greatly inferior in high cultivation, in the art of conversation, and in accomplishments, to a corresponding class here, I have felt quite assured that the "million" with us occupy a level they can never reach in England, do what they will with penny magazines and diffusive publications, while each class has its stall into which it is driven by the tyranny of an artificially constructed society.
While the marks No. 2, No. 3, and so on, are seen cut in, there cannot be the conscious power and freedom, and the self-respect brightening the eye, giving free play to all the faculties, and urging onward and upward, which is the glory of the United States, and a new phase of human society.
With your confirmed habits, my dear C., you might not envy the English the luxuries and magnificence of their high civilization; but I am sure you would the precise finish of their skilful agriculture, and the all-pervading comfort of their everyday existence. If you have money, there is no human contrivance for comfort that you cannot command here. Let you be where you will, in the country or in town, on land or on water, in your bone or on the road, but signify your desires, and they may be gratified. And it is rather pleasant, dear C.—it would be with your eye for order—to be in a country where there are no bad—bad! no imperfect roads, no broken or unsound bridges, no swinging gates, no barn-doors off the hinges, no broken glass, no ragged fences, no negligent husbandry, nothing to signify that truth omnipresent in America, that there is a
