"Nous nous en tiendrons aux moeurs, aux habitudes extÉrieures dont se forme, pour les differentes classes de la sociÉtÉ, une sorte de physionomie morale, oÙ se retracent les moeurs privÉes."

De Jouy.

It is a perpetual wonder to an inexperienced person that the students of particular classes of facts can learn so much as they do from a single branch of inquiry. Tell an uninformed man of the daily results of the study of Fossil Remains, and he will ask how the student can possibly know what was done in the world ages before man was created. It will astonish a thoughtless man to hear the statements about the condition of the English nation which are warranted by the single study of the administration of the Poor Laws, since their origin. Some physiognomists fix their attention on a single feature of the human face, and can pretty accurately interpret the general character of the mind from it: and I believe every portrait painter trusts mainly to one feature for the fidelity of his likenesses, and bestows more study and care on that one than on any other.

A good many features compose the physiognomy of a nation; and scarcely any traveller is qualified to study them all. The same man is rarely enlightened enough to make investigation at once into the religion of a people, into its general moral notions, its domestic and economical state, its political condition, and the facts of its progress;—all which are necessary to a full understanding of its morals and manners. Few have even attempted an inquiry of this extent. The worst of it is that few dream of undertaking the study of any one feature of society at all. We should by this time have been rich in the knowledge of nations if each intelligent traveller had endeavoured to report of any one department of moral inquiry, however narrow; but, instead of this, the observations offered to us are almost purely desultory. The traveller hears and notes what this and that and the other person says. If three or four agree in their statements on any point, he remains unaware of a doubt, and the matter is settled. If they differ, he is perplexed, does not know whom to believe, and decides, probably, in accordance with prepossessions of his own. The case is almost equally bad, either way. He will hear only one side of every question if he sees only one class of persons,—like the English in America, for instance, who go commonly with letters of introduction from merchants at home to merchants in the maritime cities, and hear nothing but federal politics, and see nothing but aristocratic manners. They come home with notions which they suppose to be indisputable about the great Bank question, the state of parties, and the relations of the General and State governments; and with words in their mouths of whose objectionable character they are unaware,—about the common people, mob government, the encroachment of the poor upon the rich, and so on. Such partial intercourse is fatal to the observations of a traveller; but it is less perplexing and painful at the time than the better process of going from one set of people to another, and hearing what all have to say. No traveller in the United States can learn much of the country without conversing equally with farmers and merchants, with artizans and statesmen, with villagers and planters; but, while discharging this duty, he will be so bewildered with the contrariety of statements and convictions, that he will often shut his note-book in a state of scepticism as to whether there be any truth at all shining steadily behind all this tempest of opinions. Thus it is with the stranger who traverses the streets of Warsaw, and is trusted with the groans of some of the outraged mourners who linger in its dwellings; and then goes to St. Petersburg, and is presented with evidences of the enlightenment of the Czar, of his humanity, his paternal affection for his subjects, and his general superiority to his age. At Warsaw the traveller called him a miscreant; at Petersburg he is required to pronounce him a philanthropist. Such must be the uncertainty of judgment when it is based upon the testimony of individuals. To arrive at the facts of the condition of a people through the discourse of individuals, is a hopeless enterprise. The plain truth is—it is beginning at the wrong end.

