those imperial savages the blood with which it had been incarnadined. (Annals, XII. 56, 57.)
Thus in the year of grace 54 did the first of the two Roman princes celebrate his transient victory over nature, the later prince, in the year 1867, having accomplished that in which the other failed, will content himself with the inconspicuous glory of pocketing the ducats which his rich recovered land will yield. But since it belongs only to emperors to illustrate with pompous spectacles of naval splendor the works with which they may have "renewed the marvels of the Orient," let us at least accord to Prince Torlonia and to M. Bermont—to Italian enterprise and French genius—the honor, which even a Caesar would not have demanded, of publishing in this Western world their work, more beneficent and hardly less great than that of the two Napoleons at Cherbourg.
TRAVEL IN THE UNITED STATES.
NO people travel more than the Americans, whether inside of their own country or outside of it. Locomotion belongs naturally to the restless, shifting phases of the national temperament. Migration at home has become so general a habit, that cases of strong local attachment are almost exceptional; while to have visited Europe is one of the understood requirements of our conventional gentility. It is accepted as implying a higher degree of culture, and no doubt docs remove certain families somewhat farther from their antecedent history. Even our farmers are beginning to have their little after-harvest trips to the sea-shore, the Hudson, Niagara, or the West. The old men, whose boast it was that their lives had been spent within a radius of twenty or thirty miles, are going unhonored into their graves.
This habit of travel will certainly increase, as our means of communication penetrate farther and touch more attractive regions. It is already so fixed, however, — so much of a physical necessity,—that we might expect to find a certain correspondence between its demands and the facilities furnished for its gratification. The latter, in fact, are among the most obvious indices of a people's civilization. Given their homes, hotels, and methods of locomotion, and you may infer their degree of education and the character of their political system. The muleteer of Spain belongs as naturally to a superannuated church and a decayed dynasty, as the Prussian railway to the order and precision of a military power, or the American hotel to a gregarious people recklessly bent on keeping up appearances.
Admitting the want, let us consider how it is supplied. Any material feature of the national life can best be examined by contrasting it with the same thing in other countries; yet we find ourselves obliged to go back of the external facts at the start, and to compare qualities which are to a great extent the result of political causes. In the first place, there is this broad distinction between our national government and that of every prominent European power: the former stands as far as possible aloof from any interference with the private and personal interests of the citizen; while the latter descends to inspect and regulate his education, his labor, his travel, and even his amusement. In Europe, the practical part of life is reduced to a system which has the exactness and something of the monotony of a machine;
