BOOKS.

THE WABASH.* THE author of this family tour in America, Mr. J. Richard Beate, is a Roman Catholic gentleman of some standing and property. Unless we mistake, he published in the New Monthly Magazine, a good many years ago, a series of papers descriptive of English society as it appeared to a man who had resided much abroad. In those papers there was a good deal of minute description, only re- deemed from commonplace by a very remarkable sense of the real. This trait appears strongly in The Wabash ; and, coupled with

ostrong family affections, and that unctuous feeling which seems to

distinguish the manner of the markedly religious—whether Ro- manists, Tractarians, or Quakers—it forms the characteristic of the book. The writer is less to be praised for his solid information. In-fact, a man in 'the position of an English gentleman who had passed the greater portion of his time on the Continent was not well fitted to pick up that floating knowledge which can only be acquired by those familiar with the coarseness and the struggles of active life. This was not the case with Mr. Beste or any of his family. Behaviour, demeanour, social conduct, dress, comfort—in short, manners and menage—were the things that mostly occupied the traveller's attention ; although the project which took Mr. Beate, his wife and family, to the .Far West, required for success a very -different character.

'When our traveller started from France in 1851 on his voyage,

he had a family of six sons and six daughters. From the birth of his second son he had dwelt upon the idea that all his boys except the eldest should acquire estates in the Western frontier of Ameri- ca, by purchase instead of the oldfashioned feudal mode of dis- possessing the lawful owners : thus, in the progress of time and advancing population, they might become country gentlemen at a cheap rate, instead of toiling and struggling in a profession at home. The idea was not a bad one, had it been-more'udioiously prepared for and carried out. But a scholastic education at Roman Catholic colleges was not perhaps the best training ; and an exploration of the unsettled districts in the Ear West to select a "location" could have been better attempted by the father him- self, than by a family of a dozen, including seven females of various ages, and two boys little beyond infancy, besides baggage extend-

: ing to forty-two packages, with imperials, carriage-boxes, and all the accommodations of an European household. The result, as might have been expected, was non-success. After reaching the Lakes from New York by way of Albany and Buffalo, Mr. Beate and his family travelled 'through the frontier States—Ohio, Ken- tucky, Indiana—till, on arriving -at Terre Haute -on the river Wabash, he was prostrated by the local complaints that prevail along that frontier in the neighbourhood of marshes and the damp valleys of rivers. A little daughter died; others of the family were afflicted; and as soon as Mr. Bests was convalescent he was ordered to a better climate, and returned to England, but left two of his sons at a Roman Catholic college to finish their education. The circumstances of the book do not give it the novelty with

regard to information which Mr. Beste seems to suppose. From New York to Buffalo, and from Buffalo to Cincinnati, if net. tb Indianopolis, where he bought a waggon, his journey, so far- fts the Americans were concerned, differed little from /that of other travellers. He put up at hotels; he travelled in public convey- ances ; and though the number of the party and the suantity,of - their luggage might cause difficulty inprocuring acoommoiation it scarcely reached the " adventures " of the titlepage. The family afflictions in the hotel at Terre Haute brought out strongly' the good feeling of the better classes of the Americans, and the inde- pendence and selfishness of the lower class, who could with diffi- culty be engaged to " help," and when they did engage, would only do what they pleased. Nor did the residence amount to much, for Mr. Baste was confined to his room the greater part of the time. The family is the means of introducing a domestic fea- ture into the volumes which is not without interest. The children were required to keep journals, and -their father freely quotes from his daughters' journals when they throw a light upon any point. These extracts are often curious ; but, as might be supposed, they mostly relate to manners in some form ; and, trained as the young ladies had been to good English and-Continental society, American manners did not meet their approbation. Mr. Bests himself agreed with his daughters in opinion, and carried with him ideas that a little preparatory reading would have shown to be impracticable. In fact, before he got into the very thinly-settled districts, a Romish priest to whom he opened himself freely, recommended a Slave State as the only place where he could realize his ideas of, a domestic establishment.

