The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 | Page 7

les autres, c'est celui-ci: Ne fais, ni ne dis jamais rien que tu ne veuilles
que tout le monde voie et entende. J'ai toujours regardé comme le plus
estimable des hommes ce Romain qui voulait que sa maison fût
construite de manière qu'on vît tout ce qui s'y faisait.' Whether the
Englishman would be the first or the last to submit himself to this
crucial test of living in a transparent house, we do not feel called upon
to decide. The barriers, of which some justification has been attempted,
are merely those formal observances by which society aims to protect
itself from the intrusion of the unworthy and designing; which all must
perceive to be in some degree necessary, even to personal
independence; and which common-sense teaches us must be of greater
extent and more rigorous application in a crowded capital than a
country village, in an English Almacks than an American
drawing-room. No one will deny that these barriers are high and strictly
guarded in England; but it would be unreasonable to impute as a fault

what is a dictate of prudence, or to infer that coldness and incivility
must of course lurk under forms which have been manifestly imposed
by the necessity of constant circumspection.
Duly impressed with these considerations, the stranger will be less
disposed to complain when arriving at any place of fashionable resort
in England; at Tonbridge, for instance, one of the most aristocratic; he
finds himself consigned to the solitary comfort of his own apartments,
without the prospect of any of those periods of social reünion, which
elsewhere tend so strongly to break down the barriers of reserve and
facilitate the process of introduction and acquaintance. Cardinal de
Retz has told us, that the dinner-bell never fails to disperse a mob in
France, and if English travellers are to be believed, it seldom fails to
bring one together in an American hotel; but as a social summons, no
such tocsin breaks the uniformity of the English ménage. The traveller
may dine indeed in the public room, but it is at a separate table, on his
separate repast; he is served with what viands, at what hour, he pleases,
but no contiguity of position or interchange of friendly offices can
remove the impalpable but impassable partition which divides him
from his neighbors. He feels something of the air of the penitentiary in
the very refinements of his luxurious hostelrie. But these are incidents
not without their attendant advantages. If the stranger is thus separated
from his fellows, he is at least saved, in turn, from the attempts of fraud,
and the contact of impertinence. This is, in fact, the meaning of such
arrangements, and if not exactly palatable, they are at any rate
protective. But there are restrictions with regard to the fairer part of
creation, and his correspondence with them, which admit of no such
topics of comfort and alleviation. We nowhere find it stated, by what
steps it is permitted to the English suitor to proceed from the distant
bow to the morning call, always in the presence of the mother, the aunt,
or other watchful guardian; and thence by regular gradations to the
heart and hand of the object of his wishes. But it is enough for our
stranger to know, that whatever may be the laws of strategy, provided
for such cases in other lands, here it is necessary to begin his
approaches with the father, and to lay his lines of earliest
circumvallation around the watchful mother. These distant out-works
must be mastered before there is the slightest chance of communicating

even a summons to the citadel. English travellers, therefore, express
surprise at the artless confidence with which unmarried ladies in
America commit themselves to the solitary chat with a comparative
stranger, take his hand or his arm after a few hours' acquaintance, and
expose themselves to the surprise of a declaration before the extent of
his means or the respectability of his connexion have been discussed
and settled. Between the merits of these different modes of procedure,
the present writer has neither the wish nor the ability to arbitrate. They
have their growth in such widely different states of society, that the
reformer must be bold who should attempt to transpose or change them.
It is sufficient for our present purpose to remark, that if the visitor at
Tonbridge should have failed to make those preliminary advances just
spoken of, his pleasures here, as an admirer of female loveliness, will
most probably be limited to seeing the fair creatures ride on diminutive
donkeys (such is the custom of Tonbridge) to the wells, there to drink
the chalybeate and promenade the pantiles. But what then? If he have
not the entrée of society, the charms of nature and the attractions of
English