ople in the world.

That he is a vain man, cannot be denied--self-taught men are apt to be
so every where; but those who understand the New England humour, will
at once perceive, that he has spoken in his own name merely as a
personification, and that the whole passage means after all, when
transposed into that phraseology which an Englishman would use, very
little more than this, that the House of Commons presented a noble
field for a man of abilities as a public speaker; but that in fact, it
contained very few such persons. We must not judge of words or phrases,
when used by foreigners, by the sense we attribute to them, but
endeavour to understand the meaning they attach to them themselves.

In Mexico, if you admire any thing, the proprietor immediately says,
"Pray do me the honour to consider it yours, I shall be most happy, if
you will permit me, to place it upon you, (if it be an ornament), or to
send it to your hotel," if it be of a different description. All
this means in English, a present; in Mexican Spanish, a civil speech,
purporting that the owner is gratified, that it meets the approbation
of his visiter. A Frenchman, who heard this grandiloquent reply to his
praises of a horse, astonished his friend, by thanking him in terms
equally amplified, accepting it, and riding it home.

Mr. Slick would be no less amazed, if understood literally. He has used
a peculiar style; here again, a stranger would be in error, in supposing
the phraseology common to all Americans. It is peculiar only to a
certain class of persons in a certain state of life, and in a particular
section of the States. Of this class, Mr. Slick is a specimen. I do
not mean to say he is not a vain man, but merely that a portion only of
that, which appears so to us, is vanity, and that the rest and by far
the greater portion too, is local or provincial peculiarity.

This explanation is due to the Americans, who have been grossly
misrepresented, and to the English, who have been egregiously deceived,
by persons attempting to delineate character, who were utterly incapable
of perceiving those minute lights and shades, without which, a portrait
becomes a contemptible daub, or at most a mere caricature.

"A droll scene that at the house o' represen_tatives_ last night," said
Mr. Slick when we next met, "warn't it? A sort o' rookery, like that
at the Shropshire Squire's, where I spent the juicy day. What a darned
cau-cau-cawin' they keep, don't they