the Pope!" This puts the English government on the hip, and silence is its safest, if not its only way, out of the dilemma. If Montalembert's pamphlet were generally read in England, we are of opinion that it would go farther than most things in proving to the English nation what is the bona fide inferiority of the position to which the French alliance and the policy of the Palmerston Cabinet have reduced it. However, upon this subject we Americans are perhaps just now not quite impartial witnesses, and we will therefore leave the Whig government to the "tender mercies" of the champion of Pius IX. One thing we must be allowed to remark,—and it amply bears out the truth of what we observed in the beginning of this article, namely, that at the present moment none of the most liberally administered countries of Europe, none of those that have the largest amount of freedom, have anything like the intellectual activity of despotically governed France. Whether this proves that the extreme of self-government is incompatible with the extreme of intellectual and literary cultivation, or simply that the utmost development of man's force is never provoked but by opposition, we leave to others to decide. Meanwhile we register the fact, and find in its various manifestations frequent matter for admiration. Bos ART. XI.-1. English Traits. By R. W. EMERSON. BOSton: Phillips, Sampson, & Co. 1856. 12mo. pp. 312. 2. Impressions of England; or Sketches of English Scenery and Society. By A. CLEVELAND COXE, Rector of Grace Church, Baltimore. New York: Dana & Co. 1856. 12mo. pp. 321. 3. A Month in England. By HENRY T. TUCKERMAN. [A New Edition.] New York: Redfield. 1856. THESE books are of a description which always attracts and seldom wearies us. Yet we enjoy them less as the rec VOL. LXXXIII. NO. 173. 43 ords of what has been seen and heard, than as autobiographies. It has been well said, that we cannot thoroughly know even a kinsman or an intimate, till he has been our companion in travel. The attrition of new and strange objects, nationalities, and experiences brings out traits that may have been latent in familiar scenes,— powers that may have been only possibilities in the home-circle, - merits or defects that may have been merged in the routine-life of domestic, professional, or public duty. This same revelation, which the traveller inevitably makes to fellow-pilgrims, he who publishes his adventures imparts of necessity to his readers. We learn what he carries with him by what he finds. We ascertain what questions were in his mind by the answers he puts on record. We test his temper by his opinions of men and things. We probe his culture by the depth or shallowness of his observations. We trace his sinuosities by the track they leave on his path. Therefore it is that, even in England, where every place of interest and monument of note and man of mark is too well known for any added intimacy of acquaintance through the testimony of others, we still love to renew the round with each new tourist; and, if we gain nothing else, we have at least hung up in our repository another well-analyzed specimen of our own race. Conversely, if the traveller is one whom we previously knew, or if his individuality is patent in his book, we learn much by his descriptions even of the most familiar persons and objects. He presents them from a new point of view, which we can compare with others. He gives us a fresh perspective, by which we may correct outlines previously in our own mind. He discloses to us bearings and relations, which have their counterpart in fact. For his impressions, preferences, or aversions, be they well or ill grounded, there are existing causes, which, if we know him, we can divine. pecially is all this true, if our tourist is a man of genius, taste, or large specific attainments in art or literature. Then, however strong may be his prejudices, however abnormal his standard, we can allow for his parallax, and even his onesided representations may give us more accurate knowledge than his own senses gave him. Thus, while Ruskin's entire Es artistical creed may have hardly a disciple, who would not gratefully adopt him as a guide through the whole world of art, though often finding food for admiration in what he might denounce, and repudiating what he might praise? Mr. Emerson's book, did it profess to describe all of England, would be justly open to the severest criticism. It ignores pauperism, ignorance, and crime, aristocratic pretension and plebeian sycophancy, sinecure laziness and under-paid labor, in fine, all the inequalities of condition, realized right, and availing privilege, which assimilate the moral and social landscape of Great Britain much more nearly to the broken surface of Switzerland, than to the gentle alternations of hill and valley on its own soil. But all of the less pleasing "English traits" have been set forth with ample minuteness of detail by the greater portion of recent travellers, and we are glad to open one book that revives our early pride in our mother-land, and makes us feel anew the unparalleled queenliness of her position and belongings. We by no means say that the tourist who beholds only the glory of England, and is blind to her shame, possesses our moral sympathy. This we must reserve for itinerants of the Heraclitus school; but while we read their writings with heightened emotion, they do not entertain or edify us. With the intense subjectivism of Mr. Emerson's philosophy we are at swords' points. We hesitate not to say, that, pushed to its legitimate