Note 26 — Chapter IV

Miss Martineau, I understood of my American friends, was, like many English reformers, a great enthusiast for democracy in the abstract; only that in her private intercourse she preferred the society of distinguished persons belonging to the opposite coterie. This probably accounts for her partiality with regard to Daniel Webster and Henry Clay, and her antipathy to the administration. The Quarterly Review, in an excellent article on that useful and instructive work of Mr. Walker, entitled “The Original,” ascribes to the influence of the generous and brilliant hospitality of the noble Lords Lansdowne, Holland, Sefton,—and the clever writer might have added his Grace the Duke of Devonshire,—“a magic power, which, in the intoxication of the moment, throws many an author off his guard, until he finds or thinks himself irrecoverably committed, and, suppressing any lurking inclination towards Toryism, becomes deeply and definitely a Whig.” The administration party in America are unfortunately not much in the habit of entertaining people; but if the number of dishes—no matter how cooked—constituting an American dinner can be put into the scale against the rank, beauty, wit, eloquence, accomplishment, and agreeableness which congregate at the noble houses just named, an American Whig dinner, too, is not without its attraction.