a little money, he bids his master good-morning, and, fired with the ambition of farming or storekeeping, starts off for the back country.

"first

The nuisance of this is, that no white servant is ever stationary in a place. He comes a mere clodpole, and is no sooner taught his duty, and become an useful member of the house, than he accepts the Chiltern Hundreds, and a new writ must forthwith be issued for a tenant of the pantry. Now, though annual elections may be very good things in the body politic, the most democratic American will probably admit, that in the body domestic,

62

MANNERS OF THE HIGHER ORDERS.

the longer the members keep their seats the better. Habits of office are of some value in a valet, as well as in a secretary of state, and how these are to be obtained by either functionary, as matters are at present ordered in this country, I profess myself at a loss to understand.

When you enter an American house, either in quality of casual visitor or invited guest, the servant never thinks of ushering you to the company; on the contrary, he immediately disappears, leaving you to explore your way in a navigation of which you know nothing, or to amuse yourself in the passage by counting the hat-pegs and umbrellas. In the house of a stranger, one cannot take the liberty of bawling for assistance, and the choice only remains of opening doors on speculation, with the imminent risk of intruding on the bedroom of some young lady, or of cutting the gordian knot by escaping through the only one you know any thing about. I confess that, the first time I found myself in this unpleasant predicament, the latter expedient was the one I adopted, though I fear not without offence to an excellent family, who, having learned the fact of my admission, could not be supposed to understand the motive of my precipitate retreat.

On the whole, the difference is not striking, I should imagine, between the social habits of the people of New York and those prevalent in our first-rate mercantile cities. In both, the faculties are exerted in the same pursuits; in both, the dominant aristocracy is that of wealth; and in both, there is the same grasping at unsubstantial and unacknowledged distinctions.

It is the fashion to call the United States the land of liberty and equality. If the term equality be understood simply as implying, that there exists no privileged order in America, the assertion, though not strictly true, may pass. In any wider acceptation it is mere non

*

Not strictly true, because in some of the States the right of suffrage is made dependent on a certain qualification in property. In Vir. ginia,in particular this qualification is very high.