They bent our ear; James Silk Buckingham

Why do other nations think of the past and act for the future. America may be said to exist in the present alone. The past has left no shadow. And the future promises no substance. The people with the energy and intelligence which the Americans possess a people which has like it the genius of industry which combines perseverance with the resources of ingenuity. Such a people cannot be born of yesterday to vanish on the morrow. Oh no. They bend our ear travelers to America. From the 1820s to the eve of the Civil War. Europeans came to America in a steady flow traveled through the United States driven by an irresistible curiosity. Many of them wrote books about their travels to tell us what they had seen in the new world of Jacksonian democracy.

Some were friendly. Some were highly critical. All women particularly observers of detail in the written by Perry Miller professor of American literature at Harvard University. You will meet some of the travelers to America who bend our ear with their criticisms their advice their prayers or that philosophy. Some you already know. Our new acquaintances at all times the travellers speak in their own words quoted directly from their writing. They bend our ear is produced and recorded by the Lowell Institute cooperative broadcasting console under a grant from the Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National Association of educational broadcasters. Today's encounter was with Michelle author of society manners and politics in the United States. And Thomas Conley grokking author of civilized America. Has a parody Miller is your host and the

writer. This is indeed a fortunate occasion to have you for a gentlemen assembled here especially our European gas. Michele is a professor of political economy at the College de France and member of the Institute. I am very grateful to my government for sending me on a mission to study and order of things so I'm like oh yes and Mr Thomas College Gratton likely Her Britannic Majesty's Consul General in Boston representative of Her Britannic Majesty indeed sir. Nevertheless Irish son of colleague pleating margin going to get there. Yes. Also a distinguished author of such romances as the heiress of that popular sketch of European travel the highways and byways are still more distinguished countryman Washington I having sometimes been called have you not. The Irish Washington Irving and it

is a compliment above my just saying no not at all. We are also fortunate in having with your hosts. You recognize these gentlemen Mr Thatcher. Indeed I do. And they were both guests at my house in Boston during his visits in 1830 forty eight hundred twenty five and Mr. Gratton frequently during the time he served as Consul which was I believe from 1839 team for all to see. Yes. And you know Carter were their host in Virginia I had the honor of entertaining them at my plantation on the James though I regret that neither of them avail themselves of my hospitality long enough to gain such precise knowledge of Amen as as as they did in New England. There's flooding of the South I consider if I may say so. The major deficiency in their otherwise admirable books about this country or stranger in a foreign country even during a long residence. No but a small portion of the inhabitants on terms of great intimacy although I can scarcely hope to take an unprejudiced view of anything in which the heart is more concerned than the head.

There is the Irish 1 4 0 0 0. I have no hesitation in deciding that the whole total feeling in Maryland and Virginia is more frank and genial than that in New York state which shows how well bred and cultivated medium between them and Massachusetts had you Micio got to choose a permanent lot in the United States. Where would you wish it to be cast. I miss your show value or slavery extinct in the precincts of Virginia. I SHOULD WE SHOULD there I things are I prefer New York or least of all I should like knowing when you made that evident to us to understand fully the meaning of liberal ideas used in this country it is necessary to go to the sources of the American population that is to say to the origin of the distinction between the Yankee and the real genial race Yankee is a misuse of the general character of the Union. Yankee manners and feelings are as migratory as Yankee Maine Yankee connections and interests are spread throughout the land and are gradually neutralizing all opposing influences the Yankee

mind in short is stronger than that of the other races under subduing them. When Lee came to settle himself in the New World it was not for the purpose of founding an empire but to establish the church he left behind him Satan. But his works he sought a refuge in which he might practice his own mode of worship and obey what he believed to be the law of God. Yankee tape therefore exhibits little variety. All Yankees seem to be cast in the same MO There is no delegation to the pastor that has not received that it rests upon money. Money is something substantial. Everybody knows that and feels it. Birth is a mere idea which grows every day more and more. It was therefore very easy for the Yankees to organize a system of liberty for themselves to construct a frame within which they would have the necessary freedom of motion freedom of motion in New England.

