But the soil, the rivers, the
ponds, the ten thousand landscapes, together with the virtuous and
lovely women which now adorn the ancient kingdoms of Connecticote,
Sassacus, and Quinnipiog, would tempt me into the highest wonder and
admiration of them, could they once be freed ofthe skunk, the
moping-owl, rattlesnake and fanatic Christian."
Or, to take another example of the abuse heaped by our English cousins
upon this so-called "American custom of bundling." We extract the
following from an article entitled _British Abuse of American Manners_,
published in 1815.[24] It seems that it had long been a custom in the
Westminster school, in the city of London, for the senior students, who
were about to leave that seminary for the university, at the age of
sixteen to eighteen, to have an annual dramatic performance, which was
generally a play of Terence.[25] To this, as annually performed, there
was usually a Latin prologue, and also an epilogue composed for the
occasion and this epilogue turned, for the most part, on the manners of
the day that would bear the gentle correction of good humored satire, in
elegant Latinity. In the epilogue presented at one of these exhibitions,
about 1815, in connection with the performance of Terence's _Phormio_,
the following balderdash (with much else, as applied to American life
and manners) was introduced and spoken by these ingenuous and virtuous
British youth, before a large and enlightened audience:
"Nec morum dicere promtum est,
Sit ratio simplex, sitne venusta magis.
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