The Sun.
London, England, 1863-11-03 00:00:00

THE WESTERN PEOPLE.

(' From the Special Correspondent of the Times.)
CLEVELAND, OHIO, Oct. 19.

"1 low do you like America ?" Such from the
days of the elder to those of the present Trollope is
the s tereotyped question with which a stranger is
ever] -where greeted in this country. " How do you
like the Americans ?" does not usually follow. Yet
it ma vbe matter of duty to answer this second
query, even unasked.
The old Venetians wished their Republic never
to be made the theme of any remark, hostile or
friendly. The Americans are, on the contrary, ex-
cessively fond of being talked and written about;
with this peculiarity, however, that the harder they
are hit the more thankful they seem to be. The
least word of abuse is deeply taken to heart, but
any amount of praise is wasted upon them. Mrs.
Trollop e, of old, lashed them within an inch of their
lives, road they kiss the rod to this day ; Anthony
Trollope wrote a fair and on the whole favourable
acco ant of them, and his book fell nearly stillborn
on this side the water. Unless you are very hard
upon them, they will vote you dull, colourless, insipid.
Yet my time has come to bid my farewell to the
West, and I should think I had but imperfectly
acquitted myself of my task, did I not consecrate at
least a few lines of my last letter to render, as I
best could, the impression I received of the character
of these -Western people. It little matters whether
I am set down among the unreasonably severe or
the unbearably stupid. When there is no way of
pleasing some people, it is just as well for a man to
try and please himself.
The American people are an
Enalish race at
second hand. Two millions and a halt of European
emigrants came into this country within the period
of ten years, from 1850 to 1860, and by far the
greatest number found their way to the Western
States. The influx of strangers must have been far
greater in the pr"
i°l
German
years, in the days of Irish
potato rot and Irepublican riots. The Anglo-
Saxon race is or soon will be in she minority west
of the"Allegbanies et from this chain to the Rocky
Mountains the Americatype
American continues true to
itself. Nothing can be more prodigious than the
absorbing and assimilating power of the dominant
race. German names are to be read here and there
on the shop windows at St. Louis and Chicago;
rural Teutonic accents will strike
gut your ear as you
walk about the Transrhenane (über den Rhein),
suburbs of Cincinnati, especially of a Sunday aftdr-
noon ; but, on the whole, the aliens are no more
perceptible in these Western cities than they are
in New York,—New York, the" third German
city
in the world," by reason of its "Dth" a c population
taking rank next to Vienna and Berlin.
There are no better citizens
in America, I am
told, than the Irish of the second generation, and
the names of Andrew Jackson, Patrick Henry, and
John Calhoun are quoted in support of the assertion.
Possibly, the A •
mericans are too apt to take for Irish
everything that comes out of Ireland, as they would
consider fish all that is got out of the sea. But there
is no doubt that all trace of Irishism is lost in the
American schools, and that Irish no less than Ger-
man children soon grow up here, soon forget their
alien origin, to disavow, to hate, and despise it.
The Americans are English or they are nothing.
However estranged they may be in their mutual
feelings, this elder and this younger branch of the
Anglo-Saxon race are one in the estimation of all
the rest of mankind ; and it is only as a variety of
the British type that the American character is to
be studied and tested.
One of the most obvious, nay, obtrusive virtues
of these "Western Americans is their hospitality.
The enormous hotels raising their lofty domes above

the rooms of their mushroom cities are " institu-
tions" which have barely taken the place of the
squatter's hut, where, in old pioneering days, the
. _

" etranger was always taken in," whether he paid
Lis shot in coin or merely in thanks. Moreover, the
Great West is a region of unbounded, natural wealth
and in all rich agricultural countries the owner of the
soil is generally ready to share in its bountiful fruits
with the guest who is within his gates. You may
travel from one end to the other of the States with-
out one word being addressed to you, for the Ameri-
can is proud and shy and " would be spoken to :"
but oring with you only the poorest scrap of a note

of introduction, only show the seal of your socia

passport, and it must be your own fault if you are
not at home at once with the whole community.
The first man who has hold of you ushers you into
his entire circle. In ten minutes you aro made to
shake a hundred hands, and presently, on your
name lazing down on your hotel book, and vouched
for as something above that of a pickpocket, you

are waited upon by unknown persons, who, you are
to understand, are conspicuous citizens, taking upon
themselves the duty of doing the honours of the
place, and making you free of their house no less

than of their town. This open-handed, open-
hearted benevolence towards strangers is true of all

