[The editor then makes extracts of about fifteen pages from the work-interspersed with some unsuccessful attempts at humour of his own.]

We cannot, at present, venture upon any more extracts—and yet we have done nothing to give our readers a due notion of what Knickerbocker's book contains. We shall return to the volumes again, for we suppose we may consider them as in regard to almost all that read this Magazine, "as good as manuscript." Enough, however, has been quoted to show of what sort of stuff Mr. Irving's comic pencil is composed-and enough to make all our readers go along with us in a request which we have long meditated, viz. that this author would favour us with a series of novels, on the plan of those of Miss Edgeworth, or, if he likes that better, of the author of Waverley, illustrative of the present state of manners in the United States of America. When we think, for a moment, on the variety of elements whereof that society is every where composed-the picturesque mixtures of manners derived from German, Dutch, English, Scottish, Swedish, Gothic, and Celtic settlers, which must be observable in almost every town of the republican territories-the immense interfusion of different ranks of society from all these quarters, and their endless varieties of action upon each other-the fermentation that must every where prevail among these yet unsettled and unarranged atoms-above all, on the singularities inseparable from the condition of the only half-young, half-old people in the world-simply as such-we cannot doubt that could a Smollet, a Fielding, or a Le Sage have seen America as she is, he would at once have abandoned every other field, and blessed himself on having obtained access to the true terra fortunata of the novelist. Happily for Mr. Irving that terra fortunata is also to this hour a terra incognita; for in spite of the shoals of bad books of travels that have inundated us from time to time, no European reader has ever had the smallest opportunity of being introduced to any thing like one vivid portraiture of American life. Mr. Irving has, as every good man must have, a strong affection for his country; and he is, therefore, fitted to draw her character con amore as well as con gentilezza. The largeness of his views, in regard to politics, will secure him from staining his pages with any repulsive air of bigotry-and the humane and liberal nature of his opinions in regard to subjects of a still higher order, will equally secure him from still more offensive errors.

To frame the plots of twenty novels can be no very heavy task to the person who wrote the passages we have quoted above-and to fill them up with characteristic details of incidents and manners, would be nothing but an amusement to him. He has sufficiently tried and shown his strength in sketches—it is time that we should look for full and glowing pictures at his hands. Let him not be

discouraged by the common-place cant about the impossibility of good novels being written by young men. Smollet wrote Roderick Random before he was five-and-twenty, and assuredly he had not seen half so much of the world as Mr. Irving has done. We hope we are mistaken in this point-but it strikes us that he writes, of late, in a less merry mood than in the days of Knickerbocker and the Salmagundi. If the possession of intellectual power and resources ought to make any man happy, that man is Washington Irving; and people may talk as they please about the "inspiration of melancholy," but it is our firm belief that no man ever wrote any thing greatly worth the writing, unless under the influence of buoyant spirits. "A cheerful mind is what the muses love," says the author of Ruth and Michael, and the Brothers; and in the teeth of all asseverations to the contrary, we take leave to believe that my Lord Byron was never in higher glee than when composing the darkest soliloquies of his Childe Harold. The capacity of achieving immortality, when called into vivid consciousness by the very act of composition and passion of inspiration, must be enough, we should think, to make any man happy. Under such influences he may, for a time, we doubt not, be deaf even to the voice of self-reproach, and hardened against the memory of guilt. The amiable and accomplished Mr. Irving has no evil thoughts or stinging recollections to fly from-but it is very possible that he may have been indulging in a cast of melancholy, capable of damping the wing even of his genius. That, like every other demon, must be wrestled with, in order to its being overcome. And if he will set boldly about An American Tale, in three volumes duodecimo, we think there is no rashness in promising him an easy, a speedy, and a glorious victory. Perhaps all this may look very like impertinence, but Mr. Irving will excuse us, for it is, at least, well meant.

ART. IX. An Appeal from the Judgments of Great Britain respecting the United States of America, &c. By ROBERT WALSH, Esq. 8vo. London, 1819. [Review, May, 1820.]

THE Americans,' said Dr. Johnson, are a race of convicts, ' and ought to be thankful for any thing we allow them short of hanging.' Whatever might be thought of the liberality or the propriety of this anathema at the time when it was uttered, it will be granted that, under present circumstances. it sounds rather obsolete: this race of convicts' no longer either live upon our bounty, or wait for our respite from the gallows. But yet, if the express terms of the sentence we have quoted are now inadmissible, the spirit it breathes, seems not at all to have for

saken us; and our writers, of almost all parties, might very well adopt it as a standing text or motto to their effusions relative to the people of the United States. There has been a greater unanimity in our jealousy towards America, than is usual in England towards her other rivals. The diverse aims and the strong distinctions of party, have been nearly merged in the common feeling of hostility. The same temper shows itself on all sides; whether it be in the sedate ill-will of noble lords, or in the less measured ill-will of honourable gentlemen, or in the daily, monthly, and quarterly effusions of political spleen. No one, indeed, would ask or expect, that the Tories should forget their old grudge against America, and either moderate or conceal their aversion towards these "Republicans;" but, on many grounds, less prejudice, less intemperance, might have been anticipated on the part of their opponents: yet, even the instinctive antipathy of the Tory, has hardÎy displayed a more deep-seated animosity, than has been discovered in the sarcasm and affected candour of the Whig.

