ASPECT OF THE PEOPLE.

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pier; we see groups of them, and they have books in their hands, and are well dressed and neat. In the houses, too, we see people at the open windows; there is not this dreadful solitariness and seclusion that appear in the better class of houses, throughout most of the Continental cities. Indeed, where the better sort of people-the people of condition, or learning, or wealth, or leisure, or taste -are, in these countries, I cannot devise. Few equipages, no saunterers, no fashionable or contemplative walkers, no riders out-nothing, or nearly nothing, of all this, which is so commonly seen in and near all our American cities and villages, appears here. The toiling multitude-men with sober brow, women with faces weatherbeaten and shorn of every feminine grace, dull children, or the starch, stupid, or fierce-looking soldier-this is almost the entire population that meets the eye of the traveller. Now there must, of course, be other people; but they must be few, and their habits secluded.

In speaking of the general air of the people, I should not forget the extreme courtesy that pervades all classes, and especially the lower classes. No one of these ever speaks to you without touching his hat. The very grooms and horseboys never forget this. If they have no hat, they put

their hand where the hat should be. The common people, too, as we pass them, really tax our courtesy, unless we would consent to be outdone in politeness. At the hotels, too, landlord, waiters, valets, are all at your service; you are assisted out of your carriage; you are ushered into your room with a bow; you have dinner announced with a bow; every one of the limbs and senses of those around you is at your bidding—is alert and instinct with obedience-is ready to say, if it could speak, "Oui, monsieur." This, to be sure, is at the hotels partly mercenary; but it belongs in part, also, to the general manners of the people.

The fashion of salutation on the Continent is always to take off the hat; and this is done not to superiors alone, but among the country people, from one to another, constantly. I wish it were the fashion everywhere. Our manners in America are too brief, gruff, and hasty. Our "no" and "yes" are very short words; and if we add "sir" to them, that again is an unfortunate monosyllable; and the whole intercourse, I mean the out-of-door intercourse, of our people, seems to me, compared with what I see here, monosyllabic, brief, and ungracious. It is fanciful to suppose that something of this depends on the very words of salutation, with which different languages provide us? Qui, man»

sieur, and Si, signore, always seem to come softly and kindly from the mouths of the French and Italians; and they cannot well be pronounced as gruffly as Yes, sir, and No, sir. At any rate, the difference in manners is great, and in my judgment it shows altogether to our disadvantage. When a man here meets his fellow-labourers in the morning, he says "Bon jour, messieurs," and has time, while he is saying it, to take off his hat to his neighbours. It is a good and kind beginning of the labours of the day: there is something almost courtly in it. What a contrast to the manner with which you may often see a man meet his neighbour, in one of our New-England villages. "Morning!" he says I suppose he means, "Good-morning, sir,” or "Good-morning," at least-but he says, " Morning!”—but half raising his eyes, perhaps, in civility, from the ground-and his hat as fast upon his head as if he had worn it all night. Ask a man here if he knows the way to a certain place, and if he does not know, as it is very likely he will not, he has, at least, the grace of manner to make his ignorance agreeable-which is more than you can say of many people's knowledge. "No, monsieur, pardonnez,” he says, and takes off his hat. In America, a man would often answer your question

with a "No, sir," or, "No, I don't," and turn upon his heel.

I believe that utility and philosophy have more to do with these things than we may imagine. The manners of life are the chief language of its affections. If that language be abrupt and harsh, there is some danger that the affections may take their tone from it. Manners infect the mind. And the mind of an ill-bred people is likely, at length, to become coarse and degraded. There is a morality in street salutations. And I have often thought that a man of a harsh and repulsive demeanour might give more pain as he passed through the street to his home, than he could give pleasure or do good, if, when he arrived there, he should distribute the most liberal alms.

Are not the manners of our people becoming less courteous? Are they not less so than they were fifty years ago? When we speak of the “manners of the old school," do we not imply this? Must republican institutions always be found hostile to the gracefulness and refinement of life? I do not believe it. And yet much is to be done and

taught among us.

We do exceedingly want some

Censor morum, some Spectator redivivus; and if I could direct the pens that wrote Salmagundi, I would engage them in this work.

The Falls of the Rhine are three miles below Schaffhausen. They are glorious and beautiful: but who shall describe a waterfall? Every particle a living thing: a whole mighty river hurled, amid the thunders of its descent, into spray and foam--the drifted snow not whiter nor lighterand, indeed, if mighty snow banks were, in succession, driven by a sweeping storm over a precipice, seventy feet high, I do not know but it would more resemble the Falls of the Rhine, than anything else I can think of.

The waters of the Rhine here are perfectly pure and transparent, and have a colour of the deepest green, for which I cannot account. This colour, purity, and a rapid flow, make it, at this point, the most beautiful of rivers.

Before I leave the notices of Schaffhausen, I must just mention, what I have seen nowhere but on one small house-front in Frankfort, the fresco paintings covering the whole front of several old houses here. They consist, some of them, of considerable numbers of figures. On one is an allegorical representation of all the cardinal virtues—a good admonition, certainly, to the dwellers within.

ZURICH, SEPTEMBER 9. From Schaffhausen to this place (thirty miles) we came on an excellent road, through a highly cultivated and delightful