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WASHINGTON COLUMN.

which is yet unfinished, is simple and grand, and does honour to the taste of the city. Its gross height, including the statue and pedestal, is about a hundred and sixty feet.

In one of the squares of the city, there is what is called the Battle Monument, a sort of trophy column, erected to commemorate the repulse of the attack on the city during the late war, and the names of those who fell in its defence. This structure, which is about fifty feet in height, consists of a column representing the Roman fasces, symbolical of the Union, rising from a square pedestal, which tapers in the Egyptian style, with a griffin at each corner. Above, is the statue of Victory, with an eagle at her side. The effect of the whole is sadly injured by a most anomalous complexity of petty details. Indeed, so vicious is this monument in point of taste, that it is difficult to believe it the production of the same period which has adorned the city with the noble structure to Washington.

I remember being asked by a lady, in one of the first visits I paid in Baltimore, whether I had seen this monument. Having answered in the negative,

BATTLE MONUMENT.

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she proceeded to inform me that it was very beautiful, but, as if struck by a sudden recollection, somewhat eagerly apologized for the introduction of the subject, on account of the painful feelings which this memorial of failure in his country's arms, could not fail to excite in an English spectator. In reply, I took the liberty to assure her that her regrets on this matter were entirely gratuitous; that I should have great pleasure in examining the monument, and really entertained no apprehension of suffering from any pungency of feeling on the occasion. It was easy to observe, however, that my disclaimers, like the inaugural nolo episcopari of the Bishops, went for nothing with my fair auditor. Her apologies for having wounded my feelings, became even more strenuous than before; and as it was evidently agreeable that I should appear in the light of a mortified man, I at length judged it better to desist from further disclamation. If I know any thing of John Bull, he is not quite so sensitive a person, as it pleases the good people on this side of the water to believe him; and the idea of an Englishman at the present day, being distressed by regret at the failure

14

BEAUTY OF THE WOMEN.

of the attack on Baltimore, is perhaps somewhat closely connected with the ludicrous.

Baltimore is celebrated for hospitality, and the beauty of its women, and I can bear testimony to the justice of its reputation for both. In no other city of the United States is the former so frequent and habitual, and in none are there so few of the sordid characteristics of traffic apparent to a stranger. There struck me as being at Baltimore, more effort than elsewhere, to combine the pleasures of social life with professional labour. The effect of this is generally felt in society. The tone of conversation is lighter and more agreeable, and topics of mere commercial interest are rarely obtruded at the dinner table.

In Baltimore there is not much pretension of any sort, and the average of literary accomplishment is perhaps lower than in Philadelphia or Boston. In such matters, however, a transient visitor can form at best but an uncertain and very fallible judgment; but I can with truth assert, that my recollections of Baltimore are of the most agreeable kind, and that I quitted it with a strong sentiment of regard for

CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE.

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several of its inhabitants, which time has yet done nothing to diminish.

The ladies of Baltimore, I have already intimated, are remarkable for personal attraction; indeed, I am not aware that, in proportion to the numbers assembled, I have ever seen so much beauty as in the parties of Baltimore. The figure is perhaps deficient in height, but sylphlike and graceful; the features are generally regular and delicately modelled, and the fair Baltimoreans are less remarkable than American ladies usually are for the absence of a certain fulness and grace of proportion, to which, from its rarity, one is led perhaps to attach somewhat too much value as an ingredient of beauty.

The figure of an American lady, when past the first bloom of youth, presents an aggregate of straight lines and corners altogether ungraceful > and inharmonious. There is an overweening proportion of bone, which occasionally protrudes in quarters where it certainly adds nothing to the general charms of the person. The result is, perhaps, a certain tendency to scragginess, which I have no doubt to the eye of a young poet would be

16

TRADE OF BALTIMORE.

exceedingly annoying. A middle-aged gentleman, however, looks on such objects through a medium more philosophical; and I imagine, that, were it possible to combine the scattered and impalpable elements of female attraction, and to form a fair estimate of their amount, the ladies of the United States would have no deficiency to lament in comparison with other nations.

The trade of Baltimore, I have been assured, has, within the last twenty years, been greatly on the decline. During the long war which agitated Europe, America enjoyed nearly the whole carrying trade of the world. While her flag had only to brave the breeze, and not the battle, it was to be seen waving in every sea and in every harbour of the world. Wealth flowed in on her from all quarters, and, like the lawyer in the fable, while each of the belligerents received a shell in the shape of victories and Extraordinary Gazettes, this prudent and sagacious people contrived to keep possession of the oyster. But the United States at length resigned the innumerable benefits of neutrality. Mr Madison's proclamation of war was the signal for the