It is said, and it seems generally, if not universally, true, that, in a free country, nothing but fear ever avails to produce uniformity of opinion. Hence it is argued, that some forcible impression of impending danger must be operating, when the leaders of opposing parties are seen, on a particular subject, to concur in the scope of their arguments, and the point to which they seem to be leading public opinion. Mere national jealousy, under ordinary circumstances, has not been found to produce this concurrence of parties. In illustration of this remark, it may be recollected how rarely the English people have flattered our near neighbour and old rival by exhibiting this sort of unanimous hostility. The general voice has never been heard in one full harmonious peal of invective against France. Throughout the late contest, (some few moments of immediate alarm excepted,) there has existed enough of that feeling of ulterior security, founded upon the consciousness of strength, which affords room for party discussion and division relative to the character, condition, and power of an enemy. In looking round with confidence upon our watery munition, we have not only found leisure to quarrel among ourselves, but even to bestow upon our enemy some careless speculation and unanxious candour.

But must, then, a humiliating inference of an opposite kind be deduced from the present concurrent hostility of all parties towards the Americans? There is a specific style of fierce sarcasm, which characterizes hatred when touched by despondency but is it true that the English press is assuming this style towards America? We suppose, at least, that the immediate authors of the snarling and unmanly railing and jesting of which the American people have lately been the objects, would not wish the common adage to be applied to them,—that no mau is a bully till he is frightened.

But whether or not this adage would be appropriate to the occasion, it must be granted, that the disappearance of candour is always an ominous circumstance. At present, the ill temper of our writers is producing only a correspondent irritation and ill temper among the Americans; but they cannot fail, ere long, to deduce from it an inference altogether flattering to the national vanity: they will not be slow to reason to their own advantage from the fact, that themselves are the only people in the world whom English writers dare not treat with moderation.

It will, we know, be said, that the leaders of public opinion, of all parties, have been influenced by the supposed necessity of seeking to check or divert the stream of emigration that has been flowing towards the American wastes; and that they have believed that, if truth would not suffice for the exigency of the occasion, misrepresentation, and even shameless calumny, might be justified by the patriotic intention with which they were employed. A motive of this kind seems, in fact, to have been in operation. Little practical regard is paid to the principle, that, in a country where the press is free, the attempt to pervert opinion, is sure to produce a large excess of mischievous reaction; and that delusion, used as an engine of policy, commonly explodes in the hands of those who employ it, even before it has produced its immediate and intended effect. But there is something in the use of indirect means, which flatters the self-importance of those who are pleased to fancy themselves charged with the fates of their country. This is especially the case with that band of masked volunteers in the public service -the writers of our daily, monthly, and quarterly journals. We are apt to believe ourselves both more sagacious and more courageous than plain morality would make us, when we incur the personal damage and risk of practising some virtuous vice for the public good. Thus, for instance, if it seems expedient to persuade our English capitalists, farmers, and mechanics that America is a terrestrial pandemonium, where is the patriot writer who will not brave the ninth commandment?

Besides this supposed necessity of aiming to check the emigration of our people to the American states, it seems to have been thought, that our present amicable relations with the republican government are too precarious for us prudently to suffer the precious materiel of war-national hatred, to fall into decay. Our presses, therefore, as well as our powder-mills, must continue to furnish the full war quantum of combustibles, so that, at any moment, when the auspicious conjuncture presents itself, it may be easy to wake up in full energy the fratricidal impulse. Thus the worst evils of war must be artificially perpetuated, lest they should ever come upon us by surprise! And those who make it their high business to watch over, to cherish, and to direct the passions of

mankind, have been fain to shed every malign drug, to inject every venom into the wound that threatened to heal.

The community of language between the two people,-a circumstance which seems to proffer the means of reuniting the hearts which have been so unnaturally divided,-has, in fact, only facilitated and stimulated this labour of hatred.' Unhappily, the style of invective and of sarcasm, which, in the highest quarters, was probably directed by cool calculation and a well-instructed intention, has been imitated and repeated through all the gradations of our periodical literature. It might, however, be suggested to some of those who labour to serve their country, in this way, by their pens, that a writer should be very extensively learned in the complicated politics of the world, before he thinks himself qualified to meddle in the profound business of making men hate each other precisely in that geographical direction, and exactly at the conjuncture which may be needed; otherwise he may blunder, and incur the heaviest conceivable guilt to no purpose whatever. For ourselves, we are content to leave it to abler hands to exercise the state-craft of urging and guiding the hatred of man to man; and must even abandon the great machine of human affairs to chanceto the kinder impulses of nature-or rather, to the government of Him who interposes to restrain the remainder of wrath,' and who will scatter the people that delight in war.'

To whatever causes may be attributed the hostility of English writers towards the people of the United States, it would not be just to reckon among them any provocation received from the alleged intemperance of the American press. In the warfare of the pen, we have been, from the very nature of the case, the aggressors. The entire current of literature flows westward: there is no regular, no observable reflux of this tide. It is true, we may now and then hear of the rancour of some New-York or Charleston journalist; and perhaps a straggling paragraph of Virginian invective may occasionally find its way into our reviews or papers. But the slightest attention to the case, will make apparent the wide and important dissimilarity of the circumstances of the two people in this respect. The people of England have not been exposed to the unremitted irritation of having diffused among them a regular importation of all the obloquy, bitterness, and ridicule, which the able ill-will of a rival continually furnishes. Our writers have not been unavoidably trained to the business of invective, by having the galling labour imposed upon them, of rebutting, every day, fresh attacks, of refuting fresh slanders, and of retorting fresh sarcasms. Nor have English readers been subjected to the cruel necessity of imbibing a maddening poison mingled in all their intellectual food. We say then, that, whatever may have been the will of American writers, it has not been in their power to inflict a VOL. II.

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