Moreover, such shrewd and caustic writers as the Trollopes and Dixon and Charles Dickens have done great good service to their sensible and sensitive American brothers,--who, far from resenting strictures which for the moment stung, took the best advantage of their utterance in self-improvement.

My first visit was hospitably redolent of all manner of seductive drinks,--wherein, however, I was (as they thought) too temperate; my second was as hospitably plentiful so far as eating went, but iced water (wherein I was temperate too) appeared solitarily for the universal beverage: though even in the most teetotal homes this English guest was always generously allowed his port or Madeira or even his whisky if he wished it.

Temperance was a fashion, a _furore_, on my second visit, as its opposite had been on my first: and on each occasion, I persisted in a middle course, the golden mean,--which I know to be proverbially a wisdom though not at present universally so accepted.
It is hopeless for me to look through the multitudinous large quarto pages of my first diary and its letters, comments, paragraphs, &c.; they are only too full of compliments and kindnesses from friends in many instances passed away: and I will simply record two or three of the more public hospitalities which greeted me.
One of these was a grand dinner with the Maryland Historical Society at Baltimore, May 13, 1851, my late friend Mr.Kennedy in the chair as president, while Sir Henry Bulwer and myself supported him right and left, some hundreds of other guests also being present.

Of course all was very well done, luxuriously and magnificently; but perhaps the best thing I can do (if my reader's patience and my present tired penmanship will approve it) is to extract from a newspaper, the _Baltimore Clipper_ of the above date, a _precis_ of my speech on the occasion.

Some distinguished gentleman having proposed my health,--"This brought to his feet Mr.Tupper, who, having expressed his thanks in an appropriate manner, and acknowledged his superior gratitude to the Author of all good, alluded to that international loving-kindness which he avowed to be one main errand of his life; and he very happily brought in Horace's prophetical description of England and America in their relation of mother and child, 'O matre pulchra filia pulchrior.' He followed by relating some striking incidents of the good feeling which pervades the old country in favour of her illustrious offspring.