Americans; it is chiefly characteristic of the Western
people. Americans live in a hurry; they have little
leisure to be particular about their acquaintance.
Social equality is established at least in the streets
and publichouses ; and so long as a stranger behaves
well, people trouble themselves little about his
Transatlantic precedents. They are eager, inquisi-
tive people. The untravelled among them fancy
there is something to pick up, something to wonder
at and to learn from every one who comes to them
from the Old World. Where you have delivered your
credentials in the morning you are, as a matter of
co"Re, expected to take your dinner or " substantial
tea" in the
evening. The drawbridge of the Ame-
rican's castle home is always let down; its sanctu-
ary, with wif® and children, always accessible;
with the pale, delicate, sprightly wife; with the sea
green, noisy, knowing children. For a week or a
fortnight the hotel affords you nothing but sleeping
accommodation. For the rest your friends provide.
They ply you with old cognac or old Bourbon
whisky, and cigars at their
counting-house in the
forenoon; they treat you to sherry cobbler at the
bar in the evening; they drive you in their buggy
to their villa, to their neighbour's farm, to the
park to all American cities;
cemetery, which is the
they enter your name at the Exchange, at the Lib-
rary ; their town and all it can boast becomes no less
yours than theirs.
It gees very much against the grain to have to
find fault with a people who put themselves so much
please you; and, on the other
out of the way to
said to their
word disparagement is
hand, anytoo
readily received by the Americans as a proof of in-
gratitude and a broach of hospitality. 'Yon have so
many reasons to love them that it seems hard and
monstrous that you should not like them. For my
own part, I like the Americans. In so far as they
resemble the English I have the same feeling for
the new branches of the family as I have for the old
stock. It is only on these peculia rides in which
their institutions, their mode of life, the develop.
ment of a new social order gradually set them apart
from the parent race, that I have a few observations

to offer.
In the first place, public life in America is the
rule, and domestic privacy the exception. I hate
the hotel as a private institution, After the French
and Italian cafe nothing in my opinion can be
more injurious to the public standard of morality
than.. an American hotel. Whatever may be said of
the industry and businesslike habits of these peoples
1 should say that " loafing" is, especially in the
Peat, to a great extent the normal state of Ameri-
can life.
The crowds that beset the Planter's House
at Sr. Louis,
or the Burnet House at Cincinnati, are
somethingportentous.tters.
thei
gathering hotel is tile new: I
g would be natural enough ; the i
; but at alt bazaar, the field for political dis-
cession
hours of the day the publichouse
is a universal lounge, the very home of great hulk-
ing fellows doing nothing
but sitting upon two
chairs, with their feet u
Prou the window ledge, high
above their noses. The
is
even chaffer banter among them.
lno friendly chat, not
for hours, chewing the Cud, iern. There they
musing,sit yawning, loaf
-
inn.. Talk of Italian dolts
n•fur nient9 .
I I never
BaW so dull, so listless, so miserable -
il killing of time
as I witnessed daily in the halls ana
par
bar, the office, the divan, the barher-shopolfours, the
an
Ame-
rican hotel. Whatever may be said of the h nnewspapers, of the mass of cheap book,, issuing
from the press, the Americans—the male Americans
at least--.ire not, 3 rt,tv.llrig Fople. I se books

