narrative, and some humor. It entitled him, as far as a single production of the kind could do, to a respectable literary rank among the second-rate novelists of the day; but the principal interest which it excited was occasioned by its being mistaken for a sort of autobiography. He had also published an Account of the Peninsular War, which lays claim to no higher merit than may belong to a mere detail of military movements and battles. To these literary claims, he added, we believe, the doubtful merit of being a contributor to "Blackwood's Magazine." He was principally known here by his novel, and during his visit to this country was almost as often spoken of by the name of Cyril Thornton as by his own. While among us, he was freely received and welcomed in good society, an advantage which none of his predecessors in similar attacks upon this country have enjoyed, with the exception of Captain Hall. Mr. Hamilton was free from the brusquerie, ill manners, and talkative vanity, with which every one knows that Captain Hall's excellent qualities are a little disguised. As he was known solely as an author, it was thought not improbable, that he too might turn his travels to account by writing a book; but it was supposed, that, whatever might be his prejudices, he would write with the spirit and feelings of a gentleman.

The present work, however, is essentially a political tract, swelled out to an inordinate size. It is even professedly written for a party purpose; to support the sinking cause of Toryism in Great Britain. The writer says.

"When I found the institutions and experience of the United States deliberately quoted in the reformed Parliament, as affording safe precedent for British legislation, and learned that the drivellers who uttered such nonsense, instead of encountering merited derision, were listened to with patience and approbation, by men as ignorant as themselves, I certainly did feel that another work on America was yet wanted, and at once determined to undertake a task, which inferior considerations would probably have induced me to decline." - Vol. I, p. iv.

If it was, as seems here implied, a publication more scurrilous than Mrs. Trollope's, and more captious and prejudiced than Captain Hall's, which his party wanted, the author has succeeded in supplying the deficiency. We regret that any consideration should have induced him to engage in such a work. It has given us that feeling of mortification, which is always experienced when we are compelled to change our opinion of one of whom we have been willing to think well. An individual who submits to the composition of a party work of such a character as this, is liable to the suspicion of having been influenced by some other reward, received or expected, besides literary fame, and his bookseller's payment,

and the approbation of his conscience. But in the case of so respectable a gentleman as Mr. Hamilton, we ought perhaps to presume, that his book had its origin only in gross illiberality, virulent party spleen, and general bad temper.

We are disappointed, not only in the moral feeling which the work displays, but in the degree of ability with which it is written. It is long since we read Mr. Hamilton's novel; but the impression, which that has left upon our minds, of the talent of the author, is very different from what we have received from this publication. That, indeed, afforded no reason for regarding him as possessed of the power of thinking clearly, or reasoning consistently, but discovered, one might suppose, a degree of shrewdness, sufficient to prevent him from attempting what he was wholly unqualified to perform. In the work before us there are some parts which remind us of the power displayed in his first production, as the description of the Niagara and of the Mississippi, though these are blemished by faults of bad taste. There is likewise an abundance of passages intended to be humorous; and though the humor is, for the most part, coarse and vulgar, yet there are some that may excite a smile. If Mr. Hamilton, however, while in this country, was often as pertinaciously jocose in conversation as he is in his book, we do not wonder that he left us with the impression, that Americans had no relish for wit. He dwells too long upon his good things. A reader, upon first taking up his book, may suppose that a joke or an argument is at last fairly despatched. But in the course of a page or two he will probably find, that the author has caught hold of it again, and is worrying it anew with a sort of feline pleasure. What he has once said, he thinks good enough to say again. It would be idle, for instance, to attempt to number the various passages, in which he has expressed his horror at the silent and awful voracity, with which Americans devour their "oleaginous" food in hotels and on board of steam-boats. It is a staple topic of his book. "The American," he somewhere says, "is diurnally mortified and abased" by dining at a public ordinary, like the ancient Spartans, we presume. This process of degradation, it is implied, is every day suffered by our countrymen generally. But we quote from a long passage laboriously witty; and the author usually regards his wit as sufficiently good to render any great mixture of truth unnecessary.

Dr. Moore in his amusing "View of Society and Manners in France," has introduced fictitious personages and anecdotes in order to illustrate his conceptions of the French character. But the practice has not been common, and has of late years fallen into disuse. Mr. Hamilton, however, appears to have revived it for the purpose of giving a more striking view of what he would

acter of the different portions of his own country without having devoted years to travel and study.

A common topic with those writers, who have had a political purpose in disparaging this country, has been the grossness and vulgarity of our manners. The manners, however, of a well-bred and intelligent American are the same as the manners of well-bred and intelligent men in every other part of the world, with perhaps, as a general character, more sensitiveness, more reserve, and more truth of expression and of feeling in his offers of kindness. Of this class there is as large a proportion in our country as in any other. The representations which Mrs. Trollope and Mr. Hamilton have given, if they are intended to apply to those who would here be considered as gentlemen, are as gross what shall we say? not caricatures, for à caricature implies some resemblance,but as gross misstatements, as if applied to the gentlemen of England. The error, so far as it has any foundation, has arisen from their mistaking every well-dressed person in this country, where almost every one is well-dressed when not employed in daily labor, for an American gentleman; and from their being confused by the absence of those artificial demarkations of different ranks, which in England are observed, not only in the intercourse of polished society, but in all the relations in which men are brought together. In a country, in which incomparably more individuals are in motion by land and water, than in any other, they have travelled in stagecoaches and steam-boats through some of its rudest parts, and dined at tavern ordinaries, and found themselves surrounded by vulgar people; without any of that tact in escaping from the inconvenience, which an intelligent American soon acquires. They have perhaps taken a sort of pleasure in putting themselves in the way of it, that they might have a story to tell. Mr. Hamilton relates, that at a tavern, a "gentleman," to whom he sent his plate for chicken, "cut out the whole body for himself and handed him (Mr. H.) the drumsticks." We have seen this story quoted in an English review, "The British Critic," with the word gentleman italicized. Let us suppose that the story is "founded on fact." Is it imaginable that any body less silly than some of the writers in "The British Critic" should draw the inference, that this conduct is here considered as gentlemanly, or that the individual complained of would be regarded as less a boor in this country than any where else? Yet the evident purpose of telling the story is, that such an inference may be drawn.

