elections, the whale fishery and the Indians, manners and morals, occupy, in most unequal proportions, the attention of different writers; an engineer praises the ingenuity and hardihood, while he deprecates the fragility of the "remarkable wooden bridges in America ;" an editor discourses of the influence and abuse of the Press; a horticulturist speculates on the prospects of the vine culture, and an economist on the destruction of the forests and the desultory system of farming. Chambers, accustomed to cater for useful knowledge for the people, describes public establishments and schools; while Kossuth's companion Pulskzy looks sharply at the "white, red, and black" races of the land, and speculates therefrom upon democracy and its results; Lady Stuart Wortley enters into the sentiment of the scenery, and Miss Bremer into the details of domestic economy; the Earl of Carlisle asks first for Allston's studio on landing, and, with the liberality of a scholar and a gentleman, elucidates the country he has partially but candidly observed, in a popular lecture; while the Honorable Augustus Murray had too much rare sport in the West, and formed too happy a conjugal tie in America, not to have his recollections thereof, bright and kindly in the record. In a word, every degree of sympathy and antipathy, of refinement and vulgarity, of philosophical insight and shallow impertinence is to be traced in these books of American travel-from coarse malice to dull good nature, and from genial sense to repulsive bigotry. And while the field may appear to have been well reaped as regards the discussion of manners, government, and industrial resources—recondite inquirers, especially the ethnologists, regard America as still ripe for the harvest.

Years ago, Le Comte Carli * wrote to his cousin: “Je me propose de vous developper mes idées, ou, si vous le voulez,

* "Lettres Americaines," 2 vols. 8vo., Paris, 1788. "In the first part, the author describes the manners and customs of the Americans before their country was discovered by Europeans. He also believes that traces of the religious rites of the Church of Rome were found among them, which resembled baptism and the communion of bread and wine."

mes songes, concernant les anciens peuples de l'Amerique que je crois descendus de ces antiques Atlantides si fameux dans l'histoire des premiers temps." And, within a few months, a London critical journal has mercilessly ridiculed the Abbé Em. Domenech, who published his "Seven Years' Residence in the Great American Deserts;" in the introduction to which he remarks: "America is not solely an El Dorado for freebooters and fortune seekers; though few persons have gone thither to gather the fruits of science." He refers to the origin of the Indian tribes and the various theories on the subject, and alludes to the undoubted fact that " numerous emigrations took place at very remote periods;" and adds: "Africa has become known to us, but America has still a vast desert to which missionaries, merchants, and some rare scientific expeditions have alone penetrated. Its history, its geography, and its geology are still wrapped in swaddling clothes. America is now, comparatively speaking, a new country, a virgin land, which contains numerous secrets. The Government of the United States, to its praise be it, have, of late years, sent scientific expeditions into the American Deserts;" and he notes the publications of Schoolcraft, Catlin, and the Smithsonian Institute.

We have first the old voyageurs in the collection of De Bry and his English prototype Ogilby-the quaint, often meagre, but original and authentic records of the first explorers and navigators; then, the diaries, travels, and memoirs of the early Jesuit missionaries; next, the colonial pamphlets and reports, official, speculative, and incidental, including the series of controversial tracts and descriptions relating to New England and Virginia and other settlements; the reports of the Quaker missionaries, the travels of French officers who took part in the Revolutionary War, and the long catalogue of English books-from the colonial to the cockney era; while the lives of the Spanish explorers, of the pioneers, the military adventurers, and the founders of colonies fill up and amplify the versatile chronicle. From Roger Williams's Key to the Indian Languages, to Sir Henry Clinton's annotations

of Grahame's History of the American War, from De Vries to De Tocqueville, from Cotton Mather* to Mrs. Trollope, from Harmon's "Free Estate of Virginia," published in 1614, to Dr. Russell's fresh letters thence to the London Times; from Champlain's voyage to Dickens's Notes, from Zenger's Trial † to the last report of the Patent Office-the catalogue raisonnéc of books of American travel, history, and criticism would include every phase of life, manners, creed, custom, development, and character, from the imperfect chart of unknown waters to the glowing photograph of manners in the analytical nineteenth century. We find, in examining the library of American travels, that toleration is the charm that invests her to the heart yet bleeding from the wounds of relentless persecution; and, in the elation of freedom, the page glows with eloquent gratitude even amid the plaints of exile. Mountains, rivers, cataracts, and caves make the child of romance pause and plead; while gigantic fossil or exquisite coral reefs or a superb tree or rare flower win and warm the naturalist: one lingers in the Baltimore cathedral, another at the Moravian settlement at Bethlehem, and a third in a Unitarian chapel at Boston, according to their respective views; while "equality of condition," small taxes, cheap land, or plentiful labor secures the advocacy of the practical; and solecisms in manners or language provoke the sarcasms of the fastidious.