hawked by the hundred volumes along every rail-
way line, but hardly a person in the whole " car"
besides myself with as much as an open 50c. novel
in his hands. Instruction,.—that is,—reading and
writing, is universal in the Western States,but sound
and extensive education is unfrequent. You fall in
with smart people everywhere; for toe American
is a stirring, travelling, inquisitive being, picks up
information, and turns it to good advantage, but
intellectual life is almost altogether out of the
question. American literature is limited to the
narrow wants of the Eastern cities ; 90 out
of 100 writers on this side of the Atlantic are
Yankees. The West is as independent upon the
East for ideas as the latter is indebted to the old
country for the same commodity.
Community of life and want of mentalfeaecltiinvgityinletahed
to a great uniformity of thought and
whole Weitern region. Colossal frames you meet
with here and there in these back settlements, mas-
sive brows, strength of c.hbaurtacttheere,efin
are e
merely
yidtuhael
types of sturdy manhood ,
relics of the old pioneer life, which is rapidly pass.
ing away and shifting further and further west. In
the cities there is great sameness of ideas, barrenness
the EvenA in
Americans
in r
epolitics,ethat aelri t-
rude notions about the ex.
and vaeuitytehopfaiveteheofsuotmgahlekte:
absorbingmaee ; the y
cellence of their heaven-born Constitution, about the
bigness of their country, the smartness of their na-
tion, the destinies of their Union. For the rest, you
find everywhere iteration of the same arguments, a
vicious circle of reasoning. They are eager in the
distinction rather than in the definition of parties ;
happy in the invention of nicknames for their poli-
tical divisions; but " tickets" and " platforms" are
in the main mere personal matters, and, with the ex-
ception of slavery, they have hardly one important
question really at issue. It may be slowness of per-
ception on my part, but, bating a few crackbrained
radical abolitionists, and a few uncompromising up-
holders of slavery, I hardly ever met a politician,
whether Democratic or Republican, who could
clearly tell me what he wanted.
The same monotony is perceptible in every phase
of moral and physical life. The town yon come to
is as perfect a fac siwile of the town you left behind
as the circumstanees of site and ground would allow.
You have everywhere the same " Fourth and
Fifth" streets, at right angles with the same "Wash-
ington and Madison" avenues. The private houses,
with their excellent contrivances of bathing, light-
ing, and warming apparatus, with a high degree of
comfort, snugness, and neatness, are all on one
model, as the cells of a beehive. The hotels only
differ in their degree of dirt, noise, and discomfort ;
the same bill of fare, the same hour for meals, the
same notices on the bedroom doors, the same care-
less, slovenly waiting. Tne further you travel in
America the less you have to learn.
Another striking peculiarity of the American cha-
racter lies in the preference for city over country
life. The English love of open air, exercise, and
manly sport dies away in this country wherever
society is settled. The American towns—even of
the second and third rate—straggle oat for miles
in every direction, so that the way into the free
country lies beyond the limits of any ordinary walk.
But the people seem to care little for green fields,
and less for pure air. Everywhere, in public and
private rooms, in railway cars, wherever men do
congregate, the atmosphere is close and noisome—
unbearable to any one but the natives. The Ame-
ricans are naturally a hardy, but they have hardly
the look of a healthy race, They look sallow, lank,
dybpeptic. The nursery is not oae of their insti•
tutions ; children live with grown-up persons.
They have their diet, their talk, keep their hours,
rejoice in their independence for good or for evil.
Neither childhood nor youth have their marked
limits here ; transition ages are as short in man's
life as transition seasons in the climate. The love
of suburban villas, of the cottage-home of old
England, hardly begins to develope itself among
the Western people. The pride of the rich mer-
chant or banker lies in a superb mansion, away from
his place of business, in some solemn and stately
quarter, some " Fifth-avenue " of the Belgravia or
Tyburnia of his over-grown city. Life in the
country is unbearable in most parts of this continent,
they say, in deep winter; it is not quite wholesome
in summer; the fact is, however, that the American
is as loth to wean himself from the pleasures
of town life as the enervated people of Southern
Europe. At Cincinnati, with a population scarcely
half that of Manchester or Liverpool, there are no
less than four theatres open every evening at this
present season, with all the charms of the motley
American Fall and the purity of the bright Ameri-
can sky to invite man to the enjoyment of outdoor
life, and with all the distress, bereavement, and
anxiety inseparable from the progress of the war.
This war, by the way, has brought the levity of
the American character out in bold relief. There is
something saddening—indeed, revolting, in the high
glee, real or affected, with which the people here
look upon what ought to be, at any rate, a grievous
national calamity. The indulgence in every variety
of pleasure, luxury, and extravagance is simply
shocking. The jewellers' shops in all these cities
have doubled and trebled their trade ; the love of fine
dresses and ornament on the part of the women
amounts to madness.
.They have the money, well or
ill gotten, and must enjoy it. Every fresh bulletin
from the battlefield of Chicamauga during my three
weeks' stay in Cincinnati brought a long list of the
dead and wounded of the Western army, many of
whom—of the officers at least—belonged to the best
families in the place. Yet the signs of mourning were
hardly any where perceptible ; the noisy gaiety of the
town was not abated one jot. Miss Laura Keene,
the actress, and I forget what dancing girl, did not
draw a less fall house. There may be a great deal of
empty bravado, of bluster, and swagger in all this
apparent indifference to undeniable suffering, bat it
works no pleasing impression on a sensitive stranger.
It is a kind of "funerale con bello e maschere," grat-
ing on a man's best feelings, profane, repulsive. On
the whole, one comes away from the West with little
respect for the earnestness and dignity of the people
one has left behind. The sterling soundness of the
English character is dying away among this second-
hand Anglo-Saxon race, partly owing perhaps to the
admixture of less solid elements; perhaps to the
influence of the climate, the working of the insti-
tutions, and the exulting consciousness of that
boundless wealth of the soil which has power to
repair all broken fortunes, to heal all domestic and
social wounds.