The chief information of the book relates to the purpose which the traveller had in view. Can a young Englishman, with the education and tastes of a gentleman, but without good professional or public prospects at home, and with too small a capital to enable him to live or at least to marry upon the interest, emigrate to America with a fair chance of establishing himself as a landed gentleman or a gentleman fanner ? The success seems very doubt- ful, on Mr. Beste's own show'; • . he a ars to forget that a

itifs man to succeed must be an or - man. : e must found net only a familtaLuel a whole class. T ere are no such persons in America as, gentlemen farmers or country gentlemen. The men of wealth

• The Wabash: or Adventures of an English Gentleman's Family in the Interior of America. By .1. Richard Beste, Esq. In two volumes. Published by Hurst. and BlsckeLt.

in America are merchants—perhaps speculators would be a more proper term ; whether they buy or sell commodities, land, shares, or lots of any kicd. The nearest approach to the English country gentleman is the planter; but this involves slaveholding, and, ex- cept in Kentucky or Virginia, a hot and unhealthy climate. Vir- ginia, too, now " raises " little for sale except slaves. Nor at best is the immediate look-out promising, whatever may happen to sons or grandsons. From the difficulty of procuring household assist- ance, a man will live better at home on small means than he pos- sibly can as an agriculturist in America. In the older States, sup- posing a man can buy a property at a reasonable rate, he will be unable to mix with a wealthy society. " To an educated man with the habits of a gentleman," the difference between the farmers of a settled district and the hardy pioneers of civilization in the West " will be that of the servants' hall and the housekeeper's room"; not that Mr. Beste means to compare the American cultivators to the "menials of an English house," but such is the degree of differ- ence. To the intending founder of a family, a wife is a very im- portant item, and Mr. Beste is strongly in favour of an English- woman. The manners of all the women and the vanity of the gen- teel ladies impressed him very unfavourably, from the Atlantic to the river Wabash.

" One other question still remains,—a question that, I doubt not, will be more interesting than any to the young man whom I am supposing to emi- grate : should he take a wife with him, or marry an American, or return and fetch a countrywoman ? To return and fetch one, would imply buying a lo- cation first without the counsel and assent of one on whose approval his hap- piness must hereafter depend, and leaving it when his presence will be most needed to conduct Lis improvements. Marrying an American, implies de- voting himself to a perpetual colic ; for the whining, pining, helpless, lack- adaisical affectation of fine-ladyism which the American sex appear to think so attractive, must act as a perpetual blister or rather colic upon any Eng- lishman, when he remembers the frankness, heartiness, life, and nature of a well-born, well-bred Englishwoman, who has no position to affect or to strive for. No doubt, all this that I object to in American females is only manner : they are loving, faithful, virtuous, thrifty wives, and most affectionate mo- thers. I merely describe their manners as they impressed me. If my would- be emigrant thinks them attractive' let him select his wife from amongst them. In the class amongst which he is going to settle himself, he would scarcely find education and refinement and domestic habits suited to his own : he would not find sympathies in his own tastes, or common recollections of the past : but he might form connexions that would be useful to him in business, although he himself, like poor Mr. Long, should be a stranger and an alien amongst them.; and his wife would have friends, counsellors, and supporters against him, whenever, with English thrift, he objected to her taking the horses from the plough, at the busiest season of the year, and harnessing them to the rough-and-ready for a hOliday's excursion—accord- ing to the habits of American farmers' wives ; and his father-in-law might remind him, with the docility of American farmers and husbands on such occasions, that it was cheaper to lose the use of the horses than to be kept awake all night by complaints and unfitted for business on the following day. Such interludes are common in the life of American farmers."

Although the route of Mr. Beate cannot be called new, and his information upon the Americans is not new either, his book will be found agreeable. The peculiar habits and training of the tra- vellers induce them to look at things from a new point of view; the intermixture of the young ladies' diaries furnishes variety ; and the constant presence of the family feelings and interests im- parts a species of dramatic character. Some inconsistency is visible. In his summary of the emigration question, Mr. Bests generally seems to have the idea of a Norman baron present to his mind, at other times he appears to be thinking of a respectable farmer. In the pictures he draws, and sometimes in the compari- sons he institutes between things in America and in England, he seems to del unfairly with England, even upon his own showing as regards America. As a sample of his philosophy, we may take his account of.the great want of America.

"I have said how the universal ambition of Americans tends to level class distinctions : but the grand social want of America is—rovmerv. I say this in no unfeeling, unchristian spirit;' but it is evident that where every one IS, like the most ignorant help' in the back-woods, independent of his em- ployer, social comfort and domestic quiet cannot exist. independent

the mass of the

population, such independence may be a blessing ; but it mars the literary, scientific, or luxurious leisure of those who would purchase the services of others to secure repose and seclusion to themselves. I have not travelled through four thousand miles of the United States unsolicited by a single beggar, nor once asked for alms, without appreciating the blessed state of the inhabitants, and internally rejoicing that my feelings were not har- rowed by the exhibition of misery which no private charity could remove : neither have I travelled over those four thousand miles without feeling how much more enjoyable the country would be if the order of other societies had not there been reversed—if the employer had not been quite so depend- ent upon those whom he employed."