CHAPTER XXV.

LOUISVILLE. THE HOLY BROTHERS.

OUISVILLE sets itself up for the most beautiful city of the United

States, but few save Louisvillians would perceive it. It is a well-built town, of some one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, and is finely situated for commercial purposes. It communicates, by the Ohio, with the Mississippi, and with the South and West; yet it does not command as large an amount of trade as Cincinnati, which is one hundred and fifty miles farther up the river. There is really nothing whatever of beauty about Louisville; its site is a dead level, and the country is flat. for miles around. The trees in the suburbs are small, and pitiful-looking in winter; and it is difficult to say where the beauty could be found even in summer.

Louisville is a sort of debatable land between

the West and South. The Kentuckians, who are not purely Southerners, are square-built, sturdy, rough, energetic, and rude. They do not attempt any very high degree of refinement. The principal merchants dwell in stores and offices, which are rough and dirty, are on a level with the street, and resemble chandlers' establishments in Portsmouth or Southampton. Whatever their wealth may be, they cannot certainly be called merchant princes-they and their surroundings being the reverse of princely. When Mr. Dickens was in Louisville, he complained, I am told, that he could not get water enough. My complaint, if I made one, would be that there were not chairs enough, not having been asked to take a seat when making calls on the merchant princes. Frequently I had to go through the American catechism standing. One wealthy merchant, in particular, to whom I brought a letter of introduction from a general officer, put me through a catechism respecting my movements standing. "How long have you been in this country?" "How soon will you go back?" "Where have you come from last ?" "Where are you going next?" "How do you like this country?" "Have you made any money?" "Is this ?" "Is this your first visit?" "Shall you ever come again?" "What do you think of the books you English have written about

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us?" "They have not done us justice. This is a great country. They don't understand us. I hope you will." I, however, understand chiefly by this time that I am tired of standing, and break off the catechism by saying "Good morning," to which he replies " Good evening"for an American evening commences immediately after midday. Such is a specimen of manners in Louisville-not that the Louisvillians are to be considered as specimens of Americans generally.

Most persons, on receiving a letter of introduction, will ask you to take a seat before putting you through the catechism. Some will offer to be of service to you, offer to show you the sights of the place-consisting generally of the cemetery-but rarely fulfil their offers. They will hope to see you some day, but never fix upon any. They intend to do themselves the pleasure of calling upon you at your hotel, which they always do, and by that time have probably remembered a good many more questions to ask. If they have learned that you are a musician, they are anxious to put you through an examination there and then as to your proficiency in vocal and instrumental music. Sentiments of delicacy, or feeling, are perfectly ignored in these matters.

If the gentlemen of Louisville do not affect

any style, and stand, with their hands in their pockets, propping up the jambs of the street doors, the ladies are by no means behindhand in attempts at style and tournure. Perhaps if they did not aim at so much fashion and haut ton, they would be more agreeable people. If they did not attempt to be princesses, or, rather, to make you believe them to be, they would doubtless be far more pleasant acquaintances. If a lady in Louisville can only get a train long enough, her figure twisted enough, and her whole person to resemble a scared gander, she believes she has reached the ne plus ultra of human perfection. Where the fearful contortion called the Grecian bend originated, history telleth not; I saw it for the first time in Louisville, and it struck me as the usual American burlesque on French tournure, on the drillmaster's constant order (and all girls are drilled in France) "mademoiselle, hanche en arrière;" but it never occurred to him, or any other human being, that demoiselles should therefore poke their heads and shoulders en avant.

The hat and tuft of feathers projecting over the nose, and supported by it, with a hump of stiffening raised on the back, transform the "human form divine" into the very silliest looking of bipeds. The feet of the ladies, though small, are broad and flat, and as they

had not been accustomed to walk with heels until very recently, when equipped in their full toilette they waddled or hopped along, like farm-yard creatures, or "cats on cockles." So, what with the men standing at the open shopdoors, and chewing and spitting into the street, and the women sweeping it up with their trains, and vying with each other in attaining the highest pitch of grotesque frivolity, it is no wonder that there is so little intellectuality in Louisville.

The gathering which greeted Mrs. Fanny Kemble at her readings in the large hall, surpassed anything Punch or Leech ever imagined. Well for Mrs. Kemble that the ensemble would only present to her view a many-coloured parterre, or she never could, with becoming gravity, have gone through the solemn part of Henry VIII. Such an assemblage of vague, bewildered faces, was surely never before collected under such a mass of peacock feathers, bows, and flowers.

Mrs. Kemble's agent was a shrewd man, and knew how to draw a Louisvillian audience, at any rate for once. He peremptorily insisted, in his advertisements, that it was the height of fashion to hear Mrs. Kemble, and that not to have heard her was to be nobody. He advertised her dress, her diamond pin, her candlesticks,