AMERICAN VISITS.

A vast volume is before me containing my first American journal, which I sent over piecemeal in letters and newspaper clippings to Albury, where my wife and daughters arranged them and kept them safely, till on my return after three months travel I pasted them duly into this big book.  If I were to record a tithe of the myriad memorabilia there entered, the present volume now in progress would not afford space even for a tithe of that:  and after all, the result would only appear as a record of numerous private hospitalities (which I object to making public), of sundry well-appreciated kindnesses, compliments, and tokens of honour from stranger friends in many cities, and the numerous incidents that a tourist visitor ordinarily experiences; most of which, although paragraphed in a gossiping fashion through hundreds of the 3000 American papers, are not worth recording here.  In fact, I look at this enormous volume with despair,—­the more so that there is its other equally bulky brother about my second visit,—­and so intend to give only some samples of both.  The world is too full of books, and does not call out for another American Journal.  The main social interest of my two visits consisted in the contrast shown between the one in 1851 and that in 1876, just a quarter of a century after; between in fact the extreme drinking habits of one generation and the extreme temperance of another:  mainly due, amongst other causes, to the overflowing prosperities of the middle of this century and the comparative adversities of its declining years.  “Jeshurun once waxed fat, and kicked,”—­but since then he has become one of the “lean kine:”  wines and spirits were formerly in abundance as well as hard dollars, but have now been replaced by the cheaper water and discredited paper.  Moreover, such shrewd and caustic writers as the Trollopes and Dixon and Charles Dickens have done great good service to their sensible and sensitive American brothers,—­who, far from resenting strictures which for the moment stung, took the best advantage of their utterance in self-improvement.  My first visit was hospitably redolent of all manner of seductive drinks,—­wherein, however, I was (as they thought) too temperate; my second was as hospitably plentiful so far as eating went, but iced water (wherein I was temperate too) appeared solitarily for the universal beverage:  though even in the most teetotal homes this English guest was always generously allowed his port or Madeira or even his whisky if he wished it.  Temperance was a fashion, a furore, on my second visit, as its opposite had been on my first:  and on each occasion, I persisted in a middle course, the golden mean,—­which I know to be proverbially a wisdom though not at present universally so accepted.

It is hopeless for me to look through the multitudinous large quarto pages of my first diary and its letters, comments, paragraphs, &c.; they are only too full of compliments and kindnesses from friends in many instances passed away:  and I will simply record two or three of the more public hospitalities which greeted me.