THE SHABSPERE TERCENTENARY--The follow-
ing is the address issued by the Stratford-on-Avon
Tercentenary Committee :—" As the town in which Shak-
!Pere was born, bred, and educated, which he chose for his
noloo in the decline of life, and in which he died and was
buried, Stratford-on-Avon is assuredly the most
appropriate
81)(4 for a tercentenary celebration in his honour. The fes-
tival •
April
will be extended over four or five days. On Saturday,
23, tthheerewill be a banquet for ladies and gentlemen,
at which
address. II .Earl of Carlisle will preside and deliver an
members of both
a will be supported on the occasion by many
rfoises of Parliament, and others eminent
in the walks of art' iriterature, and science. On other days
there will be excursions_ to various places in the vicinity of
Stratford-on-Avon,
lr oftrative of incidents in Shakspere's
life, under the suidauuc
gentlemen well qualified for the
task; critical aaal)ses
many
Ilakspere's plays a grand
oratorio (to which a s
have already consented toof our leading vocalists
contribute their ser-
vices), and a miscellaneouscaouseert. The comedy of
4As You Like it,' and one of Shakspere's tragedies will be
represented by a combination of metropolitanllltan
fancy and provincial
talent. There will also be a Shakspeea
ball. One
day will be devoted exclusively to popular
Each day's proceedings will be fully
- specifiedaini n
a subse-
usements.
quent prospectus. The substantial objects to which
the
pecuniary results of the festival will be devoted
ar
the endowment of one or more scholarships to the English
first'
Universities, open to the competion of those who have
re-
ceived their education at the same school at which Shalt:
spere received his, viz., the Free Grammar School founded
by King Edward VI. ; Second, the erection of a monu-
mental memorial at Stratford on-Avon. While they re.
serve to themselves the privilege of expanding or modifying
their programme according to circumstances, they beg to
assure you that the larger the funds with which they may
be entrusted the more energetic will be their efforts to ren-
der the occasion august and memorable."
THE DISTURBANCES AT GUILDPORD._The mayor
and magistrates of the borough of Guildford, after having
been in communication with Sir George Grey, Home Secre-
tary, have at length completed their arrangements for the
prevention of the disgraceful and riotous scenes which have
annually been enacted within the limits of their jurisdiction
on the otb. November,