Travels in the United States, etc.,: during 1849 and 1850./ By the Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley.

TRAVELS IN AMERICA.
After all, I believe most of those who suffered were merely idle
spectators, drawn there by curiosity, or mixed by chance in the
crowd. However, that is very often the case in less severe encounters between the mob and the preservers of order. When I
expressed my horror at such a frightful massacre in the streets of
a peaceful city, I found none to sympathize with such sentiments,
if I except the columns of the Herald. In the crowded steamer,
where one heard people talking over the topics of the day, I do
not remember to have once heard the subject alluded to, though
the affair had so recently happened. What a sensation would
such a slaughter have excited in London!
When we passed the melancholy wreck of the i]l-starred
"Empire," whose fate had caused the destruction of so many
lives, scarcely any one manifested any interest in the catastrophe.
They sauntered to that side of the vessel in crowds-to look very
indifferently, it appeared to me, at the mournful spectacle, as they
might and would have done at tny other sight. Yet in addition
to the great number of corpses that had already been found, it was
almost certain that the still submerged cabins were so many
coffins; and those who were prosecuting the melancholy search
were constantly, we were told, finding fresh bodies in different
parts of the vessel.
The only person who seemed to me at all to feel any commiseration and regret was a lady who stood near me, and all hers was
reserved exclusively for the captain of the. ill-fated steamer, who
was her cousin, and who, however, was alive and safe. But, she
said, some people blamed him, which was very hard, as it was no
fault of his; and he had been quite "sick," she assured me, ever
since, from the annoyance he had undergone. Thus the only one
who was pitied, it seemed, was one who survived. She add(led,
however, he was much shocked at all that had happened. It was
really consolatory to hear, that there was such a thing as compassion, in this busy, go-ahead world of the West, for unfortunates,
who had been so suddenly and unexpectedly launched into eternity; for one began, almost unconsciously, to lower even one's own
opinion of the value of existence, and to think life a very twopenny-halfpenny possession, after all. I will not be sure, however,
but that what so shocked the captain, was the amount of property
lost; but I would not too curiously inquire touching the point,
preferring to think the sorrow arose from more humane feelings.
Whence arises this indifference to human life in so flourishing
and prosperous a community? One has always understood that
18