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

RAPID PROGRESS OF AMERICA.
the garden, and such gorgeous butterflies; it was quite a pleasure
to look at them! It seemed so strange to see these tropical-lookillg
humming-birds fluttering about amid the bowers and trees, that
we know are doomed to be stripped of all their beauty by the icy
terrors of the severe Canadian winter. But these little, delicate,
diminutive winged "flowers of loveliness" migrate. They leave
the winter behind them: those lovely, tiny, glittering wings bear
the little feathered miniatures to the sunny south, to revel among
magnolias and roses, when here all is snow or storm.
Though we had a very hot journey from Buffalo to New York,
yet we had the advantage, for a considerable part of the way, of
going through charmingly shadowy forests. {ailroads in the
United States are not like railroads in other countries, for they fly,
plunging through the deep umbrageous recesses of these vasty,
widely-spreading woods, whose sweeping verdure-loaded boughs,
go arching and branching about the " cars" in all directions, shedding a deep, delicious, intensely-green light around, which bathes
every thing and every body in a sea of molten emerald, and is excessively refreshing to the passengers' eyes, though eminently unbecoming to the said passengers' complexions; for they all look
there exactly as if they were playing at "snrap dragon," and the
very ruddiest, and most rubicund turn to a sort of livid, ghastly,
plague-struck looking green; but this may serve to give you an
idea, peradventure (and, I assure you, not an exaggerated one), of
the cool, and verdant, and deeply-tinted reflections from these
overshadowing masses of fbrests.)
Every thing in nature and art almost seems to flourish here.
Schools, universities, manufactories, societies, institutions, appear
spreading over the length anrid breath of the land, and all seem on
such a gigantic scale here too! Lakes, forests, rivers, electric
telegraphs, hotels, conflagrations, inundations, rows, roads, accidents, tobacco, juleps, bowie knives, beards, pistols, &c.! moderation or littleness appear not to belong to America, where Nature
herself leads the way and seems to abhor both, showing an example of leviathanism in every thing, which the people appear well
inclined to follow.
We were quite sorry to leave charming Fort Talbot. V
intensely regretted the poultry, the pic-nics, the sweet pickaninnies,
and the ponies, besides divers other bewitching delights; and I
lamented over my beauteous bower of old Greek lace, my splendid
view of the lovely Lake Sea, and, above all, the kind friends who
had made our sojourn there so exceedingly enjoyable.
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