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WHAT I SAW IN CANADA.-II.

BY THE EDITOR.

PHILADELPHIA, or, as the American people contract the name, when directing their letters, into Pa., is a very fine city; it bears the mark of the Quaker mind upon it. Order, sobriety, and cleanliness are visible in the form of its streets, the character of its older buildings, and in its "swept and garnished" walks. Here, after landing, and passing the Customs, which was a very polite affair on both sides, and being certified by the doctor that we brought no contagious disease with us, we dined, in such stillness as only an American dinner-table at a public place of entertainment can match-a stillness we greatly relished; for we hold that when a man eats he should eat, and when he talks he should talk, and that the two should be as little mixed as possible, for the one is apt to spoil the other. The eating muddles the talk, and the talk cools the plates and "sets" the gravy; and we know of only one earthly use for long talks at dinner, and that is when much wine has to be drunk-then it answers very well for those who are given to it, and gives time for copious imbibition. Besides, when we eat we cannot hear-such is the constitution of our auric faculties-and as we grudge much time for eating, and want to be again at the talking, we deem fifteen minutes long enough for the best dinner that ever was set before us. Fifteen minutes' silent eating, and then away to business.

Those who suppose the American people to be great talkers are mistaken. They are, as compared with the French, a silent people; as compared with ourselves, there is not much difference as to the talking part of the business, but they make far less noise at home or at the public dining-room than we do. The lungpower of John Bull is something marvellous, and his hearty laugh and uproarious mirth, especially when Consols are at 95, is astonishing. The American, as a rule, has not a broad and welldeveloped chest, like the Englishman, nor is he in such robust health; the majority of them are tall and slender in their persons, with indications about them of an inactive digestion, and a bilious temperament. These are not favourable to an exuberance of animal spirits; hence, as a rule, the American is serious, and often sad. Besides, it is a country filled up with all nations, and all isms, and one man, in travelling about, as they nearly all do, never knows whether his next neighbour is a Protestant or Catholic, a Mormon or a "Gentile," a "hard shell" or a "soft shell." Caution is necessary in all public companies, lest offence

should be given, and from these causes there is a reticence which cannot but be noticed by a stranger. Hence, we had silence at our Philadelphian dinner, silence which gave us time to think about the singular people we had met with, and-what next?

That next was to take the steamer and railway to New York, where, at the house of a relative, we spent several days, visiting the remarkable places and objects to be seen in the city, and enjoying ourselves as well as the sultry weather would allow us in that emporium of the world. We visited the markets, which were well stored with everything, specially with glorious fruit. We observed that the gentlemen came to make the purchases for the family, the ladies forming only a minority in the crowd. We observed, also, that the gentlemen carried the babies-where any were to be carried-and the ladies walked at their ease by the side of their " worser halves." On Sunday we went to church—not chapel, but church. Heard a Baptist minister—with a black necktie on, like any other man in the congregation-who preached a good and comforting sermon on Psalm xcvii., a sermon and a psalm which we have many a time had reason to remember and refer to since then. In the evening we started to hear Beecher, but we heard a thunderstorm instead, which sent us home again in quick-time. Never did we see such angry skies, such lurid glares of lightning, such pouring torrents of rain, and never did we hear such peals of thunder as that evening's storm presented. We visited the "courts on the Monday, and heard American law expounded by American judges-without wigs-and heard American lawyers plead-without gowns. It seemed awfully democratic, awfully naked, this way of dispensing law. We asked a friend if, with the wigs and gowns, the profession had also dispensed with their six-and-eightpences, but we soon learnt that they had not, and that law was an expensive article, Transatlantic or Cisatlantic.

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From New York we went to Rochester, and there stayed over one night and a day. On our way in the railway car," we had a specimen of American curiosity. Every one in America or Canada knows an Englishman, or, indeed, any "old countryman;” an immigrant can always be recognized.

"Guess you are from the old country, aint you, stranger ?" said a person sitting by us on the seat.

"What is that to you?" we replied.

Wa'al, now, stranger, you need not get your dander up about a simple question like that. Speech is free in this country, and we allow questions to be put without taking offence.”

We confess to a feeling of humiliation-like unto which we never experienced any other-that we should have laid ourselves open to this just rebuke. But we knew little of the world; we had lived in England all our life previously, and John Bull was very strong in us. We judged this same gentleman-Mr. Bull, we mean-to be the lord of all creation, or, at least, that he ought to be;

and we scarcely imagined that anybody else had any rights in the world but he. We recollect, when a boy, hearing that the American Government had imposed a duty of twenty per cent. on certain English goods, and we said, "Why does the English Government allow it; why do they not make the Americans take our goods at any price we choose to impose?" Such was our knowledge of political economy in those early days. We fear there was something of this feeling of English right and English superiority in our answer to the harmless question of the American. However, we have repented of our rudeness, and learned better since. We have learned to feel as a citizen of the world, in which the Almighty has a large family of immortal beings, all made of one flesh and blood.

The distance from Rochester to Lewiston is about seven miles, and at Lewiston then-for there was no railway-we took the steamer to Toronto, and arrived there on July 11th, 1851, to enter upon new scenes and new labours for the next nineteen years, although this latter fact was not known to us at the time.

As we are now in the country, we shall not stay at Toronto for the present, but take the side of the country on which we entered it, and afterwards proceed eastward, northward, and westward, as the subject opens.

At Lewiston the NIAGARA FALLS, those great wonders of the world, were near us, but we had no time to go and see them. We had to proceed to our destination, and a visit to the Falls had to be postponed to a future opportunity. Since then we have seen them many times, and from every point of view from which they are to be seen-seen them in summer and in winter-seen them in the spring and in the fall, and yet, in one sense, we have never seen them to this day. Whoso wants to see them must go and drink them; that is, he must pitch his tent beside them, above them, and below, and round about them; and he must drink in the scene, till the spirit of the Falls comes to his soul, and he is mado one with that grand sight. We can make nothing of Nature anywhere in a hurry. She is so quiet, or so terrific, and always so manifold, that we must have time to gaze, and take in her wondrous forms, or our labour will be lost. So with the Falls. We give an engraving this month of the Horseshoe Fall, as seen from the Canadian side, embracing a side view of the American fall, on the left hand of the picture. There is the tower, to the top of which all tourists go, just on the crown of the precipice over which the mighty waters leap. But no one engraving can do justice to the scene. No one look can; and the only substitute for a visit and a prolonged gaze on the reality would be to get the set of five or six stereoscopic views which are sold-at least, in Canada-and sit down on some winter evening, with the aid of a good lamp, and thus take in, as far as artificial means can help us to do so, the wonders of the view.