Southern sentinel. [volume] (Plaquemine, Parish of Iberville [La.]) 1848-1858, 1852-11-06
ssNZMERM ssMHAASAe
.--,--:. of the American Character.

Tbo following passages from a late WORK
.,h1;sbod in England, entitled 1.-TWO years or
tho Farm of Uncle Sam, with sketches OF bis
location, n%ephews and prospects" indicate a
desire rightly to appreciate the American ena'
%racter:
"Vieing with the Parisians IN dfess-the
English in energy-cautious as d !'u'chnlan--
impulsive as an Irishman-p@trlotic as lei-
brave a. WalIace-cool as Wellington, and
roval ~ Alexander; there he ~goes--the AmerI-
ran citizen! In answering your questions, or
snraking commonly, his style is that OF the
oncient Spartan; but put him on a stump, with
nm audience Of Wings, Democrats or Barnburn-
ers, and he becomes a compound OF Tom ofioo
and Demosthencs, a fountain OF eloquence,
passion. sentiment, sarcasm, logic and droliery,
aItooether different from anything known or
ima@ined in the Old World States. Say any
thing of anybody Gas public men) united with
conventional phraseoiogy, he swings his rheto-
rical mace with a vigorous arih, crushing the
antagonistic principle or person INTO a most
villainous compound. See him al dinner; ne
dispatches his meal with a speed which leads
YOU to suppose him a Illuminating animal, yet
eniering his ~cigarro for an hour afterwards,
with the eusto and ennui OF a Spaniard.
Walking right on, as If 1t were life against
time. with the glass at fever-heat, yet taking it
cool in the most serious and pressing matter,
Z compound of the Red man, Brummel and
observation-disclosures and Iaborer, on he goes,
divided and sub-divided in politics and religion,
professionally opposed with a keenness of COM
~Dctjtion in vain looked for even in England;
vet, let but the national rights or liberty be
threatened, and that vast nation stands Il pyra-
mid of resolve, united as one man, with heart,
head, hand and purse, burning with a Roman
zeal to defend i~nvio!ate the cause of the com
inonWealttl.
To him who has lived among the Americans,
and looked largely at the theory and practice
of their government and its executive, there
remains no doubt that the greatest amount of
personal security and freedom has been pro-
duced from the least amount of cost of any
nation in the world. Culling its principles and
wisdom from the history of all empires, it
stands the nearest Of all earthly systems to
perfection, because it is built on and embodies
those principles which God hath proclaimed in
his attributes.
] noticed that the American sets less value
on life than the Europeans; that is, he does not
think the loss Of life the greatest loss, the Ill
timatum. When a man dies, you see none of
that sentiment, q use the best term | can think
of,) which surrounds such an event in older
countries. The American is silent in manner,
embarrassingly so at first, extremely accurate
in his observations of human nature, and any
man that cannot bear to be scrutinized had bet
ter not come here. The American judges
much by the eye, and has a most enviable pow
er Of estimation; your temperament, speech,
look, and act, are all taken in by him; and if
you can get at the tablet of his judgment, you
will find a remarkable daguerreotype of your
exact worth written thereon. They are phre-
biologists and physiognomists, not merely as
philosophers, but as practical appliers of those
inductive sciences; and beneath 4 show of pos
tive ~laziness or languor, there is an amount of
and action, mental and physical, per-
tectly surprising. They are not averse to the
higher branches of science and literature, but
they bend all TO utility, and are as a nation the
best arithmeticians in the world: and this sci
alone gives a terse matter of fact tone to
mental working; in fact, when a man
wants to reflect on a proposition, he says
Wait till | figure up"