The Americans, like the Russians, have a national pride surpassing all expression. They cannot, like the Russians, talk of their old traditions; nor have they, like them, ancient monuments of a venerable character, and modern ones of grand aspect. They have not, like the soldiers of Suwarrow and Alexander, conquered a valiant reputation upon the chief battle-fields of Europe. Neither have they the literature of Russia, so artless in its popular poetry, so original in the compositions of Pushkin and Gogol. But little do they care what exists in other countries. They have the happiness to believe all other nations very inferior to them, and all the imagination that the perpetual use of figures has left them is agreeably employed in raising the airy edifice of their glory. Their least success is an event which must occupy the thoughts of the whole world. A battle in which they have taken a banner And slain thirty men is a second Marengo. The name of their General Scott is to be transmitted to posterity with the same lustre as that of Alexander or Cæsar; and not a soldier who served in the war against Mexico but is a Napoleon on a small scale. When they talk of their country and of its progress, the ordinary vocabulary is too weak for their enthusiasm. They are fain to seek extraordinary epithets, words which the learned Johnson never admitted into his dictionary. They remind me of the Italian cicerone who exclaimed, when showing a picture of Albano to a traveller, '_Ah, Signor! questo è un maestro, e un grande pittore, e un pittorissimo!_' I accordingly heard, from one end to the other, the story of the battle of Plattsburg, after which my officious American, satisfied probably with my attention, made me a bow--a rare circumstance! I even believe--a still rarer event--that he made a motion as if to raise his hand to his hat. Then, having no other Homeric epic to narrate, he took himself off, and left me opposite to the shores of the Champlain, at liberty to indulge in meditation."