been embarked in that speculation. It could not have been much, and
I think that others also must have suffered. But she looked about
her, at her American cousins, and resolved to write a book about
them. This book she brought back with her in 1831, and published
it early in 1832. When she did this she was already fifty. When
doing this she was aware that unless she could so succeed in making
money, there was no money for any of the family. She had never before
earned a shilling. She almost immediately received a considerable
sum from the publishers,--if I remember rightly, amounting to two
sums of (pounds)400 each within a few months; and from that moment till
nearly the time of her death, at any rate for more than twenty
years, she was in the receipt of a considerable income from her
writings. It was a late age at which to begin such a career.

The Domestic Manners of the Americans was the first of a series
of books of travels, of which it was probably the best, and was
certainly the best known. It will not be too much to say of it that
it had a material effect upon the manners of the Americans of the
day, and that that effect has been fully appreciated by them. No
observer was certainly ever less qualified to judge of the prospects
or even of the happiness of a young people. No one could have been
worse adapted by nature for the task of learning whether a nation
was in a way to thrive. Whatever she saw she judged, as most women
do, from her own standing-point. If a thing were ugly to her eyes,
it ought to be ugly to all eyes,--and if ugly, it must be bad.
What though people had plenty to eat and clothes to wear, if they
put their feet upon the tables and did not reverence their betters?
The Americans were to her rough, uncouth, and vulgar,--and she
told them so. Those communistic and social ideas, which had been so
pretty in a drawing-room, were scattered to the winds. Her volumes