The condition of the Senator’s mind may perhaps be best made known by a letter which he wrote from Dillsborough to his especial and well-trusted friend Josiah Scroome, a member of the House of Representatives from his own state of Mickewa.  Since he had been in England he had written constantly to his friend, giving him the result of his British experiences.

Bush Inn, Dillsborough,
Ufford County, England,
December 16, 187-.

My dear sir,

Since my last I have enjoyed myself very well and I am I trust beginning to understand something of the mode of thinking of this very peculiar people.  That there should be so wide a difference between us Americans and these English, from whom we were divided, so to say, but the other day, is one of the most peculiar physiological phenomena that the history of the world will have afforded.  As far as I can hear a German or even a Frenchman thinks much more as an Englishman thinks than does an American.  Nor does this come mainly from the greater prevalence with us of democratic institutions.  I do not think that any one can perceive in half an hour’s conversation the difference between a Swiss and a German; but I fancy, and I may say I flatter. myself, that an American is as easily distinguished from an Englishman, as a sheep from a goat or a tall man from one who is short.

And yet there is a pleasure in associating with those here of the highest rank which I find it hard to describe, and which perhaps I, ought to regard as a pernicious temptation to useless luxury.  There is an ease of manner with them which recalls with unfavourable reminiscences the hard self-consciousness of the better class of our citizens.  There is a story of an old hero who with his companions fell among beautiful women and luscious wine, and, but that the hero had been warned in time, they would all have been turned into filthy animals by yielding to the allurements around them.  The temptation here is perhaps the same.  I am not a hero; and, though I too have been warned by the lessons I have learned under our happy Constitution, I feel that I might easily become one of the animals in question.

And, to give them their due, it is better than merely beautiful women and luscious wine.  There is a reality about them, and a desire to live up to their principles which is very grand.  Their principles are no doubt bad, utterly antagonistic to all progress, unconscious altogether of the demand for progressive equality which is made by the united voices of suffering mankind.  The man who is born a lord and who sees a dozen serfs around him who have been born to be half-starved ploughmen, thinks that God arranged it all and that he is bound to maintain a state of things so comfortable to himself, as being God’s vicegerent here on earth.  But they do their work as vicegerents with an easy grace, and with sweet pleasant voices and soft movements, which almost make a roan doubt