Boston has a clean, English look about it, peculiar to it alone of all the cities in the United States.  Its streets, running in curious curves, as though they had not the least idea where they were going, are full of prettily dressed pretty girls, who look as though they had a very fair idea of where they were going to.  Atlantic fogs and French fashions have combined to make Boston belles pink, pretty,-and piquante; while the western states, by drawing fully half their male population from New England, make the preponderance of the female element apparent at a glance.  The ladies, thus left at home, have not been idle:  their colleges, their clubs, their reading-classes are numerous; like the man in “Hudibras,”

“’Tis known they can speak Greek as naturally as pigs squeak;”

and it is probable that no city in the world can boast so high a standard of female education as Boston:  nevertheless, it must be regretted that this standard of mental excellence attributable to the ladies of Boston should not have been found capable of association with the duties of domestic life.  Without going deeper into topics which are better understood in America than in England, and which have undergone most eloquent elucidation at the hands of Mr. Hepworth Dixon, but which are nevertheless dlightly nauseating, it may safely be observed, that the inculcation at ladies colleges of that somewhat rude but forcible home truth, enunciated by the first Napoleon in reply to the most illustrious Frenchwoman of her day, when questioned Upon the subject of female excellence, should not be forgotten.

There exists a very generally received idea that strangers are more likely to notice and complain of the short-comings of a social habit or system than are residents who have grown old under that infliction; but I cannot help thinking that there exists a considerable amount of error in this opinion.  A stranger will frequently submit to extortion, to insolence, or to inconvenience, because, being a stranger, he believes that extortion, insolence, and inconvenience are the habitual characteristics of the new place in which he finds himself:  they do not strike him as things to be objected to, or even wondered at; they are simply to be submitted to and endured.  If he were at home, he would die sooner than yield that extra half-dollar; he would leave the house at once in which he was told to get up at an unearthly hour in the morning; but, being in another country, he submits, without even a thought of resistance.  In no other way can we account for the strange silence on the part of English writers upon the tyrannical disposition of American social life.  A nation everlastingly boasting itself the freest on the earth submits unhesitatingly to more social tyranny than any people in the world.  In the United States one is marshalled to every event of the day.  Whether you like it or not, you must get up, breakfast, dine, sup, and go to bed at fixed