that it may be understood that I say that word only against a
certain class; and even as to that class I admit that they are
respectable, intelligent, and, as I believe, industrious. Their
manners, however, are to me more odious than those of any other
human beings that I ever met elsewhere. Nor can I go on with that
which I have to say without carrying my apology further, lest,
perchance, I should be misunderstood by some American women whom I
would not only exclude from my censure, but would include in the
very warmest eulogium which words of mine could express as to those
of the female sex whom I love and admire the most. I have known,
do know, and mean to continue to know as far as in me may lie,
American ladies as bright, as beautiful, as graceful, as sweet, as
mortal limits for brightness, beauty, grace, and sweetness will
permit. They belong to the aristocracy of the land, by whatever
means they may have become aristocrats. In America one does not
inquire as to their birth, their training, or their old names. The
fact of their aristocratic power comes out in every word and look.
It is not only so with those who have traveled or with those who
are rich. I have found female aristocrats with families and
slender means, who have as yet made no grand tour across the ocean.
These women are charming beyond expression. It is not only their
beauty. Had he been speaking of such, Wendell Phillips would have
been right in saying that they have brains all over them. So much
for those who are bright and beautiful, who are graceful and sweet!
And now a word as to those who to me are neither bright nor
beautiful, and who can be to none either graceful or sweet.

It is a hard task, that of speaking ill of any woman; but it seems
to me that he who takes upon himself to praise incurs the duty of
dispraising also where dispraise is, or to him seems to be,