d in the persons and dialogue. With nothing absent or
abated in its sharp impressions of reality, there are more of the subtle
requisites which satisfy reflection and thought. We have in this book
for the most part, not only observation but the outcome of it, the
knowledge as well as the fact. While we witness as vividly the life
immediately passing, we are more conscious of the permanent life above
and beyond it. Nothing nearly so effective therefore had yet been
achieved by him. He had scrutinised as truly and satirised as keenly;
but had never shown the imaginative insight with which he now sent his
humour and his art into the core of the vices of the time.

Sending me the second chapter of his eighth number on the 15th of
August, he gave me the latest tidings from America. "I gather from a
letter I have had this morning that Martin has made them all stark
staring raving mad across the water. I wish you would consider this.
Don't you think the time has come when I ought to state that such public
entertainments as I received in the States were either accepted before I
went out, or in the first week after my arrival there; and that as soon
as I began to have any acquaintance with the country, I set my face
against any public recognition whatever but that which was forced upon
me to the destruction of my peace and comfort--and made no secret of my
real sentiments." We did not agree as to this, and the notion was
abandoned; though his correspondent had not overstated the violence of
the outbreak in the States when those chapters exploded upon them. But
though an angry they are a good humoured and a very placable people;
and, as time moved on a little, the laughter on that side of the
Atlantic became quite as great as our amusement on this side, at the
astonishing fun and comicality of these scenes. With a little reflection
the Americans had doubtless begun to find out that the advantage was not
all with us, nor the laughter wholly against them.

They had no Pecksniff at any rate. Bred in a more poisonous swamp than
their Eden, of greatly older standing and much harder to be drained,
Pecksniff was all our own. The confession is not encouraging to national
pride, but this character is so far English, that though our countrymen
as a rule are by no means Pecksniffs, the ruling weakness is to
countenance and encourage the race. When people call the character
exaggerated, and protest that the lines are too broad to deceive any