July 8.—To-morrow we leave England, having seen but a drop in the ocean of things worthy to be examined. We mean, next year, to travel over it, to see the country, to visit the institutions of benevolence, the schools, &c. We are now to plunge into a foreign country, with a foreign language and foreign customs. It seems like leaving home a second time. If anything could make us forget that we are travellers, it would be such unstinted kindness as we have received here. You cannot see the English in their homes without reverencing and loving them; nor, I think, can an Anglo-American come to this, his ancestral home, without a pride in his relationship to it, and an extended sense of the obligations imposed by his derivation from the English stock. A war between the two countries, in the present state of their relations and intercourse, would he fratricidal, and this sentiment I have heard expressed on all sides.
Antwerp, July 12, 1839.
My dear C.,
We left the Tower Stairs yesterday at twelve, and were rowed to the steamer Soho, lying out is the Thames, in a miserable little boat, the best we could obtain. We found a natural American consolation in remarking the superiority of our Whitehall boats. We nearly incurred that first of all minor miseries (if it be minor), losing our baggage.
