not devote so great a portion of his time to the service of his female friends, as he otherwise might wish. But who can tell how soon the day may come, when in America, as well as in Great Britain, abundance of men will be found ready at all times for the delicate and pleasing office of carrying a reticule or parasol, or, if occasion should require, of

Capering nimbly in a lady's chamber

To the lascivious tinklings of the lute?

It has been diligently propagated by various travellers, who appear to have been greatly prejudiced against the people of America, that the boasted independence of the country has been productive of many injurious effects. Among other examples of its evil tendency, it is said to have gone so far in banishing civil and obliging dispositions from the people, that in his intercourse with individuals of every class, an Englishman is in vain to expect the "Sir" and " Your honour," with other tokens of respect, which are lavished upon every person of genteel appearance by the lower orders of his own country. That good things sometimes administer to bad ends, is what every one knows; and it cannot be denied that in America one may occasionally meet with persons of a rude and bearish disposition, who could not for the life of them return a civil answer to a civil question: But where is the country that does not partake of a similar admixture? During my short stay in New York, I

had occasion to make several purchases among the stores-men or shop-keepers; and I found them as suaviter in modo, as perfectly polished in their address, as the most accomplished London Haberdasher. None of them would permit me to carry the smallest articles myself, until I had repeatedly declined their pressing offers to send them to my lodgings. I also found every class of Americans much less inquisitive than I was prepared to expect; and, upon the whole, I could have easily fancied myself in the midst of the capital of my own country, if there had not been wanting those beautiful streets and squares for which Dublin is so justly celebrated, and the refreshing lingo of the hardy natives.

Of English writers on their country, the Americans have in general a very contemptible opinion; but the name of Mr. Fearon is an object of their peculiar contumely. I never entered into conversation with any respectable persons in the city, when the work of this gentleman was not introduced; and with so little ceremony was it treated, that I beg leave to assure Mr. Fearon, if these volumes should happen to fall into his hands, that, on revisiting New York, he will meet with a very unwelcome reception. On one occasion I had nearly got into a scrape, by a few remarks that escaped me in representing Mr. Fearon's work as containing altogether a fair representation of the country: When I made the observation, the company immediately proceeded to proofs; and one of the

misrepresentations adduced was the assertion, that there was not a bed in New York fit for an Englishman to lie upon. I did not recollect the passage; but appealed to a gentleman present, who had been. in England, and asked him, if any of the beds in American hotels were fit to be compared with those of England? You will tell me, continued I, that I am now residing in the first hotel of this city; but I can tell you, there is not only not a single bed in the house with a suit of curtains around it; but the sheets are all of cotton, things to which travellers in England are never accustomed !..

Another instance of misrepresentation was alleged to be implied in the anecdote" of a gentleman walking in Broadway, and a friend passing him who called Doctor, and immediately sixteen persons turned round to answer to the name:" This I sufficiently defended, by replying, that Mr. Fearon did not relate this circumstance as an observation of his own, but as having been related by some indifferent person in his company. Many more examples were selected, but nothing to affect the general veracity of Mr. Fearon, or the truth of my unlucky remark.

The fact is, that Americans have too much inherent vanity to take a joke, even when it is passed upon one of their countrymen with whom they have not the slightest acquaintance; and every thing therefore, which does not exactly redound to the making of the individual concerned the most

perfect of his species, is by their knock-down mode of argumentation, nolens volens, untrue.

Miss Wright is a writer who has succeeded admirably in flattering the vanity of the Americans, and in teaching them to cultivate a wonderfully high opinion of themselves and of their nation: But I have conversed with individuals among the more refined classes, who only laughed at her glorious representations of their perfect integrity, honesty, and virtue, and dignified her neat octavo with the opprobrious epithet of a mere puff. Those who have not intelligence sufficient to guard them against the subtle point of flattery, may at any time be pierced; and to them, in the large portion of pleasure which is infused with the wound, it proves like the arrow of Cupid, and, immediately on its entrance,

Keen transport thrills through every vein,
They never felt so sweet a pain.

While, on the contrary, the well-informed part of a community are relieved from that moral blindness which would prevent them from distinguishing between "the precious and the vile," and reject what is offered in the shape of food for their ambition, with the same precipitance with which the stomach of a sick man discharges an emetic.

With regard to American literature, I had neither means nor opportunity sufficient of acquainting myself with it, to give any lengthened account

of its character and progress, or to mention it otherwise than incidentally. All competent judges have allowed, that some time must elapse before it can lay its own foundation by the instrumentality of its own authors. The standard works of English, Irish, and Scotch writers are still the principal ornaments of public and private libraries in the United States; and, with the exception of some few living and some late men of considerable talent, the American muse is rather limited in the number of her votaries.

The periodical literature of the United States, which, with the exception of the writings of Dwight, Irving, Browne, and a few others of inferior note, forms the only criterion of native ability, is tolerably flourishing. Besides the formidable host of newspapers which are published in every town or village of considerable population, there is a prodigious number of monthly and quarterly publications, many of which are of a sound moral and religious tendency. Few of them are, however, deserving of notice, when compared with the various excellent magazines which, on my return to England, I found recently established: The intelligence and information of American journals are, for aught I know, correct and instructive; but they are not dressed in that alluring garb of chaste language and splendid imagery, which has proved so attractive to the rising generation, and has tended so manifestly to resuscitate the dying spark of a desire for knowledge, in the British Empire.