As he bore this good-naturedly, thinking perhaps his abrupt question merited a saucy answer, we soon became good friends.  He made a remark or two, in better taste than the last, on the facts of America, and I assured him he was in error, showing him wherein his error lay.  He then asked me why some of our own people did not correct the false impressions of Europe, on the subject of America, for the European could only judge by the information laid before him.  He then mentioned two or three American writers, who he thought would do the world a service by giving it a book or two, on the subject.  I told him that if they wrote honestly and frankly, Europe would not read their books, for prejudice was not easily overcome, and no favourable account of us would be acceptable.  It would not be enough for us to confess our real faults, but we should be required to confess the precise faults that, according to the notions of this quarter of the world, we are morally, logically, and politically bound to possess.  This he would not admit, for what man is ever willing to confess that his own opinions are prejudiced?

I mention this little incident, because its spirit, in my deliberate judgment, forms the rule, in the case of the feeling of all British subjects, and I am sorry to say the subjects of most other European countries; and the mawkish sentiment and honeyed words that sometimes appear in toasts, tavern dinners, and public speeches, the exception.  I may be wrong, as well as another, but this, I repeat for the twentieth time, is the result of my own observations; you know under what opportunities these observations have been made, and how far they are likely to be influenced by personal considerations.

In the evening I accompanied a gentleman, whose acquaintance I had made at Rome, to the country-house of a family that I had also had the pleasure of meeting during their winter’s residence in that town.  We passed out by the gate of Savoy, and walked a mile or two, among country-houses and pleasant alleys of trees, to a dwelling not unlike one of our own, on the Island of Manhattan, though furnished with more taste and comfort than it is usual to meet in America.  M. and Mad.  N——­ were engaged to pass the evening at the house of a connexion near by, and they frankly proposed that we should be of the party.  Of course we assented, leaving them to be the judges of what was proper.

At this second dwelling, a stone’s throw from the other, we found a small party of sensible and well-bred people, who received me as a stranger, with marked politeness, but with great simplicity.  I was struck with the repast, which was exactly like what a country tea is, or perhaps I ought to say, used to be, in respectable families, at home, who have not, or had not, much of the habits of the world.  We all sat round a large table, and, among other good things that were served, was an excellent fruit tart!  I could almost fancy myself in New England, where