Page:The North American Review - Volume 2.djvu/98

 92 United States [Nov.

says, that riches are too much in the mouths of Americans, he is undoubtedly correct; and when he observes, that conversation turns too much on politicks and property, we may answer, that it is the inevitable attendant of liberty and security; and surely is well worth the prevailing topicks among Frenchmen, to which they were restricted by the police for some years past; the merits of an actress or of a General. He has been incautiously led away by some injury received himself, or by some of his countrymen, to brand all the merchants of the United States with dishonesty. He would find some rash men retort the same reflexions on his fellow subjects, and in both cases unreasonably. A foreigner is always under a disadvantage in every country, and very often blames others for his own mistakes. Frenchmen have been so harassed and unfortunate, for the last twenty years, that they may be excused if they are sometimes unjust in their complaints. When he says, that we laugh at all acts of disinterested conduct towards the publick, how many instances to the contrary could we cite, in the small district around us! When he says, we are incapable of generous and elevated emotions, what shall we say of the enthusiasm which some European events have caused in this country! What shall we say of those thrilling resistless impulses, that agitated the hearts and flushed the cheek of the whole nation, at certain events in the late war; till it seemed almost justly to be apprehended, that a people nurtured in the bosom of peace, and denounced as possessing no passion but the love of money, should, in their admiration and sympathy for the perils and achievements of their gallant countrymen, be lured from their peaceable and noble occupations, to waste their unequalled energy and enterprise in pursuit of the false glory derived from war.

M. de Beaujour observes, that though we have assemblies, yet that the principal occupation of them is, 'among' the women to drink tea, and among the men to drink wine,’ which shews that he was not thoroughly initiated in our society. Indeed, Frenchmen generally disliking tea, and being unaccustomed to such potent wine as Madeira, are prone to mistakes on these subjects. A conversazione at Naples, a cercle at Paris, a route in London, or a tea party in America, are only different names for the same thing, modified by the habits of the different nations. In Europe