A Tour in the United States, Cuba, and Canada (1861) (Hardcover)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3TOUE IN THE UNITED STATES. FIRST LECTURE. N accordance with the request of your Committee, I am now about to offer to the members of this Institution the gleanings of that information which has been gathered during an absence of six months, having one of my daughters as my companion. It is not my intention to reduce my observations into heads or chapters, but throughout these lectures to carry on a sort of renewed intercourse with every locality I have visited, and thus to facilitate my descriptions by the localising of my ideas and recollections. By this arrangement I hope I shall be able to diffuse over every evening a greater variety of local interest, and a wider range of expression of opinion, more especially upon slavery and politics. In respect of these, and upon all other matters also, I shall endeavour to represent very faithfully whatever I may have heard, leaving to yourselves to draw from my observations whatever conclusions you may think proper. It will be admitted that the desire to travel abroad is commendable. It springs from that enlarged desire for knowledge which is sure to lead to the discovery of something acceptable, whether in arts, science, literature, agriculture, commerce, or in the study of those institutions which have relation to political or civil life. Its gratification affords to the eyes, as well as to the mind, an unspeakable delight in the contemplation of those wonders and beauties of nature, which are to be found in every country as essentially its own. And, in our own experience, the enjoyments have far outweighed any risk of disasters. The hazards of crossing the Atlantic may appear serious to many persons, but their real insignificance becomes obvious when we bear in mind that the Cunard Steamers have been constantly sailing, week by week, for nineteen years,...