Francis J. Grund

“ The Planets, Moons and Comets, together with the Sun around which they move, form what is called our Solar System. But what will you say, if you are told that each fixed Star in the firmament is a Sun which, like our’s, has its Planets and satellites and Comets; in short, that each fixed Star is the centre of a solar system, a thousand and more times larger than our own!! But how infinitely great must God’s Creation appear to us, when we reflect that all these globes, as well as our own, may be inhabited by reasonable beings!!! ”

“ Is it not strange, thought I, before I had drunk the first glass of champaign, that in a country which more than any other convinces one of the vanity of human pursuits,—in which wealth, honour, and distinction are mere bubbles floating on the surface of society,—men should be more eager after aristocratic distinctions, than where these are founded on an historical basis, and in accordance with the customs of the people? ”

“ The nobility of the middle ages offered to the people protection for vassalage, and set them the example of chivalry and valour. A mere moneyed aristocracy, on the contrary, enslaves the people without giving them an equivalent, introducing everywhere the most sordid principles of selfishness, to the exclusion of every noble and disinterested sentiment. A mere moneyed preponderance of one class of citizens over the other, does not form an historical link between the present and the past; neither does it, like the masses, represent the interests of mankind in general. ”

“ If their pretensions were recognised by the people at large, there would be no happier set of men in the world. There is no species of perfection which they do not attribute to one another: so that one is constantly reminded of the fable of the two asses, one of which found the other an excellent singer, while the latter discovered in the first a great talent for public speaking; the rest of the animals seeing neither the singer nor the orator in either of them. I am at once for an aristocracy like the English, with some lasting, real distinctions. ”

“ General Jackson has a peculiar way of addressing himself to the feelings of every man with whom he comes in contact. His simple, unostentatious manners carry into every heart the conviction of his honesty; while the firmness of his character inspires his friends with the hope of success. His motto always was, ‘Never sacrifice a friend to an enemy;’ or, ‘Make yourself strong with your friends, and you need not fear your foes.’ These things, however, must be born with a man; they must be spontaneous, and felt as such by the people, or they lose the best part of their effect. ”

“ I have seen in Boston, or rather in Nahant, a small watering-place in the neighbourhood of that city, two girls,—one the daughter of a president of an insurance-office, and the other the child of a merchant,—supporting their heads with their elbows, and in this position staring at each other for several minutes across a public table; each believing that her standing in society entitled her to the longest stare, and that the other, being the daughter of a man of less consideration and property, should have modesty enough to cast down her eyes. ”

“ There are toad-eaters in politics as well as in society. A man may be a toad-eater to the mob as well as to those above him; and I do not know which of the two kinds is the worst. We have a set of political sycophants who fawn and cringe before every party that is in power, and who are always the first to desert them at the least mauvais contretemps. Our democracy has no greater enemies than those twaddles. ”

“ Our society takes it upon itself to punish political, moral, and religious dissenters; but most of its wrath is spent upon the champions of democracy. That society is the means of seducing our unsophisticated country members, making them believe that republicanism is only fit for backwoodsmen, is a fact too notorious to be mentioned. It destroys our independence in words and actions, and makes our duties of citizens subordinate to the exactions of a coterie. What man is there in this city that dares to be independent, at the risk of being considered bad company? ”

“ Here is a free people voluntarily reducing itself to a state of the most odious social bondage, for no other object but to maintain an imaginary superiority over those classes in whom, according to the constitution of their country, all real power is vested; and here are the labouring classes, probably for the first time permitted to legislate for themselves, worshipping wealth in its most hideous colours! Here, then, is a society formed as nearly as possible on the abstract theory of equality ”

“ We have ‘lots’ of aristocracy in our country, cheap, and plenty as bank-bills and credit, and equally subject to fluctuation. To-day it is worth so much,—to-morrow more or less,—and, in a month, no one will take it on any terms. We have, in fact, at all times, a vast deal of aristocracy; the only difficulty consists in retaining it. Neither is the position of our aristocrats much to be envied. Amidst the general happiness and prosperity of our people, their incessant cravings after artificial distinctions are never satisfied ”