People are afraid to go to any great length from the road of the affections. There is small chance of their tumbling into the pitfalls which passion digs by the wayside. No one ever died for love in New England except unfortunately in music master who shot himself one morning much to the surprise of his cold blooded pupil who quietly married you mediately after all. First Frenchmen who resemble each other in nothing except in differing from everybody else. Harass to whom variety is as necessary as the life of rules would be a subject of horror. The Yankee system would be torture torture. The deeper passions are known to the Yankee in the European sense he and especially she cannot comprehend the intensity which makes one hold everything light in comparison with the object to be attained. There are bright simmers upper times but never had the liberty of the Yankee is essentially limited and special like the nature of the race. We are satisfied with it because it leaves us all the latitude we desire. And

because of all the lessons of the Bible that too the forbidden fruit which you French and Irish You have not been able to fix your brain has made the deepest impression you know so often and often. Social meetings in Boston where by the way the greatest object seems to be eating and drinking. Have I wondered at this uniform breaking up of those promising parties at the very time when pressure like the midnight hour really does begin to bloom. Surprised that there should be never one exception. But no group of young men under the joint effect of wine and beauty ever showed any exuberance of joy ever actually. Her and her were trying to sort of jollity or strove to prolong even the regulated cost of amusement. Public opinion Mr. Gratton condemn sitting up after midnight for seven o'clock in the morning is the general breakfast hour at which every Yankee merchant all lawyer I expect and I am starting to say too often in on his wife and daughters meeting him to make his TV or cut his bread and butter. Nothing profound can be cited as characteristic of the United States. The word

passion you need to best and most solemn sense has no application here. Intense emotion does not exist in a fiery temper is seldom if ever met with. We Virginians Mr. Gratton are more disposed to understand liberty in your manner. Our disposition has a greater resemblance to yours. Our faculties are much less spiritual more general than those of the Yankee mind is more ardent and very easy in consequence of these opposite influences in the bosom of American society that such conflicting judgments have been passed upon it it is because the Yankee type is at present the stronger whites the Virginian was superior in the period of the revolution that the ideas which the sides of America now suggest. Different from those which he inspired at the epoch of independent habits which gave the laws of the Yankees by a natural reaction they gave strength still exist to this day it is observable that no pollen settles in new it was just a meme that Mr Thatcher just a minute.

You surely remember unless your memory is sadly failed that even in 1834 when you were entertaining with your sheer volume and still more in 1840 when Mr Grattan was your neighbor that the Irish were coming in droves to Boston. Do not call them foreign settlers. Anyone who knows Ireland most of remarks by the less elevated ranks the small farmers artisans and persons like the United States are considered as a sort of or halfway stage to have me. Figure to yourself an Irish person with whom I could scarcely earn enough to live on potatoes who would look upon himself as a rich man if he owned an acre of ground. But who on stepping ashore at New York finds himself able to earn a dollar a day. I do me a sight of his arm. The poet by the Irishman his warm heart and ambitious temperament all unite to give the colors of enchantment to the fairy land he plans for the Irish man looks upon America as the refuge of his race the home of his kindred to his

children and of their children. The Atlantic is to his mind less a barrier of separation between land and land that isn't George's Channel. The shores of England are further off and his heart's geography than those of New York or Massachusetts. So I have observed this you're going to. The Irish would go to fisticuffs with anybody for denying that the item Aaron was a terrestrial paradise and under the inspiration of seeing the glories of that first we did by fifty thousand for the United States on their arrival they could not believe their own eyes. We do not dare describe to their friends in Europe the stream of milk and honey that last of all this promised land. I once had an Irishman working for me who showed me a letter he had written to his family. Patrick I said why do you say that you have meat three times a week when you have it three times a day. Why is it replied Pat. It's because they wouldn't believe me if I told them so. The expectations of a new comedy romantic rather than reasonable are too often cruelly checked

