The Arkansaw traveler., 1884-04-19
COLONIAL SOCIETY OF VIRGINIA
fMacmi!t4n NJ aea1ine.l

Macmillan Magaxine
 IL Is very singular thing tha, among the great number of English travellers who of late years have published books upon America, scarcely one has thought It worth while to tuin from thc beaten and haokncyed paths which kahit would seem to have marked out, to those great unexplored regions lying south of the. Potomac liver. Many, too, o! these pub licationS, having the most comprehensive titles, bear no evidence on ;helr pages of any consciousness m the authors mind of the very existence of that great group of states, which m his own lifetime dominated ,he union, and may at this day fairy ke said 10 represent one-third of its integral power There Is seldom even any expression nt regret that time and circumstances should pfevcn, the nifi..iVr ftor v:stsisg the south, nor Is there often any. apparent consciousness of tEComplcieness' Tn the lahors of American exploration, as lie or she turns sharp roand at Washington, as na,ula ally as If II lay upon tho Gulf of Mexieo. and strikes westa .dd for the Rocky Noun tains.
 II the ordinary tourist thinks tat his tune is better spen, over an upimportant and un-Amcrlcan social excrcs cencc like the Mormon settlement. II Is his affair :: but Tn the case of those who travel for the pursose ot enlightening their fellow eountrymen as 10 the political. social and material condi,ion ot our trans atlantic cousins. there is something strangely incomplete in the programme into which they drift, rather from pre- cedent, or perhaps from despair a, the size ot the country, than from any de hberate purpose. Such works are gene.- ally but the impressions of vacation tours. and not only that, but, as general thing, the only two phases of American life with which the English traveller comes Tn contact are the comparatiyely cosmopolitan society of the great eastern cities on the one hand, and on the other the Exaggerated erudeness of the western wilds. The great mass of the American people proper, lying between these two extremes-knowing little of either, living on farms and IF villages all through the older states are hardly recognized by this class of travellers. Tucked up in | Pullman car. he goes from city 10 city and from wonder to wonder. and comes home to encourage the shlbboleth that America has much land but no country An almost contcmp,uous ignorance oi American and colonial history IS not conducive to q sympathetic appreciation or a ready recognition of that really rich local coloring whose existence no one will. 1 think, deny who has lived in any of the older states. For l think may say, wlthou, fear of con tradiction, that the development of our earliest colonies into mighty nation is historical study to which the majority of even wel!-read Englshmen are sub. Timely indifferent
 One or ,%o distinguished journalists have made raids of late into southern towns. and have disooursed with their usual brilllancy on the social loys of Sharieston or Savannah; on Chesapeaxe oysters and oanvasback ducks. have paid pathetic tributes to the eraveyards that bristle on the battle-helds round Richmond have reproduced the negro as seen on the box of hackney coach or behind the apron of hotel waiter have recalled old war "reminiscences. and noted down conversations with southern friends: haze had iex gllmpses of the country from the platform of railway cars. and had good time generally. if a brief one. To get comprehensive view of the country, however, even north of the Potomac. from inside towns. is inn possible but 10 study such a country IS the sou:h-which IS nothing If no, rural m whose economic structure. towns. uu- happily. played bu, little part, and whose whole history is based on their non- existence-is, of course. under such con- ditions impossible. Indeed, venture to say, that an extended residence is necessary to understand the social con- diions of the south, and it is to i;s social conditions that mos, Of its peculiarities and strong characteristics are due.
 Each of the older southern states has ot course. cherished individual tadi- tons each has some distinctive trai, for which 1t Is noted; yet all these minor oiffeIences seem to fade, when com pared with the general uniformity of habits and ideas created by the existence of a common domestic system. All diversities of soil, climate, production. and even of origin, seem ovsr ridden by the long attitude of combined defence that welded the slave states together from the beginning of this century. when | the really formidable development of slavery commenced, till the war. A | Virginian to-day is, first a virginian