One hears a great deal about what is described as the arrogance and conceit of Americans. I never met with anything of the kind, except among classes which with us are generally too ignorant to know much, and too apathetic to care much about their own country. The upper classes are proud of their country, as they ought to be, and that is all. At Boston, however, I was struck, not with the arrogance and conceit, but with the humility of Americans. I am speaking now of the literary class; and I think the phenomenon is to be accounted for in the following way. These New Englanders are the most observant and the most receptive of the human family, and it is the first thought of all among them who have literary aspirations to travel in England and on the European continent. These are to them the Holy Land of thought. It is here that all the branches of literature, and all the departments of science, originated and were matured. All the creations of fancy, all the lessons and examples of history, all the familiar descriptions of outward nature, and of human emotions, come from this side. Here, then, are the shrines which the literary men of the New World must visit with the staff and in the spirit of a pilgrim. They feel an influence which their fellow-countrymen do not feel. But besides this, because they are New Englanders, they note and weigh every idea and practice they find in European society; and everything that approves itself to their understanding, they adopt readily and without prejudice. This is the reason why travelled New Englanders are generally so gentlemanly and agreeable. They understood what they saw abroad, and they have acknowledged to themselves that they have learnt much that they never would have known anything of if they had stayed at home. This, which is true of all, is doubly true of their literary men. One of the leading writers of New England described to me the craving that he felt for intercourse with minds cultivated as they are only in Europe. There only, in his opinion, men had time to think; there only had the critical faculties been trained; there only could you meet with broad and profound views on questions of literature, history, or policy. The whole of the literature of America was but a _rechauffé_ of that of England, France, and Germany. [Sidenote: _Humility of the Leading Literary Men._] I regretted the necessity which obliged me to leave Boston before I had seen as much as I wished of its society. I did not feel in this way because it more nearly resembles European society than is the case in any other city of the Union—for one does not go to America to see what can be seen at home—but because I wished to know more of some with whom I felt that it would be a happiness afterwards to be acquainted, and because I was desirous of using every opportunity for arriving at some distinct conclusions as to the tendency of opinion and thought, more particularly religious thought, in the New World.