In England we have all the grades and conditions of society that are to be found in America, with the addition of two others, the highest and the lowest classes.  There is no extensive class here equivalent to the English or Irish labourer; neither is there any class whose manners are stamped with that high polish and urbanity which characterises the aristocracy of England.  The term gentleman is used here in a very different sense from that in which it is applied in Europe—­it means simply, well-behaved citizen.  All classes of society claim it—­from the purveyor of old bones, up to the planter; and I have myself heard a bar-keeper in a tavern and a stage driver, whilst quarrelling, seriously accuse each other of being “no gentleman.”  The only class who live on the labour of others, and without their own personal exertions, are the planters in the south.  There are certainly many persons who derive very considerable revenues from houses; but they must be very few, if any, who have ample incomes from land, and this only in the immediate vicinity of the largest and oldest cities.

English novels have very extensive circulation here, which certainly is of no service to the country, as it induces the wives and daughters of American gentlemen (alias, shopkeepers) to ape gentility.  In Louisville, Cincinnati, and all the other towns of the west, the women have established circles of society.  You will frequently be amused by seeing a lady, the wife of a dry-goods store-keeper, look most contemptuously at the mention of another’s name, whose husband pursues precisely the same occupation, but on a less extensive scale, and observe, that “she only belongs to the third circle of society.”  This species of embryo aristocracy—­or as Socrates would, call it, Plutocracy—­is based on wealth alone, and is decidedly the most contemptible of any.  There are, notwithstanding, very many well-bred, if not highly polished, women in the country; and on the whole, the manners of the women are much more agreeable than those of the men.

Early in the summer I proceeded to Maysville, in Kentucky, which lies about 220 miles above the Falls.  Here having to visit a gentlemen in the interior, I hired a chaise, for which I paid about two shillings British per mile.

A great deal of excitement was just then produced among the inhabitants of Maysville by the president’s having put his veto on the bill, passed by congress, granting loans to the “Maysville and Lexington road,” and the “Louisville canal” companies.  The Kentuckians were in high dudgeon, and denounced Jackson as an enemy to internal improvement, and to the western states.  It would appear that the friends of Adams and Clay, had determined to place Jackson in a dilemma which would involve his character, either as a friend to internal improvement or an enemy to lavish expenditure.  Accordingly, they passed an unusual number of bills, appropriating money to the clearing of creeks, building of bridges, and making