and evident, that they who run may read. The Belgians had just gotten to themselves a new king. The natural question is, "Do they like him?" We will not answer directly, but men tion a few circumstances, which speak an universal tongue, and mark the times at Owhyhee as well as Brussels. We had hardly left Bruges when there was a disturbance, and the papers rang with the pro and con. At Antwerp the people rose en masse, and set upon the gentry, who were suspected to be Orangists. At the capital some officers horsewhipped some gentlemen and editors of papers, because they did not worship King Log. At Ghent, the newsroom was attacked, and the gentlemen abused for being Orangists. Does this show "any rottenness in the state?" It shows one thing, that they who are supposed to be the "intelligence" of the land, are not yet fixed in their new regime. Whether their feelings, or those of the Great Unwashed, are to be taken as the standard of af fection towards their king, is quite another thing, and we beg to be excused from dilating on this dry subject. Proceed we now to Waterloo.

Shall we say a word on this theme? A sore struggle is going on within us, between our national pride and a conviction that we can tell nothing new. We make a compromise, and will briefly narrate a few things which we heard on the spot. About 200 yards from the spot where OUR Duke stood, is the mound erected on the place where the Prince of Orange was wounded. It is a huge heap of earth, cut from the adjacent fields, which are by this means lowered many feet from their former level; the features of this part of the ground are in consequence much changed. A son of Decoster, who officiated as guide to our party, as his father had done to Napoleon, remarked to us, "that the French were very sorry to see that mound;" and he further declared to us, with what truth we know not, that the Belgian ministers had offered to the French king to have the whole thing pulled to the ground. If this be true, it is a pretty example of Belgic truckling. From the top may be had a fine view of the whole field of battle. From this were pointed out to us the place where the decisive charge of our heavy ca

valry was made; the spot where Picton fell, and where Brunswick died; the position of the gallant 42d; the route of the retreating enemy; the position of old Chassé of Antwerp glory. But all these are written and re-written, until each particular is familiar to every British child, and they are as conversant with Waterloo as "maidens of fifteen with puppy dogs." We can tell nothing new, but our feelings are our own, if the facts are public; and we walked over that once bloody plain with pride;-pride national, for the success of our country; pride personal, as being natives of that country.

After a long walk, we returned to our fiacré by the extreme right of the British position, and the post of the reserve. Near this, we believe, was the position of the Belgians. Concerning these troops there has been much controversy in Britain, amongst those who had but little opportunity of ascertaining the truth. We had always believed that these worthy heroes had turned tail, and galloped to Brussels, spreading horror and confusion by their retreat; nor were we corrected in this misbelief until we met a very intelligent general officer on the Rhine, who set us right in this circumstance. According to his account, these troops were not very much to be depended on, and were placed in the rear of the reserve, being as useful as the red-cloaked Welsh fish women who were drawn up behind the regulars and mistaken for an army.They--the Belgians, not the fish women-did not advance, but they, in Napoleon's phrase, "took up a less advanced position," but it was by command; in short, that they were neutral. We hope, for the honour of Leopold, that this may be true; although he will hardly believe it, since these troops run away from the Dutch at Louvain, leaving their leader to collect them if he could, or bring up their rear. "Les braves Belges."The conducteur of our fiacré let out a fact, in passing through the wood of Soigny, which speaks volumes as to the state of trade since the dismemberment of the Low Countries. We had remarked enormous piles of firewood, and observed to him that there must be a vast consumption in Brussels, to require such a stock. He

The more Captain Hamilton's book is studied, the stronger will the reader's conviction be of its merits, as a clear and impartial description of the American people. We have already described it as less vehement than suits our temper, in its denunciation of the provoking or hateful absurdities of American practice which come under review, but our judgment is still.satisfied that the book is all the more useful for its coolness. The emotions which stronger language might have excited, would probably have been transitory the conviction which calm and clear description produces, is permanent.

Our general impression of the people of the northern part of the United States, from the book before us, is decidedly an unfavourable one-not but that there appears to be a "select few," possessed of sense, spirit, information, and good taste, with whom intercourse would be very agreeable, if one could be fortunate enough to obtain it; but the general mass, even of those who are found in what may be called the first situations of life, seem to combine a great many of the points of character which are the most offensive to cultivated judgment and good taste. The coarse, purse-proud, common-place, pedantic, "men of substance" in the English manufacturring towns, are just such men as one might expect in the average of American society, even of the rank of members of congress. They live on fat things, and adore themselves, most complacently imagining themselves miracles of wisdom, when they utter the tritest and poorest observations of common-place sagacity, illustrated by displays of information, which in England would be thought very appropriate to a parish clerk, or village schoolmaster, but absurd in a gentleman acquainted with the world, and mixing in its business.