in the first moments of his arrival. He gives his hand on an Irishman's hand almost always has his heart in it. So the designing persons by whom from various motives he is watched for and caught up. But the cordiality of his grasp meets a code return where you have to admit that he's uncouth at his cost rate and his blood and his brood certainly unattractive. Ludicrous to those who like myself consider him only as a machine for doing the rough work of the state or as an object of political speculation. And the Irishman soon sees the fact of his position before he sensitive and shrewd beyond most men recoil is in proportion to the exuberance and in the same degree in which they originally warm and social that they come are also gloomy when repellent we look and listen with caution to the newcomer. We have to consider him a cheat and we call his warm talk so much blah this cannot certainly increase the alien self-esteem or make him more fit for the exercise of a citizens privileges. And

he has not that right of conscious respectability and value which leads very little for the man however only his station to take a wide and exalted view of public affairs. We read English books of poetry in the Irish is an UN team of let us Americans see that our minds are not driven from the moorings of justice by the sinister current. Let us by all means bring about a good understanding between the Irish immigrants and society. Colonel Carter the Irishman can hardly be made a bad citizen or prevented from embracing the first opportunity to serve the country. I just proved by the readiness with which he invests in a naval or military force. You wrote back to Mr Grant back in 1845 or 1846 that I noticed that your book was not published in 1859. If you will look abomination today you must feel a hot tempered Irishman as you were if you want a good profit. By the way when you finally got your book printed you were a long time about it.

What did you call it civilized America. The parts with which I was familiar are the most settled containing the circles of greatest refinement. I am most interested in this established community who being heirs of an earlier wisdom that falls to the general lot of nations to inherit form of the materials of a grand experiment in civilization for others to follow. And your letters about that country were published if I remember correctly in Paris in 1836 they were translated into English in 1859 under the title. So science and politics in the United States are printed I believe. Well you see the West did that original effect your feeling about the destiny of America. No deductions of logic can force me to conclude that a society is superior to any that has yet flourished in ancient continent we're not one and that still exist in the region of the west of the Alleghenies around the wide basin of the destiny of America.

I can tell you what that is. The destiny of America requires the accumulation of a certain amount of money to carry out the purposes of civilization. And there seems to be a corresponding instinct in the mind of the people sufficient to attain that end. They make money by impulse. It is there. It is to their social existence the very breath of life. Like any other necessity of nature it is struggled for within it is what you say is equally true of England. It is not Mr. Carter in England there are thousands who never think of making money who are born to a certain inheritance or satisfied to be worth so much you're going to live on it's a mountain continue the monotony you American. You said you created with the idea that you would have some particular appreciation that used to be a farmer a manufacturer a merchant speculator lawyer who's usually a minister or perhaps only in succession. He is active and intelligent. He would make you scratch or you has no conception of living without a profession. The men of leisure as a variety of the human species which the Enki does not suspect the existence that is why they can easily dispense with and many of them really despise the elegancies

of life. They imperfectly and enjoy the interchanges of good fellowship. They don't nothing of the mutual consolation which constitutes the charm of European society. This absence of familiar intercourse is a great security against disputation quarreling and the contempt which familiarity proverbially brain. Indeed yes we Americans do not know or like each other well enough to quarrel. Yes that is quite true. You American of the north and northwest whose character now gives the toll in the United States is permanently a man of business told slender and light of figure. The American seems built for Labor. He is devoured with a passion for locomotion. When you speak the look in motion his fingers must be in action. He must be whittling a piece of wood cutting the back of his chair a notch in the edge of the table. Oh he's Joyce must be at work grinding to a back. We are born in haste. Within is our education on the right. We marry on the wing. We make a fortune a stroke and lose it in the same battle to make it lose it

again ten times over in the twinkling of an eye. Reminds me of the way out you and I meet from Baltimore to look folk in 1834. You remember it was very cold but all the passengers except me were but for although it was not until eight that.