Penny Magazine

No. 220 - THE PENNY MAGAZINE - Sep. 5, 1835

The New England States.--They do us the honour to call themselves purely English in their origin; they alone, of the whole population of the United States, undoubtedly were so; and in the abundant witness which their whole character, country, and institutions bear to that fact, I feel an additional reason to be proud of England,--of Old England, for these are her children,--this race of men, as a race incomparably superior to the other inhabitants of this country. In conversing with New Englandmen, in spite of any passing, temporary bitterness, any political difference, or painful reference to past times of enmity, I have always been struck with the admiring, and, in some measure, tender feeling with which England, as the mother-country, was named. Nor is it possible to travel through the New England states and not perceive, indeed, a spirit (however modified by different circumstances and institutions) yet most truly English in its origin. The exterior of the houses--their extreme neatness and cleanliness,--the careful cultivation of the land,--the tasteful and ornamental arrangement of the ground immediately surrounding the dwellings, that most English of all manifestations,--above all, the church spires pointing towards heaven, from the bosom of every village,--recalled most forcibly to my mind my own England, and presented images of order, of industry, of taste, and religious feeling, nowhere so exhibited in any other part of the Union. I visited Boston several times, and mixed in society there, the tone of which appeared to me far higher than that of any I found elsewhere. A general degree of cultivation exists among its members, which renders their intercourse desirable and delightful. Nor is this superior degree of education confined to Boston; the zeal and the judgment with which it is being propagated throughout that part of the country is a noble national characteristic. A small circumstance is a good illustration of the advance which knowledge has made in these states. Travelling by land from New Haven to Boston, at one of the very smallest places where we stopped to change horses, I got out of the carriage to reconnoitre our surroundings. The town (if town it could be called) did not appear to contain much more than fifty houses: amongst the most prominent of these, however, was a bookseller's shop. The first volumes I took up on the counter were Spurzheim's volume on education, and Dr. Abercrombie's works on the intellectual and moral faculties.--Mrs. Butler's Journal.