Chapter II: Preface

I herewith submit to the British Public a work principally intended for the benefit of the American. Both people, however, are so intimately connected by the ties of friendship and consanguinity, and so many errors and faults of the Americans--as, indeed, most of their virtues--are so clearly and distinctly to be traced to their British origin, that the perusal of the following pages may, perhaps, be not altogether uninteresting to the readers of both countries.

As individuals may study their own character by carefully examining and observing that of their fellow-creatures,--for it is only in comparing ourselves with others that we become acquainted with ourselves,--so may a correct knowledge of one nation, and the tendencies of its institutions, enable another to form a proper estimate of itself, and to set a right value on its own laws and government.

Such is the object of the following publication; the Public must decide whether it has been attained.

THE EDITOR.

London, May 10th, 1839.

CONTENTS

OF

THE FIRST VOLUME.

PART I.

CONTAINING THE ADVENTURES OF A DAY SPENT AMONG
THE BLOODS IN NEW YORK.

Introduction.--Character of the Author. Page 3

CHAPTER I.

Walk to the Battery.--The Breakfast.--Conversation of
young travelled Americans.--Their Notions of Politics,
Negroes, and Women. 16

CHAPTER II.

Return to the City.--Arrival of the London Packet.--Reception
of the Passengers.--American Speculations on
an English Lord.--Introduction to a Fashionable Boarding-house.--A
New England Minerva.--A Belle.--A Lady
from Virginia.--Conduct of Fashionable Young Ladies
towards Gentlemen of an inferior Standing.--Confusion
produced by the Dinner-bell. 49

CHAPTER III.

The Dinner.--Reflections on the Homage paid to American
Women.--Observation of a Fashionable Young Lady
on American eating.--The Party after Dinner.--An American
descanting on the Fashions.--Parallel between English
and American Women.--Manner of rising in Society.--Extravagance
and Waste of the Middle Classes.--Toad-eating
of Fashionable Americans in Europe.--Their
Contempt for the Liberal Institutions of their Country.--Manner
in which the Society of America may be used as
a Means of correcting the Notions of European Exaltados.--The
British Constitution in high favour with the Upper
Classes.--Southern and Northern Aristocracy contrasted.--Aristocracy
of Literati.--American Women in Society and
at Home.--Pushing in Society the Cause of Failures.--Western
Aristocracy.--An Aristocratic Lady in Pittsburgh.--Aristocracy
in a Printer’s Shop.--Philosophical
Windings-up of the Party. 84

CHAPTER IV.

Joining the Ladies.--Education of a Fashionable Young
Lady in New York--her Accomplishments.--Tea without
Gentlemen.--Commercial Disasters not affecting the
Routine of Amusements in the City of New York.--The
Theatre.--Forest come back to America.--Opinions of the
Americans on Shakspeare and the Drama.--Their Estimation
of Forest as an Actor.--Forest and Rice contrasted. 155