The aspect of the country between Philadelphia and Baltimore took me very much by surprise, as I suppose it would anyone whose previous travels had been confined to Europe. I had imagined that old and densely peopled countries, like England and France, must necessarily present to the eye of the traveller an appearance of their being more closely inhabited than a new country like America. But the very reverse of this is the case, and most strikingly so. All the way from Philadelphia to Baltimore I found the country sown with houses. This arises from the fact that every 100 or 150 acres belong to a separate proprietor (large estates being unknown) who has his house upon his small farm, which he cultivates with his own hands and the assistance of his family. As far as the eye can range over the country you see these white farmhouses. And you may now see them all the way from New York to Omaha on the Missouri, 500 miles beyond Chicago, and 1,500 from New York. The traveller in the United States generally derives his idea of the wealth of the people from what he sees in the towns. The rapidity of their growth, the amount of business done in them, the dimensions of their shops, the goodly appearance of the houses of their merchants, justify him in supposing that the Americans are a very wealthy people. But all this wealth of the towns is in fact only a measure of the wealth of the country. The towns become wealthy and flourishing in proportion to the wealth of the country. These tens of myriads, then, of farmhouses, each of which is evidently the home of a well-to-do family, and of which one is never out of sight in the settled districts of the North, are the truest and most interesting indications of the nature and of the amount of the riches of the United States. CHAPTER IV. THE LOCOMOTIVE IN THE STREETS—IN BALTIMORE PUBLIC OPINION FIRST BECOMES SOUTHERN—GROWTH AND PROSPECTS OF BALTIMORE—ON TRADING POLITICIANS AND ILL WILL TO ENGLAND—WHY AN AMERICAN TUTOR THOUGHT NECESSARY FOR AN ENGLISHMAN—REPUDIATION—THE MASSES AND MIDDLE CLASSES IN FAVOUR OF IT—ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF IT—AN ARGUMENT USED 2,000 MILES FROM WALL STREET—WHY REPUBLICANS BOUND TO REPUDIATE—AMERICANS ADDICTED TO ABSTRACT REASONING—INSTANCES. We very often find a difficulty in getting our horses to take quietly the sound of a railway train in motion. It was at Baltimore that I first saw the locomotive dragging a train along the main street of a city. All the precaution that was taken was merely to ring a bell on the top of the engine to warn foot-passengers and drivers of carriages. Many horses were passed, and many crossed the moving train, but I did not observe that in any instance they took the least notice of it. I afterwards saw the same arrangement at Chicago, at New York, and at many other places, and did not anywhere hear that accidents resulted from it. [Sidenote: _A Marylander’s Opinion of Government._]