We derive from each and all of these commentators on our country, information, not otherwise obtainable, of the aspect of nature and the condition of the people, at different eras and in various regions: we thus realize the process of national

* Cotton Mather's "Magnalia Christi Americana; or, the Ecclesiastical History of New England," 2 vols. 8vo., first American ed., Hartford, 1820.

† “A Brief Narrative of the Case and Trial of John P. Zenger, Printer of the New York 'Weekly Journal,' for a Libel,” 4to., pp. 53, New York, 1770. Governeur Morris, instead of dating American liberty from the Stamp Act, traced it to the prosecution of Peter Zenger, a printer in the colony of New York, for an alleged libel: because that event revealed the philosophy of freedom, both of thought and speech, as an inborn human right, so nobly set forth in Milton's treatise on unlicensed printing.

development; trace to their origin local peculiarities; behold the present by the light of the past; and, in a manner, identify ourselves with those to whom familiarity had not blunted the impression of scenes native to ourselves, and social traits or political tendencies too near for us to view them in their true moral perspective. It may therefore prove both useful and interesting, suggestive and entertaining, to follow the steps and listen to the comments of these numerous travellers and critics, and so learn better to understand, more justly to appreciate and wisely love the land of our birth, doubly dear since fratricidal hands have desecrated her fame.

After colonial enterprise, republican sympathy, economical zeal, the satirical, the adventurous, and the scientific had thus successively reported to Europe the condition and prospects, the errors and merits of our country, in the height of her material prosperity, broke out the long-matured Rebellion of the Slaveholders; and while a vast and sanguinary civil war tested to the utmost, the moral and physical resources of the nation, it called forth a new, more earnest and significant criticism abroad. To analyze this would be to discuss the entire foreign bibliography of the war for the Union. We can but glance at its most striking features and important phenomena.

The first lesson to be inferred from the most cursory survey of what has been published in Europe on what is there called "the American Question," is the immense and intricate influence and relations which now unite the New to the Old World. Commerce, emigration, political ideas, social interests, literature, science, and religion have, one and all, continued to weave strong mutual ties of dependence and reciprocity between Europe and America, to realize the extent and vital importance of which we have only to compare the issues of the European press for a single week with the sparse and obscure publications whereby the foreigner, a century ago, learned what was going on or likely to be achieved for humanity on the great western continent. This voluminous and impressive testimony as to the essential importance of

America to Europe, is quite as manifest in the abuse as in the admiration, in the repulsion as the sympathy of foreign writers, during the memorable conflict; for selfish fear, interested motives, or base jealousy inspired their bitter comments far more than speculative indifference; while those in a disinterested position, actuated solely by philosophical and humane impulses, elaborately pleaded the cause of our national life and integrity as involved in the essential welfare of the civilized world. Next to this universal acknowledgment of a mutual stake in the vast conflict, perhaps for us the most singular revelation derived from the foreign discussion of our civil and military affairs has been that of the extraordinary ignorance of the country existing abroad. Apart from wilful political and perverse prejudice, this popular ignorance is doubtless the cause and the excuse for much of the patent injustice and animosity exhibited by the press toward the United States. The rebellious government organized a social missión to Europe, whereby they forestalled public opinion and artfully misrepresented facts: so that it has been a slow process to enlighten the leaders of opinion, and counteract the work of mercenary writers in France and England subsidized at the earliest stage of the war.

But with all due allowance for want of knowledge and the assiduity of paid advocates of error, through all the passion, prejudice, and mercenary hardihood which have given birth to so much falsehood, malice, and inhumanity in the foreign literary treatment of our national cause in this stupendous crisis and climax of social and civil life-we can yet distinctly trace the influence and recognize the work of friend and foe in the recent avalanche of new commentators on America their motives become daily more obvious, their legitimate claims more apparent, and their just influence bet ter appreciated. History has in store for the most eminent an estimate which will counteract any undue importance attached to their dicta by the acute sensibilities of the passing time, so "big with fate." In an intellectual point of view, the course of English writers is already defined and explained