England: With Sketches of Society in the Metropolis, Volume 1

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R. Bentley, 1837 - England
 

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Page 14 - Half way down Hangs one that gathers samphire; dreadful trade! Methinks, he seems no bigger than his head: The fishermen, that walk upon the beach, Appear like mice; and yon...
Page 114 - ... but he is not quite so simple in all his habits and pretensions. I will give you a few laughable proofs of the contrary. - • A dozen noblemen may have laid their own patrician hands on my knocker, within a fortnight. As I use the dining-room to write in, I am within fifteen feet of the street door, and no favour of this sort escapes my ears. Ridiculous as it may seem...
Page 56 - but I cannot say that either pleased me much." I laughed and told him we could do better than that, now. He begged me to recite something — a single verse, if possible. He could not have applied to a worse person, for my memory barely suffices to remember facts, of which I trust it is sufficiently tenacious, but I never could make any thing of a quotation. As he betrayed a childish eagerness to hear even half a dozen lines, I attempted something of Bryant's, and a little of " Alnwick Castle,"...
Page 201 - She has usually more colour, and, on the whole, a more delicacy of complexion. The American is superior in general delicacy of outline, as well as in complexion ; she has a better person, bust and shoulders excepted, and smaller hands and feet. Those who pretend to know much on this subject, and to make critical...
Page 18 - We looked at this view of England with very conflicting sensations. It was the land of our fathers, and it contained, with a thousand things to induce us to love it, a thousand to chill the affections. Standing, as it might be, in the very portal of the country, I imagined what was to occur in the next three months, with longing and distrust. Twentytwo years before, an ardent boy, I had leaped ashore, on the island, with a feeling of deep reverence and admiration, the fruits of the traditions of...
Page 247 - ... the wine-discussing, trade-talking, dollar-dollar, set that has made an inroad upon society in our commercial towns, not half of whom are...
Page 169 - ... on his fellow nobles the lords and esquires of England. Mr. Cooper proceeds to give further proofs of the rancorous antipathy of the English to every thing American. ' It is not easy for an American to imagine the extent of the prejudice which exists against his country in England, without close and long observation. One of its effects is frequently to cause those who were born on our side of the water, or who have connexions there, to wish to conceal the fact. Two anecdotes connected with this...
Page 202 - I have remarked that faces here, which appear well in the distance, often fail in some necessary ßnessse or delicacy when closer ; and I should say, as a rule, that the American female, certainly the American Girl, will bear the test of examination better than her European rival. I do not mean by this, however, under a fierce sun, that direful enemy of soft eyes, for there is scarcely such a thing as a bright sun, or what we should call one, known in England.
Page 19 - Twenty-two years before, an ardent boy, I had leaped ashore, on the island, with a feeling of deep reverence and admiration, the fruits of the traditions of my people, and with a love almost as devoted as that I bore the land of my birth. I had been born, and I had hitherto lived, among those who looked up to England as to the idol of their political, moral, and literary adoration.
Page 19 - ... devoted as that I bore the land of my birth. I had been born, and I had hitherto lived, among those who looked up to England as to the idol of their political, moral, and literary adoration. These notions I had imbibed, as all imbibed them in America down even as late as the commencement of the last war. I had been accustomed to see every door thrown open to an Englishman, and to hear and think that his claim to our hospitality was that of a brother, divided from us merely by the accidents of...

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