And now arrived the 4th of July, that greatest of all American festivals.  On the 4th of July, 1776, the declaration of their independence was signed, at the State-house in Philadelphia.

To me, the dreary coldness and want of enthusiasm in American manners is one of their greatest defects, and I therefore hailed the demonstrations of general feeling which this day elicits with real pleasure.  On the 4th of July the hearts of the people seem to awaken from a three hundred and sixty-four days’ sleep; they appear high-spirited, gay, animated, social, generous, or at least liberal in expense; and would they but refrain from spitting on that hallowed day, I should say, that on the 4th of July, at least, they appeared to be an amiable people.  It is true that the women have but little to do with the pageantry, the splendour, or the gaiety of the day; but, setting this defect aside, it was indeed a glorious sight to behold a jubilee so heartfelt as this; and had they not the bad taste and bad feeling to utter an annual oration, with unvarying abuse of the mother country, to say nothing of the warlike manifesto called Declaration of Independence, our gracious king himself might look upon the scene and say that it was good; nay, even rejoice, that twelve millions of bustling bodies, at four thousand miles distance from his throne and his altars, should make their own laws, and drink their own tea, after the fashion that pleased them best.

One source of deep interest to us, in this new clime, was the frequent recurrence of thunderstorms.  Those who have only listened to thunder in England have but a faint idea of the language which the gods speak when they are angry.  Thomson’s description, however, will do:  it is hardly possible that words can better paint the spectacle, or more truly echo to the sound, than his do.  The only point he does not reach is the vast blaze of rose-coloured light that ever and anon sets the landscape on fire.

In reading this celebrated description in America, and observing how admirably true it was to nature there, I seemed to get a glimpse at a poet’s machinery, and to perceive, that in order to produce effect he must give his images more vast than he finds them in nature; but the proportions must be just, and the colouring true.  Every thing seems colossal on this great continent; if it rains, if it blows, if it thunders, it is all done fortissimo; but I often felt terror yield to wonder and delight, so grand, so glorious were the scenes a storm exhibited.  Accidents are certainly more frequent than with us, but not so much so as reasonably to bring terror home to one’s bosom every time a mass of lurid clouds is seen rolling up against the wind.

It seems hardly fair to quarrel with a place because its staple commodity is not pretty, but I am sure I should have liked Cincinnati much better if the people had not dealt so very largely in hogs.  The immense quantity of business done in this line would hardly be believed by those who had not witnessed it.  I never saw a newspaper without remarking such advertisements as the following: