tude was
considered to be synonymous with the name of this novelist. We gave him
every chance to see our follies, and we snubbed his cherished and chief
object in visiting America, concerning a copyright. There is little
wonder, then, that Dickens, an Englishman and a caricaturist, should
have painted us in the colors that he did. There is scarcely less wonder
that Americans, at that time, all in the white-heat of enthusiasm,
should have waxed angry at Dickens' cold return to so much warmth. But,
reading these books in the light of 1862, there are few of us who do not
smile at the rage of our elders. We see an uproariously funny
extravaganza in _Martin Chuzzlewit_, which we can well afford to laugh
at, having grown thicker-skinned, and wonder what there is to be found
in the _Notes_ so very abominable to an American. Mr. Dickens was a
humorist, not a statesman or philosopher, therefore he wrote of us as a
disappointed humorist would have been tempted to write.

It is not likely that Mr. Trollope's advent in this country would have
given rise to any remark or excitement, his novels, clever though they
be, not having taken hold of the people's heart as did those of Dickens.
He came among us quietly; the newspapers gave him no flourish of
trumpets; he traveled about unknown; hence it was, that few knew a new
book was to be written upon America by one bearing a name not
over-popular thirty years ago. Curiosity was confined to the friends and
acquaintances of Mr. Trollope, who were naturally not a little anxious
that he should conscientiously write such a book as would remove the
existing prejudice to the name of Trollope, and render him personally as
popular as his novels. For there are, we believe, few intelligent
Americans (and Mr. Trollope is good enough to say that we of the North
are all intelligent) who are not ready to '_faire l'aimable_' to the
kindly, genial author of _North-America_. It is not being rash to state
that Mr. Trollope, in his last book, has not disappointed his warmest
personal friends in this country, and this is saying much, when it is
considered that many of them are radically opposed to him in many of
his opinions, and most of them hold very different views from him in
regard to the present war. They are not disappointed, because Mr.
Trollope has _labored_ to be impartial in his criticisms. He has, at
least, _endeavored_ to lay aside his English prejudices and judge us in
a spirit of truth and goo