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.

15

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

decay of Baltimore and the termination of hostilities in Europe having left other nations at liberty to exert their natural advantages in the pursuits of commerce, the harbour is now comparatively deserted, and the quays are no longer thronged with a busy and bustling crowd, as in the good old times, when people in Europe cut each other's throats because they happened to live on different sides of the Pyrenees, or were divided by the Rhine.

The worthy citizens of Baltimore no doubt deplore with great sincerity the decrease of pugnacity among their European brethren. Indeed I have heard since my arrival in America the toast of " A bloody war in Europe" drank with enthusiasm. The general progress of intelligence is unquestionably adverse to the gratification of the humane aspirations of these republican philanthropists; but a still greater obstacle consists in a prevailing deficiency in what is emphatically called the sinews of war. If the people of the United States, for the sake of getting up a good desolating war, which may tend eventually to their advantage, will only pay the piper to set the thing fairly agoing, they may, no doubt, as

18

DECLENSION OF TRADE.

matters at present stand in Europe, be indulged A note,

with hostilities to any profitable amount. a word, from Metternich or Talleyrand, will do the business; and the Continent, from Moscow to Madrid, will witness a repetition of the same scenes with which it must already be tolerably familiar. Indeed, without any such exercise of liberality on Jonathan's part, it is only too probable that his wish may erelong be gratified; and certainly, if wealth is to flow from such a source, it could not have a better destination than the pockets of the good citizens of Baltimore, who would not fail to employ it liberally in acts of benevolence and hospitality.

Being anxious to witness some of the proceedings of the State Legislatures, it was my intention to proceed to Annapolis, the seat of government, where both houses were in session. To this project, however, I found my Baltimore friends exceedingly adverse. They assured me that I would meet with nothing at Annapolis to repay the trouble. of the journey; that the inns were bad, the roads still worse, and their representatives very far from incarnations either of good breeding or absolute