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CHAPTER III. SCENERY AND CITIES. I HAVE already said that America is the country of disillusion and disappointment, in politics, literature, culture, and art; in its scenery, its cities, and its people; and I would here explain the limited sense in which this criticism is intended to apply to scenery and cities. My remarks can only be general, seeing that I have no ambition to enter into competition with the guide-books, or do more than note those superficial characteristics of America which cannot fail to attract the attention of every intelligent traveller. I would then observe that to a person who has travelled much and has seen the most striking and beautiful parts of both Europe and Asia, the scenery of the United States and Canada appears singularly unattractive and tame. There is some fine scenery, but the country is so vast, andthe distances to be traversed so wearisome, that the impression made by the oases of loveliness is effaced by the monotony of the general ugliness. The prairie has been the favourite theme of poets and novelists: its illimitable extent; its carpet of flowers and its canopy of stars; its mysterious silences ; its terrible awakening to life in whirlwind and fire. But the prairie of real life is a dull, uniform plain, for most part of the year burnt a dead brown ; stretching in unbroken monotony for hundreds and even thousands of miles, precisely like those dismal Russian steppes across which, month after month, the poor victims of tyranny drag their failing limbs to their Siberian grave. As the prairies are too large to be beautiful, so are the great American lakes, Superior, Michigan, and Ontario. They have much of the beauty which belongs to thesea ; but on their southern shores there is little scenery of interest ; and it is only where they...