When I visited London, with a part of my family, in 1823, after passing near two years on the continent of Europe, Mrs. ---- was compelled to change her dress--at all times simple, but then, as a matter of course, Parisian--in order not to be the subject of unpleasant observation. She might have gone in a carriage attired as a Frenchwoman, for they who ride in England are not much like those who walk; but to walk in the streets, and look at objects, it was far pleasanter to seem English than to seem French. Five years later, we took London on our way to America, and even then something of the same necessity was felt. On reaching home, with dresses fresh from Paris, the same party was only in the _mode_; with _toilettes_ a little, and but very little, better arranged, it is true, but in surprising conformity with those of all around them. On visiting our own little retired mountain village, these Parisian-made dresses were scarcely the subject of remark to any but to your _connoisseurs_. My family struck me as being much less peculiar in the streets of C---- than they had been, a few months before, in the streets of London. All this must be explained by the activity of the intercourse between France and America, and by the greater facility of the Americans in submitting to the despotism of foreign fashions.
Another fact will show you another side of the subject. While at Paris, a book of travels in America, written by an Englishman (Mr. Vigne), fell into my hands. The writer, apparently a well-disposed and sensible man, states that he was dancing _dos-à-dos_ in a _quadrille_, at New York, when he found, by the embarrassment of the rest of the set, he had done something wrong. Some one kindly told him that they no longer danced _dos-à-dos_. In commenting on this trifling circumstance, the writer ascribes the whole affair to the false delicacy of our women! Unable to see the connexion between the cause and the effect, I pointed out the paragraph to one of my family, who was then in the daily practice of dancing, and that too in Paris itself, the very court of Terpsichore. She laughed, and told me that the practice of dancing _dos-à-dos had gone out at Paris a year or two before_, and that doubtless the newer _mode_ had reached New York before it reached Mr. Vigne! These are trifles, but they are the trifles that make up the sum of national peculiarities, ignorance of which leads us into a thousand fruitless and absurd conjectures. In this little anecdote we learn the great rapidity with which new fashions penetrate American usages, and the greater ductility of American society in visible and tangible things, at least; and the heedless manner with which even those who write in a good spirit of America, jump to their conclusions. Had Captain Hall, or Mrs. Trollope, encountered this unlucky _quadrille_, they would probably have found some clever means of imputing the _nez-à-nez_ tendencies of our dances to the spirit of democracy! The latter, for instance, is greatly outraged by the practice of wearing hats in Congress, and of placing the legs on tables; and, yet, both have been practised in Parliament from time immemorial! She had never seen her own Legislature, and having a set of theories cut and dried for Congress, everything that struck her as novel was referred to one of her preconceived notions. In this manner are books manufactured, and by such means are nations made acquainted with each other!