The Sun.
London, England, 1860-01-04 00:00:00

LOLI MONTEZ ON ENGLAND.

(From the New York Herald of Dec. 21.)
Mozart Hall was crowded on Thursday evening
by a very numerous and respectable audience, to
listen to a lecture on the subject, "John Bull at
Home," by Lola Montez, who has lately returned
from a visit to Europe, where she dissected Ameri-
can life, American customs, and American peculiari-
ties, for the edification of English audiences. Last
night she reversed the picture by presenting a New
York audience with a detailed and humorous view
of English peculiarities. Her pictures of English
life embraced a very diverse and extensive field, and
were characterised throughout by that humour and
piquancy for which the fair lecturer is so celebrated.
Long before the advertised hour the doors and
ticket office were besieged by an eager throng seek-
ing admission, and as the time for the lecture ap-
proached every seat was occupied, and extra chairs
and benches were in great demand. Nearly 3,000
people were present, a fair proportion of whom
were ladies. Both the gallery and the body of the
hall were densely crowded, and the passage ways
between the settees were filled with those who had
arrived too late to obtain seats.
Alinost precisely at eight o'clock the lecturer ap-
peared amid the plaudits of the audience, and took
her place behind the stand on the platform. She
was neatly attired in a dress of black velvet, re-
lieved at the neck by a white lace collar. Her hair
bore a charming negligee which did not seem out
of place. She seemed to be in the enjoyment of
excellent health, excepting a slight paleness and
attenuation of the features, probably the result of
the hardships and severity of her recent voyage.
After bowing in response to the applause of the
audience she began her lecture :
She hoped she would not be abused for what she
had to say of the English character. Abuse at no
time had formed part of her design. She hoped no
one would accuse her of injustice or prejudice if she
took a peep at the comical side of John Bull's cha-
racter. They might laugh at his innocent pecu-
liarities, but it was a well-known fact that they
often laughed most at those they loved the best. In
England she had many and warm friends. She had
met with a hearty reception in British cities. To
abuse the English character to Americans, or the
American character to Englishmen, would be like

abusing the father to the -son, and the son to the
father. The newspapers here have not ceased to
call England the mother country, and why cease
to call her so ? All -their troubles, no matter of
what nature, could never wipe out the fact that
their being was received from Old England. They
might tell her that German and other elements pre-
dominated, but still the type of everything was
English, and bore the marks of English origin.
They might have enlarged and improved the fabric
of human skill, but the same spirit and type existed.
This fact had escaped the attention of English tra-
vellers. Mr. Dickens, for instance, bad only been
used to looking at things in a ridiculous light. So
much had been written in England about that Ame-
rican" institution"—the spittoon—that her opinion
on the matter was looked for. She had confessed
that the spittoon was a feature of this country, and
sl-c furthermore confessed her admiration for the
institution. If there was no spittoon in a room the
American would open the nearest window and spit
out, to the detriment of any cloak or dress within
20 rods distance. But spitting into a tin box, or
even out of tke window, was preferable to slyly and
secretly spitting into one's handkerchief, like the
English. In nations so much alike as England and
America, it was hard to find peculiarities so opposed
as to distinguish them. Hence writers were CJlTl-
polled to note some peculiarity very trifling in its
character to make the distinction. The charac-

eristics of the human race were the -same every-
where. As to the formation of character from the
character of government, she had been led to be-
lieve, from what she had seen, that the national
character arose, not from the political nature of the
government, but from an inherent moral mpetus
given by political revulsions. The English have
ever been the most busy and active nation- on the
globe, which peculiarity also marked the American.
It was no metaphor to call England the workshop
of the world. The driving, busy Yankee was very
like the English. No part of the United States was
so like England as New England, with its manu•
factories and machine shops. Nowhere so many
people live by their wits as in England. The
smartest thieves and pickpockets, and those • who
taught the science of burglary, were all Lnglish.
But they should not limit smartness to rogues alone.
It ran through all classes. There was hardly a
paper in the United States which did not count
among its corps some Englishmen. It they went
to England they would find that all the smart men
had not come to this country. The first idea which
would impress a visitor to England was the fewness
of idlers. There was a business and professional
air in everybody's step and countenance. The Eng-
lish were essentially a doing people. It was gene-
r illy supposed that the Yankee character was an
original one. She argued that the Yankees were
not old enough as yet to possess a new and original
national character. They had • only
.improved and '
modified that which they had received from the
mother country. The blending of diverse national
characteristics in this country world work out a
nationality unsurpassed and unsurpassable. The
different sections of this country bore distinct marks
of the people who originally, settled them. The
great nationality of England was a compound of
great nationalities which have all been worked into
one mass by the force of time, .The whole people
were characterised by the different marks which
distinguished each of the original nations composing
them. The way in which New England wrested
the land from the aborigines was so thoroughly
English •.that they could not help smiling at it.
Their proceedings for that purpose were charac-
terised by English
,forms. For instance, they had
"resolved that the land was God's, resolved they
were God's people ; therefore, that the land be-
longed to them," and they took it. (Laughter.)
Now, nothing was more English than that. No-
thing was more amusing than to see the manner in
which the English laugh at New England peculia-
rities, which peculiarities were essentially English.
Nowhere in the world did she know of so much offi-
cious intrusion in the business and private matters
of strangers as in England. It exceeded even the
prying -curiosity of New England. She had,
during her late visit to England, received
about five hundred letters, asking her assistance
to make all kinds of fortunes, in every
conceivable manner and in inconceivably short
periods of time. (She here read several speci-
mens of these letters.) She had received half a
bushel daily of such missives—infractions on the
national modesty of which England boasted. •Eng-
land was full of modest adventurers—men who
lived by their wits and by their modesty. She had
No
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ith
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tionism, while they were at the same time fostering
the. cruel system of coolieism and committing e'atro-
cities on the poor natives of India, the horrors of
which it was impossible to convey. In her famous
letter in Enkland on slavery she took occasion to
intimate her desire to see nations minding their
own business, and if she had lost her head in Ens.-
land for so saying, she would at least have had tie
pleasure, so inestimable to every woman, of speak-
ing out her mind. (Applause and laughter.) As to
medical qusckery. nowhere was there so much of it
as in England. The teachers of quackery in this
country were English. An eminent English M.D.
whom she had once known, and who was provided
with a.diploma from the Royal College of London,
whichhearlii t the s
purported
signature
after the demise of that gentleman, turned in
llature
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London, duringher visit, as an ostler with a pa-
tent machine for subduing refractory horses. She
had seen all England plastered with placards of a
certain kind of lozenges, whose healing powers
were mast wonderful and of love powders, by
which to subdue the stoutest and coldest heart, en-
abling the poorest of women to marry the richest