Occasionally, as if through inadvertence, passages escape from Mr. Hamilton, which, if properly considered, would go far to do away the general impression that his book is intended to convey. In travelling in the United States he says, "A person of true breed

ing will rarely be treated with disrespect. He will receive tribute without exacting it; and even in this democratic country may safely leave it 'to men's opinions to tell the world he is a gentleman.' (Vol. II, pp. 4, 5.) This general remark, however, may seem not quite reconcilable with some of Mr. Hamilton's stories; about which we doubted whether they fairly fell within the allowable license of a traveller, till a satisfactory solution of them occurred to us. The fact is, that while travelling through this country Mr. Hamilton for the most part left it merely to his manners to tell the stage-drivers and inn-keepers that he was a gentleman. He entirely disregarded the sensible remark of Bob Acres ;-"Dress does make a difference, Davie." He indeed complains, that, in a steam-boat on the Ohio, his servant was obliged to " ensconce himself behind a curtain while cleaning his clothes"!—in order that he might appear with proper neatness before his beastly fellowpassengers. The writer of this notice, however, happened to see Mr. Hamilton for several days on his travels, when the company about him was such, that a regard to his appearance would not have been preposterous; and he had then either dismissed his servant, or the office of "cleaning his clothes" had become a sinecure. Whoever had been fated to attempt it, might have uttered exclamations like those of Lady Macbeth while walking in her sleep. No one could have suspected from his outward man, that he suffered under such a horror of " oleaginous" substances as he repeatedly affirms to be the fact. We speak with all soberness when we say, that we never before saw an individual so shabby, so dirty, and so unshaved, who meant to pass for a gentleman. The keepers of our inns and hotels might well have been a little surprised, if, appearing as he then did, he had seemed to think himself entitled to any extraordinary attention or accommodation.

As regards the manners of our community at large, we will speak only of that portion of it concerning which we can speak from long personal knowledge, the inhabitants of New England. We the more readily limit ourselves to them, as, in his endeavours to defame the country, Mr. Hamilton has been more elaborate and repetitive in his abuse of this section of it than of any other. Strange therefore as it may seem to those who have drawn their conceptions of the New England character from such books as Mr. Hamilton's Travels, we assure them with a feeling of entire confidence, that no portion of England can be taken, containing an equal population with New England, in which there is so much moral principle, so much real courtesy and kindness, so much knowledge of and regard to the decorums of life, so much intelligence, and, as this seems to be made a point of importance, in which the English language is spoken with so much cor

rectness. Our opportunities for forming a judgment of what exists here have been very different from Mr. Hamilton's; and we are well acquainted, as all intelligent Americans are, with the state of England; whatever allowance any one pleases may be made for our prejudices in favor of our native country; but against England we have none whatever. Strong associations, which no folly nor malice of individual writers can weaken, attach us to the land of our ancestors, and never before were the higher interests of two nations so inseparably blended as those of England and

our own.

Excepting a residence of nearly three weeks in Boston, Mr. Hamilton saw nothing of New England but what may be seen in rapidly travelling through it in winter. He spent not a month in the whole country. On the society to which he was introduced in Boston he bestows compliments not worth quoting, but the amount of which is, that it was as moral, gentlemanly, and intelligent as is to be found in any city of the same size. But the New Englanders, generally, are, according to him, a very different class of men, offensively vulgar in their habits and language, impertinently inquisitive, ignorant, obstinate in their prejudices, obtrusively vain of their country, yet without any attachment to it, engrossed by money-getting, hard, selfish, cold, cunning, and knavish. We have not exaggerated the prevailing tone of coloring in the picture, which he gives of what he elsewhere gravely calls "this interesting people." He seems himself to have been aware, that his readers must perceive that his description of them was at utter variance with all that his regard to truth, or some other feeling, had led him to represent as the character of those individual New Englanders (in Boston), with whom alone he had any opportunity of becoming acquainted. He, in consequence, subjoins this note to his labored and incongruous remarks:

"I beg that my observations on the New England character may be taken, not as the hasty impressions received during a few days' or weeks' residence in Boston; but as the final result of my observations on this interesting people, both in their own states, and in other portions of the Union."-- Vol. I, p. 127.

How could this writer suppose, that any one who read his book with common attention, would be deceived by so paltry an attempt to represent himself as having had any other opportunities for observation, than what were afforded him by his residence in Boston, and his ride of a week through the country, during which his impressions must at least have been as hasty as in the metropolis. In his account of the New England character there is, however, almost as little consistency as truth. There appears from a great