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CINCINNATI—ITS BEAUTIES.
Chap. VII.
CHAPTER VII.
The Queen City continued—Its beauties—Its inhabitants, human and equine—An American church—Where chairs and bedsteads come from—Pigs and pork—A peep into Kentucky—Popular opinions respecting slavery—The curse of America.
The important towns in the United States bear designations of a more poetical nature than might be expected from so commercial a people. New York is the Empire City—Philadelphia the City of Brotherly Love—Cleveland the Forest City—Chicago the Prairie City—and Cincinnati the Queen City of the West. These names are no less appropriate than poetical, and none more so than that applied to Cincinnati. The view from any of the terraced heights round the town is magnificent. I saw it first bathed in the mellow light of a declining sun. Hill beyond hill, clothed with the rich verdure of an almost tropical clime, slopes of vineyards just ready for the wine-press,[1] magnolias with their fragrant blossoms,
- ↑ Grapes are grown in such profusion in the Southern and Western States, that I have seen damaged bunches thrown to the pigs. Americans find it difficult to understand how highly this fruit is prized in England. An American lady, when dining at Apsley House, observed that the Duke of Wellington was cutting up a cluster of grapes into small bunches, and she wondered that this illustrious man should give himself such unnecessary trouble. When the servant handed round the plate containing these, she took them all, and could not account for the amused and even censuring looks of some of the other guests, till she heard that it was expected that she should have helped herself to one bunch only of the hothouse treasure.
