a Chinese millet. Many farmers cultivate patches of the latter; but so far as I could learn, this sugar is not likely to come to much-only a sort of molasses for domestic use is ordinarily obtained.

The American tobacco is principally grown in the Central States; still to a large extent in Virginia, but even more in Kentucky and Tennessee, and farther west, and now a good deal in Pennsylvania also.

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There is some very fine grazing ground in the Central States, Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia. The blue grass of Kentucky is famous; though it is not blue at all, but green, and very our common natural grass. In the South an EastIndian grass, known as 'Dhoop,' or Sun-grass, has been introduced, and proves very productive as a permanent grass. In most of the Northern States timothy grass, rye grass, and clover are largely sown; and in some parts further south lucerne is a productive crop.

Efforts are being made to reintroduce silk in the South, but it has been tried before, and I doubt if it will come to much. The tea-plant grows very well, but it requires too much labour to be a practical culture in the States. There is too much frost for coffee. The Southerners are trying to grow Bengal jute, but nothing has come of these experiments yet. They used to cultivate indigo, but it has quite gone out; Bengal has beaten them in that. And they have not attempted to rival our Indian opium. Attempts are made to produce wine, but I think it is only in California that vineyards are very successful.

In the Northern States, little as one would expect it, the most valuable product of all is hay, chiefly grown from artificial grass. That shows how much is done for the rearing of flocks. Maize, or Indian corn, is an immense production all over the country. Of this also much is used to feed animals. After that comes wheat, the production of which has made wheat cheap in our markets, and the cultivation of which is so much increasing that it may be confidently predicted that, unless we have any unhappy quarrel with the United States, which God forbid, bread never can again be dear in this country; for the means of communication are improving every day. The production of barley is not large, but there is a great abundance of oats. Wheat is produced both in the North-Western States, where snow covers it in winter, and much further south, where the winters are mild. In the intermediate zone maize prevails.

I trust cheap meat is about to be secured to us in addition to cheap bread. Already bacon is produced in America at an extraordinarily low rate, and the people of a large number of the States are now devoting immense attention to the production of beef. It is not only that great herds come from the western grazing grounds of Colorado and Texas, but in the settled agricultural countries people are more and more giving themselves to cattle-breeding. They import very carefully the finest bulls, and are raising the character of their cattle every day. Nothing impressed me so much throughout my tour as the

great extent of country, North and South, East and West, in which the farmers are going into cattlebreeding for our market with enthusiasm-one hears the talk of beeves everywhere, and the cattle trade is ready to assume enormous proportions. You are aware, too, that extraordinary efforts are being made, day by day, to find improved means of bringing the American meat to your doors. An immense number of fine steamers are fitting up for the trade in live cattle, which is growing by leaps and bounds as never trade grew before. I cannot but have some sympathy with our farmers, who are, I am afraid, having rather hard times; but still they have considerable advantages in many respects, and must more and more devote themselves to supplying us with milk and butter, to finishing off the education of foreign cattle, to turning their farms into a sort of market-gardens of high culture. And, without touching upon political subjects, I must venture to hope that our Government will not be led into any restriction upon the importation of cattle, which would have the effect of keeping very dear the butcher's-meat consumed by the people of this country.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

I now proceed to tell you something of the characteristics of the American people-I mean the real American, born and bred in the country, as distinguished from the foreign element, of which there is so much. In some things, no doubt, there

are peculiarities which make them unlike us; but in very many other things they are like us. And it

seems to me that, after getting over the first surface differences, the likenesses are much more numerous and much more prominent than the unlikenesses. We have heard of their popular "Yankeeisms," which are supposed to give us a fair specimen of the American people; but what I found when I went there was, that the peculiarities of language and otherwise which had been held out to us as "Yankeeisms " really almost exhaust all that there is of American peculiarity. These 'Yankeeisms' of our literature are not specimens of what is behind, but are in themselves nearly the whole of the features in which the people' differ from us. In their general style, in their manners, and in their language they are in a very marked degree British, and not foreign.

In regard to language especially I was really surprised to find how little difference there is, and how much their idioms and everything else are thoroughly English. It is a curious thing, but it seems to me that the only people who talk very American indeed are the higher class of people, and especially the ladies-the sort of fine ladies one sees in foreign hotels on the Continent of Europe. Perhaps the truth is that these people are the oldest Americans, who have brought down most completely the provincial peculiarities which they carried with them from certain parts of Old England or established among themselves in the early days of American settlement. It may well be that these have been

handed down among the richer classes, whereas among the lower classes, intermixed so much as they have been with new arrivals, the language has assumed a sort of cosmopolitan English character. I found that in many parts of the States the common labouring man used language which I could not distinguish from that of a tolerably educated man of the same class in these islands. I might have been in doubt what county he came from, but if he did not happen to use a few peculiar American phrases I should not have known that he was not a Britisher. It was not only that my ear became accustomed to the American intonation, for I constantly found, again, that when I met ladies of the more well-to-do classes the 'Yankee' peculiarities came out as prominently as ever. Of the body of the people I think it may be said that their language is English-a little better than that used in any county of England.

The hotels are certainly a very peculiar American institution. Mr. Anthony Trollope hits them off very well. Although he does make the worst of things, I am not prepared to say that there is not much truth in his description of the hotels. I have said that they are extremely convenient for the passing traveller; but as residences in the way many Americans use them I do not know that I should care for them. It struck me as curious, in regard to hotels and some other things, that, inventive and progressive as the Americans are, there is in these things a sort of dead level of uniformity about them.