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

HIGH-SOUNDING NAMES OF TOWNS.
existence is of little account in China, because the over-crowded,
half-starved, hard-worked, oppressed, and tyrannized-over population, are so wretched in this world, that any change must, they
feel, be a beneficial one for them; but how different is the case
here? Yet true it is that they are tyrannized over by a very
despotic task-master, and a very exacting and spirit-grinding ruler
-Mammon; and I can well imagine that ceaseless toil in his
service, with all the cares and troubles incident to it, must make
a man find life somewhat of a wearisome burden. Indeed, moneygetting, which is certainly in most countries a great business, appears here to me almnost a battle. It seems as if they must win,
do or die, and the dead on the field are trodden under foot by their
eager comrades and competitors, hurrying onward, and having no
time to stay, however they might be disposed. That they are a very
kind-hearted people, I filly believe; but to make money seems a
sort of duty in America-the great object of living; and this paramount feeling, to a certain extent, like Aaron's rod, swallows up
all the rest.
On our road to Niagara, to-morrow, we shall come to a great
many very high-sounding places: Rome, Syracuse, Egypt, Athens,
Geneva, Utica, Amsterdam, Batavia, and Palmyra, among them,
I believe. A noble line of places indeed, and worthy of forming
the road to the great, glorious Niagara, if their actual state, circumstances, and proportion harmonized with their pretensions.
What a pity the Americans do not choose Indian names for their
rising towns and cities, which are generally as sonorous and noblesounding as they are impressive and poetical! Setting aside the
inadequacy of the towns in general, for the present at least, to do
justice to such splendid appellations, and the sometimes ridiculous
juxtaposition in which they are placed with regard to each other
(the most different, and distant, and hostile places in the Old
World being forced into a sort of happy-family brotherhood in the
New), in their immediate neighborhood are too often found other
flourishing villages and towns rejoicing in the very homely designations of Smithsville, Brownsville, Onion, Jacksontown, &c.
In one place I see they have an infant Troy (not the one almost
close to this place, but some diminutive rival)-then Highgate,
Canaan, Guildhall, Milton, Hyde Park, and Columbia, are all
tolerably near to one another; but I believe this is nothing to the
greater incongruities which the West presents in its more out-of the-way districts.
VWe were quite charmed with the extreme beauty of the Hlud
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