MORE MEMORIES. I. PERSONAL. Fear and hope-Some misapprehension as to our appreciations of America-General Washington-American authors-Subjects and objects of addresses. IF I am presumptuous in obtruding upon your notice so large an amount of British humanity, if I should fail to evoke your interest, and to win your approbation, I can only call upon those who, privately, suggested my visit by their cordial invitations, and publicly encouraged it by their genial praise of my books, to retire with me into the wilderness to share and to solace my despair. But I will not anticipate such a doleful disaster. The kindness which I have already received, my earnest anxiety to please, the object of my enterprise, the sympathy which has always responded to my love for my fellow-men, to my "enthusiasm of humanity," these all combine to assure me that you will minimize my faults, which B are many, and will magnify my merits, which are few. In the days of my boyhood there was a custom in our English homes, when a new little brother or a new little sister was given to our love, to trace with pins on a large white pincushion this shining salutation WELCOME LITTLE LITTLE STRANGER and as I seem to read a similar reception, in the bright eyes and smiling faces before me, I am inspired with the hopeful, happy ambition, that the little stranger may grow in your esteem, and enlarge himself to your affectionate regard. I am here, ladies and gentlemen, not only in response to the kindly inducements which I have mentioned—I may add that your reviewers have almost made me of Jefferson's mind, when he said, "that if it were left for him to decide whether there should be a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, he should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter"-but I come to realize my lifelong desire to see your wonderful country, its cities, and its scenery, its rivers, "broad, and deep, and brimming over, making their waves a blessing as they flow," the splendid glories of your forests in "the fall," the triumphs of your inventive and industrial power. You come to us to venerate the past; we come to you to admire the present and to anticipate the future-the progress of a mighty people, which, while all the other nations of the world are armed to the teeth, yet ever seeking new armaments, amid wars and rumours of wars, work on in peace, practising that which your great poet preached— "Were half the power that fills the world with terror, There were no need of arsenals and forts." It has been said by an American bishop, that all we English people knew about American history was the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers upon Plymouth Rock, and that he became so wearied by monotonous references to this particular embarkation, that he began to wish that the arrangements had been reversed, and that Plymouth Rock had landed on the Pilgrim Fathers! Such a kатаσтρоДη would not only have been fatal to the Fathers, but would have deprived America of some of her most famous men, and certainly of one of her most famous institutions; for it was Elihu Yale, the son of one of these Pilgrim Fathers, whose munificence to the Newhaven College at Connecticut induced the trustees to rename it "Yale College." I have seen his monument in the churchyard at Wrexham, North Wales, and remember part of the inscription "Born in America, in Europe bred, In London dead. Much good, some ill, he did, So hope all's even, And that his soul, through mercy, 's gone to heaven." To the same purport I read, not many months ago, in Harper, that "when an Englishman came to the States, all that he brought was himself.” I am constrained to acknowledge that there is too much truth in this impeachment. Insularity does not tend to enlighten ignorance, or to enlarge experience, and riches and honour rarely promote humility. I have read of a certain Emperor of Tartary, who, when he proceeded to dine, principally on horse-flesh, sent a herald to announce, outside his tent, that all the other emperors, kings, presidents, and plenipotentiaries throughout the world had his permission to feed, and he made himself believe, with the assistance of his courtiers, that all these rulers were waiting, with their knives and forks in their hands, and their dinner napkins tucked under their chins, for his authority to begin. England for a time was fascinated by a somewhat similar delusion, and still has children who are disinclined to believe that any other nation can prosper without her permission and patronage. They regard it as a waste of time to study carefully any history except their own, and they close their eyes and shut their ears to any records which seem to contradict their creed, that Britannia rules all seas and shores. I need not remind you that there are incidents in the annals of America which do not lend themselves quite |