The grand secret of wise inquiry into Morals and Manners is to begin with the study of THINGS, using the DISCOURSE OF PERSONS as a commentary upon them. Though the facts sought by travellers relate to Persons, they may most readily be learned from Things. The eloquence of Institutions and Records, in which the action of the nation is embodied and perpetuated, is more comprehensive and more faithful than that of any variety of individual voices. The voice of a whole people goes up in the silent workings of an institution; the condition of the masses is reflected from the surface of a record. The Institutions of a nation,—political, religious, or social,—put evidence into the observer's hands as to its capabilities and wants which the study of individuals could not yield in the course of a lifetime. The Records of any society, be they what they may, whether architectural remains, epitaphs, civic registers, national music, or any other of the thousand manifestations of the common mind which may be found among every people, afford more information on Morals in a day than converse with individuals in a year. Thus also must Manners be judged of, since there never was a society yet, not even a nunnery or a Moravian settlement, which did not include a variety of manners. General indications must be looked for, instead of generalizations being framed from the manners of individuals. In cities, do social meetings abound? and what are their purposes and character? Are they most religious, political, or festive? If religious, have they more the character of Passion Week at Rome, or of a camp-meeting in Ohio? If political, do the people meet on wide plains to worship the Sun of the Celestial Empire, as in China; or in town-halls, to remonstrate with their representatives, as in England; or in secret places, to spring mines under the thrones of their rulers, as in Spain? If festive, are they most like an Italian carnival, where everybody laughs; or an Egyptian holiday, when all eyes are solemnly fixed on the whirling Dervishes? Are women there? In what proportions, and under what law of liberty? What are the public amusements? There is an intelligible difference between the opera at Milan, and the theatre at Paris, and a bull-fight at Madrid, and a fair at Leipzig, and a review at St. Petersburg.—In country towns, how is the imitation of the metropolis carried on? Do the provincials emulate most in show, in science, or in the fine arts?—In the villages, what are the popular amusements? Do the people meet to drink or to read, to discuss, or play games, or dance? What are the public houses like? Do the people eat fruit and tell stories? or drink ale and talk politics or call for tea and saunter about? or coffee and play dominoes? or lemonade and laugh at Punch? Do they crowd within four walls, or gather under the elm, or spread themselves abroad over the cricket-field or the yellow sands?—There is as wide a difference among the humbler classes of various countries as among their superiors in rank. A Scotch burial is wholly unlike the ceremonies of the funeral pile among the Cingalese; and an interment in the Greek church little resembles either. A conclave of White Boys in Mayo, assembled in a mud hovel on a heath, to pledge one another to their dreadful oath, is widely different from a similar conclave of Swiss insurgents, met in a pine wood on a steep, on the same kind of errand: and both are as little like as may be to the heroes of the last revolution in Paris, or to the companies of Covenanters that were wont to meet, under a similar pressure of circumstances, in the defiles of the Scottish mountains.—In the manners of all classes, from the highest to the lowest, are forms of manners enforced in action, or dismissed in words? Is there barbarous freedom in the lower, while there is formality in the higher ranks, as in newly settled countries? or have all grown up together to that period of refined civilization when ease has superseded alike the freedom of the Australian peasantry, and the etiquette of the court of Ava?—What are the manners of professional men of the society, from the eminent lawyer or physician of the metropolis down to the village barber? The manners of the great body of the professional men must indicate much of the requisitions of the society they serve.—So, also, must every circumstance connected with the service of society: its character, whether slavish or free, abject or prosperous, comprehensive or narrow in its uses, must testify to the desires and habits, and therefore to the manners of a community, better than the conversation or deportment of any individual in the society can do. A traveller who bears all this in mind can hardly go wrong. Every thing that he looks upon will instruct him, from an aqueduct to a punch-bowl, from a penitentiary to an aviary, from the apparatus of a university to the furniture of an alehouse or a nursery. When it was found that the chiefs of the Red men could not be impressed with any notion of the civilization of the Whites by all that many white men could say, they were brought into the cities of the Whites. The exhibition of a ship was enough for some. The warriors of the prairies were too proud to utter their astonishment,—too noble to hint, even to one another, their fear; but the perspiration stood on their brows as they dumbly gazed, and no word of war passed their lips from that hour. Another, who could listen with calmness to the tales of boastful traders in the wilderness, was moved from his apathy by seeing a workman in a glasshouse put a handle upon a pitcher. He was transported out of his silence and reserve: he seized and grasped the hand of the workman, crying out that it was now plain that he had had intercourse with the Great Spirit. By the evidence of things these Indians had learned more of the manners of the Whites than had ever been taught them by speech.—Which of us would not learn more of the manners of the Pompeians by a morning's walk among the relics of their abodes and public halls than by many a nightly conference with certain of their ghosts?

The usual scholastic division of Morals is into personal, domestic, and social or political morals. The three kinds are, however, so apt to run into one another,—so practically inseparable,—that the traveller will find the distinction less useful to him than some others which he can either originate or adopt.

It appears to me that the Morals and Manners of a nation may be included in the following departments of inquiry—the Religion of the people; their prevalent Moral Notions; their Domestic State; their Idea of Liberty; and their Progress, actual or in prospect.