and elegant modern houses, its shops large and
well-filled, and its inhabitants polite and
genteel, with "more the air of Londoners
than at any place I have seen." Then, from
Worcester, travelling by way of Tewkesbury
where they stayed the night, past apple
orchards of uncommon height and bigness,
through fields, pastures, and enclosures
singular for their richness and verdure, and
with fruit and forest trees on either hand, "in
greater abundance, and larger girth and
greater height than are to be seen elsewhere
in England,"—the American exiles, stopping to
dine and see the cathedral at Gloucester (a
city which, after Worcester, sorely
disappointed them), resumed their drive through
roads dirty and rough—past farmers' houses
wonderful for their look of slovenliness, and
over a soil whose richness they could never
sufficiently admire—till they arrived at
Bristol.

The welcome that here waited them, their
first salute in their temporarily selected
home, was hardly complimentary or
cordial; for it proceeded from the "virulent
tongue of a vixen" in the streets, excited
by something that displeased her in their
manner or dress, and it saluted us by
the names of damned American rebels."
They walked on, however, not much moved;
and soon after, in the same streets, passed one
who seemed a humble pedestrian like
themselves, yet who well deserved the interest with
which they stopped, turned, and looked
earnestly after him. This was "a person
dressed in green, with a small round hat
flapped before, very like an English country
gentleman"; and the Americans knew, from
what already they had heard, that under that
green dress, small round flapped hat, and
country gentleman's bearing, walked quietly
along those Bristol streets no less a potentate
than the Emperor of Austria, Joseph the
Second, not simply interesting to them for his
rank, or because he was the son of Maria
Theresa and brother to Marie Antoinette,
but for many high and striking qualities of
his own. He was at this time (1777)
performing incog the grand tour, including
England.

And now, having seen the working of Old
England's institutions in a borough contest,
the New Englander had the opportunity of
observing how these things were manaed in
the countries; for on the morning after his
arrival in Bristol, he beheld a triumphant
entry of the member just elected for the
county of Gloucester; and this proved to be
"the Duke of Beaufort's man" (his grace's
footman it might have been, though it was
not), Mr. Chester, who burst into the huzza-ing
town, amid the ringing of bells and
discharging of cannon, attended by a
bodyguard of some couple of hundred horsemen
"clad in new blue coats and breeches, with
buff waistcoats, the Duke of Beaufort's hunting
garb." The duke himself, touched
apparently by a not unbecoming modesty, had
privately left the liveried procession just before
its arrival in town, and was content with an
out-of-the-way corner in a private house,
whence himself and his duchess could see
the parade and "enjoy his triumph without
observation." After which second notable
instance of a free election, and of that
independence of the Lower House from all influence
of the Upper which is so cardinal a theory of
the English constitution, Mr. Curwen must
not be thought wholly unreasonable or unjust
for a belief recorded in the next page of his
diary, to the effect that if any thing destroys this
devoted English people it will be "venality";
—or for an opinion subsequently expressed,
that "in the corrupt state of this people, the
wheels of Government cannot move an inch
without money to grease them";—or for
gravely recording in his journal what he had
heard from the owner of a wine vault, that
of port wine alone a general election always
consumed six thousand hogsheads extra, in
addition to the ordinary annual consumption
of twenty-four thousand hogsheads;—or even,
at last, for pleasantly proposing to write a
book that should make confession of his New
England visions of Old England and English
institutions which daylight had broken and
dissolved, under the title of "The Perils and
Peregrinations of a Tory or Refugee in quest
of Civil Liberty," which the Author fondly
imagined "was to be enjoyed in higher
perfection in the Land he travelled through,
than in That he precipitately abandoned."

But his peregrinations, if not his perils, are
drawn for the present to a close; and he has
but to sit down and record the result of his
"dearly bought experience," his "long,
expensive, and not very pleasing tour." It is,
briefly, that manufacturing towns are not
proper places of residence for idle people,
either on account of pleasure or profit; the
expenses of living in every such town, however
distant from London, being as high almost as
in London itself; the spirit of bargaining,
moreover, and of taking advantage, running
through every line of life in those places; and
having especially reached a cruel predominance
in the North. Not that the good old gentleman
felt he should escape all this, by settling in the
West; but he had satisfied himself on the
whole that the West was "a quarter of greater
plenty and less expense," and a majority of his
fellow refugees had already taken up residence
there. As many as eighteen were in Bristol
alone; and that he counted upon these as his
chief society may be inferred from the fact, that
he noted as worthy of record the circumstance of
his having had "an hour's conversation with a
stranger on 'Change, a rare event, people in
England being greatly indisposed to join with
unknown persons." He goes on to make
certain exceptions, indeed, which it is evident
do not include himself, in the observation
that the Bristolians are notorious for early
enquiries into the character of all strangers, from