These will, perhaps, be thought severe and illiberal remarks, but they are fully borne out by the descriptions in the book before us, which, be it remembered, is written by one, whose political bias is in favour of American Institutions, though his taste is too much cultivated to receive as gold, the dross of which the Americans seem to be so proud. Let us follow our author to Washington, which he reached when congress was sitting, and take a glance, through his spectacles, at the specimens of life which the American capital affords. The city itself has been a failure, because it has not turned out a place of trade. "It would not," says our author, “have been consistent with the American character, had the original plan of the future metropolis not been framed on a scale of gigantic magnitude. A parallelogram nearly five miles in length, and more than two in breadth, was at once parcelled out with pleasing regularity, into streets, squares, and avenues, and preparations were fondly made for the rapid growth of a city, compared with which London would dwindle into a village. In short, nothing could be more splendid than Washington on paper, and nothing more entirely the reverse of splendid than the real city, when at wide intervals a few paltry houses were seen to arise amid the surrounding forest.”

This is not, however, the present state of Washington-it has assumed the appearance of a city, but, instead of the intended and anticipated regularity, it is a straggling and most irregularly built place. An immense quantity of ground is included within its limits, but the greater part is empty space-"the houses are scattered in straggling groups, three in one quarter, and half a dozen in another, and ever and anon, our compassion is excited by some disconsolate dwelling, the first

William

and last born of a square or crescent, yet in nubibus, suffering, like an ancient maiden, in the mournful solitude of single blessedness." It was expected that the city would have been the seat of great foreign commerce, but the trade never came, nor is there any prospect that it will. Washington is important only as the seat of government, and its hope of prosperity founded solely on the expenditure of those whom the business of making or administering the general laws of the Union, draws within its precincts.

In Washington, our author says, all are idle enough to be as agreeable as they can. The business of congress is no great burden on the shoulders of any of its members; and a trip to Washington is generally regarded as a sort of annual lark which enables a man to spend the winter months more pleasantly than in the country. A considerable number of the members bring their families, with the view of obtaining introduction to better society than they can hope to meet elsewhere, but the majority leave such incumbrances at home, some, it may be presumed, from taste, and others from economy. These members of parliament are "no way particular" it seems, as to their place of residence, and what the city wants in compactness, is made up for in the storage of its temporary inhabitants within such house accommodation as it affords. This packing, however, is more compact than comfortable-at least it would be, according to our European tastes, but, perhaps, the honourable members of congress judge differently. They generally live together," says Captain Hamilton, "in small boarding houses, which, from all I saw of them are shabby and uncomfortable. Gentlemen with families take lodgings, or occupy apartments in a hotel, and it is really marvellous, at the Washington parties, to see how many people are contrived to be stored away in a drawing room somewhat smaller than an ordinary sized pigeon house. On such occasions one does not suffer so much from heat as from suffocation, for not only does the whole atmosphere become tainted in quality, but there seems an absolute deficiency in quantity for the pulmonary demands of the company." We do not wonder at this: an evening assembly in a crowded room of honoura

ble members in dirty boots, or thick shoes and worsted stockings, in which they have been tramping about all day, cannot be expected to breathe forth the sweetest odours: even on the supposition that a hebdomadal detersion of their pedal extremities, duly takes place on Saturday nights, a delicate attention to their sheets, which, in such a state of society, it is, perhaps, more agreeable to hope, than reasona ble to expect may be customary. We certainly should have liked (having first well plugged with tobacco or other odoriferous herb) to have been among the crowd, and watched the countenance of the French ambassador to the President's Court, at the ball which Captain Hamilton describes to have been given by his Excellency, as a compliment to the fashionables of Washington, shortly after his arrival from Paris. 66 I presume," says our author, "that the invitation to members of congress had been indiscriminate for the party was adorned by many members of that body who would not probably have been present on any principle of selection. Many of the gentlemen had evidently not thought it necessary to make any change in their morning habiliments, and their boots certainly displayed no indication of any recent intimacy with Day and Martin. Others were in worsted stockings, and their garments, made evidently by some tailor of the back woods, were of a fashion, which, when displayed amid a scene so brilliant, was somewhat provocative of a smile, I was informed that the gentlemen, whose appearance I have attempted to describe, were chiefly from the Western States, and they might be seen parading the apartments with ladies of aspect quite as unique, and sometimes even more grotesque than their own." But let's be fair-the Captain says that, notwithstanding this motley mixture, the majority of the company were unobjectionable, and the scene altogether very interesting to a traveller."

But the French Ambassador's ball was nothing to the President's levee, in these characteristic traits of the "free and easy" which prevail in the capital of the mighty modern republic. This clected sovereign of the Western Empire threw open, upon the occasion, four large saloons, for the accommoda