consequences, it neutralizes moral distinctions, eliminates duty and accountability, obliterates religion, and excludes the conception of a personal and self-conscious Deity. And even in the book before us, when religious or ethical subjects are touched upon, (which they are but seldom, and lightly,) we discern traces of the indifferentism which proceeds from the author's philosophy. But this very ele ment is propitious to merely æsthetic observation and impression. Mr. Emerson threw open his own broad, rich, delicately organized, and generously cultured intellect, with an Arguseyed passiveness, with a receptivity which no emotion or affection weakened or distorted, to take the exact impress of what he heard and saw. The greatness of England is in fact the theme of all his chapters. And there are many aspects in which she is the greatest of the nations. She has enriched herself with the spoils of every zone and soil. Her language, a conglomerate from all the tongues of ancient and modern civilization, is the type of her national personality and genius. With hardly a tithe of the learning of Germany, she is the fountain of elegant scholarship. With often a paucity and never a redundance of creative talent, her literature embodies the wealth and beauty of all times and lands. Inferior to France in science, she immeasurably transcends her in its concrete forms and practical uses. Later than the Continental nations in almost every branch of lucrative industry, she has domesticated all their processes, and has made her manufactures the staple of the world's commerce. Limited in her natural resources, she supplements them by the empire of the sea, and the lordship of the tropics and the Orient. What her arms might fail of, her diplomacy secures. Her defeats bear the fruit of victory. Her one signal loss during these latter centuries, that of her rebel colonies in America, has but erected the best market for her products, opened the most humane asylum for her surplus population, and furnished the most genial seminary for her intellectual and moral influence. In her home economy, her greatest of national debts only consolidates her government, and insures the loyalty of her myriad creditors. Her enormous landed estates but strengthen the conservative and cripple the revolutionary elements of her population. Her monopolies and arbitrary prescriptions have worn deep niches in her constitution, and are clothed with all the semblance and prestige of sacred right. Every decaying timber in her political and social fabric is so buttressed, that it cannot fall till slow time disintegrates it; every weak member of the pile is so built around and over, that it bears no strain. Mr. Emerson gives few details of his English sojourn. The titles of his chapters are such general heads of remark as "Land," "Race," "Manners," "Wealth," "Aristocracy," "Religion." Under each he gives rather the sum total of his observations, than the specific instances that served for his generalizations. He delights in antithesis and contrast, and brings out with unequalled rhetorical force very many of the anomalies of the English commonwealth and society, those balancings and co-workings of seemingly opposite and antagonistic forces, by which strength is born out of weakness, and the ever fresh and new from decadence and decline. Among the most striking specimens of this style of delineation, (and in felicity and point it can hardly be surpassed,) is the following, under the running-title "Factitious." "A proof of the energy of the British people, is the highly artificial construction of the whole fabric. The climate and geography, I said, were factitious, as if the hands of man had arranged the conditions. The same character pervades the whole kingdom. Bacon said, 'Rome was a state not subject to paradoxes'; but England subsists by antagonisms and contradictions. The foundations of its greatness are the rolling waves; and, from first to last, it is a museum of anomalies. This foggy and rainy country furnishes the world with astronomical observations. Its short rivers do not afford water-power, but the land shakes under the thunder of the mills. There is no gold mine of any importance, but there is more gold in England than in all other countries. It is too far north for the culture of the vine, but the wines of all countries are in its docks. The French Comte de Lauraguais said, No fruit ripens in England but a baked apple'; but oranges and pineapples are as cheap in London as in the Mediterranean. The MarkLane Express or the Custom-House Returns bear out to the letter the vaunt of Pope, — 'Let India boast her palms, nor envy we The weeping amber, nor the spicy tree, While, by our oaks, those precious loads are borne, The native cattle are extinct, but the island is full of artificial breeds. The agriculturist Bakewell created sheep and cows and horses to order, and breeds in which everything was omitted but what is economical. The cow is sacrificed to her bag, the ox to his sirloin. Stall-feeding makes sperm-mills of the cattle, and converts the stable to a chemical factory. The rivers, lakes, and ponds, too much fished, or obstructed by factories, are artificially filled with the eggs of salmon, turbot, and herring. "Chat Moss and the fens of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire are unhealthy and too barren to pay rent. By cylindrical tiles, and guttapercha tubes, five millions of acres of bad land have been drained and put on equality with the best, for rape-culture and grass. The climate |