“ I never want to see an aristocrat until he is ready to put on white gloves; our ‘ungloved,’ ‘unwashed’ aristocrats are to me an object of horror. No tyranny is more odious than that of an overgrown bourgeoisie. Being less removed from the lower classes, their tyranny is more felt; and not being placed sufficiently above competition, they are incapable of taking any lofty, disinterested views with regard to the government of the people, whom they half fear and half despise. ”

“ As a finish then to the education of father, mother, and children, and perhaps, also, to drown in oblivion the tedious particulars of their rise and progress, our highest and best families emigrate for a short time to Europe, in order, in the society of noblemen, to attain that peculiar high polish and suavity of manners which it is impossible to acquire amidst the bustle of business and the vulgar turmoil of elections. ”

“ In the same manner it has been said of General Jackson that he is incapable of writing a good English sentence, as if this were the standard by which to measure the capacity of a political chief, especially in America, where, out of a hundred senators and representatives, scarcely one has received what in Europe would be called a literary education. If classical learning were to constitute the scale by which to measure the talents of our statesmen, how far would they not rank behind the paltriest Prussian schoolmaster! ”

“ I know not what the duke’s literary pretensions are; but, if Walter Scott had written a book on America, it could not have made a greater sensation than the duke’s.”
“You ought to make an allowance for the novelty of the thing,” said I. “As yet, but few dukes have visited the United States.”
“If their wonderment and toad-eating were confined to dukes and earls,” replied he, “I would willingly pardon them; but they worship everything in the shape of a nobleman, until, by continually talking about nobility, they imagine themselves to belong to it. ”

“ It is high time for the Americans to leave off the barbarous and ridiculous notion that a man, in order to be a statesman, a lawyer, an orator, or a man of business, must necessarily be a bore in society. I was once present when an American, who was in the habit of delivering gratuitous lectures on morality, was asked by a Frenchman what sort of impression the sight of a beautiful and lovely woman made upon him? ”

“ If Michel Chevalier is right in believing that the nature of man is too corrupt to be governed by a pure democracy, then I would, with my Boston cicerone, prefer at once an aristocracy of family and hereditary property, with chivalrous notions of honour and justice, to a cold, calculating preponderance of moneyed men, which, though it may to a certain extent stimulate enterprise and industry, establishes nevertheless a mean numerical scale of worth, the most distressing of all to the lofty aspirations of high-minded men. ”

“ The building was very spacious; but its wings were a little too long, and the small garden in front almost entirely destitute of trees,—a fault from which no public, and hardly any private, mansion in the United States, can be said to be entirely exempted.
The Americans have, indeed, a singular aversion to trees and shrubs of every description: their highest idea of perfection in a landscape being an extended plain sown with grass. They consider trees as a mark of barbarism, and are, in their zeal for civilization, extirpating them wherever they find them. ”

“ If we had as many distinct and established orders of society as in England, there would not be that everlasting attempt to go beyond one another which particularly characterises our women, and, joined to the credit system, is the cause of so many failures; a circumstance which, in whatever light merchants and bankers may view it, is nevertheless one of the greatest moral evils with which an honest community can be afflicted. ”

“ What noble principles which they cherish, will thereby be trodden in the dust? What protection which they give to arts and sciences, will thereby suffer? Echo must answer, ‘What?’—Daniel Webster, the gentleman there with the hawk-eyes, told us that the war between the democrats and the aristocracy is a war of the poor against the rich; and I am inclined to think he is half right,—as far, namely, as concerns his own party. But if wealth form the only distinction, the only claim to supremacy in our country, the sooner we get rid of its influence the better. ”

“ They are the destruction of domestic happiness; break in upon the sanctity of private life; blight a thousand germs of affection, which can only be matured in retirement; make mutual tenderness the subject of ridicule, and publish those foibles to the world which love and forbearance would scarcely have discovered, and certainly never revealed. If I were a man without a fortune, I would a thousand times rather emigrate to the far West, and live with my wife in a log-house, than in one of those palaces constructed for the torture of husbands! ”

“ I have heard gentlemen in the Northern States boast of having worked sixteen hours a day in a manufactory, or in a store, as if they had actually benefited the world with their manual labour. The thought never struck them that they might have been more useful to society by employing poor men to do the same work for them, and reserving their faculties, if such they had, for some occupation that had some relish of intellect in it. ”