of Bunn or Grattan, we hold that neither the exalted and
irrepressible prosiness of Dr. Charles Mackay, nor the cleverish
magic-lantern pictures of that good-natured book-maker, Mr. Anthony
Trollope, would be perfectly fitted with this polite addition. It is no
mean praise to say that the word _gentlemanly_ naturally applies itself
to a traveller's work. And it is necessary to allow that the majority of
Americans who have printed their impressions of a scamper over Europe
have fallen as hopelessly below it as a few have risen far above it.
Some word of deeper meaning must characterize the sterling sentences of
"English Traits"; some epithet of more rare and subtile significance is
suggested by those exquisitely painted scenes of foreign life with which
Hawthorne is even now adorning the pages of the "Atlantic." But after
the manner in which such a well-informed, modest, humane man as we would
emphatically credit as an American _gentleman_ might speak of six months
in England, so has Mr. Dicey spoken of his six months in the Federal
States.

And, at this present time, far better than all curious delineations or
"stereographic" descriptions are the sober testimonies concerning us
which Mr. Dicey offers to his countrymen. To such loyal Americans as
these volumes may reach they will give a heart not to be found in Dr.
Russell's pictorial neutrality, in the dashing effects of popular Mr.
Trollope, nor even--making all allowance for the sanative influence of
counter-irritation--in the weekly malignity of that _ex_-Moral Minstrel
whom the London "Times" has sent to the aid of our insurgent
slave-masters. For, instead of gloating over objections and picking out
what petty enigmas may not be readily soluble, Mr. Dicey has a manly,
English way of accepting the preponderant evidence concerning the crisis
he came to study. He seldom gets entangled in trivial events, but knows
how to use them as illustrations of great events. It is really
refreshing to meet with a British traveller who is so happily delivered
from the haunting consciousness of a personal identity. The reader is
not called upon to bemoan the tribulations of temperance-taverns, the
hardships of indiscriminate railroad-carriages, nor the rapacity of
New-York hackmen. There is scarcely an offence against good taste or
good feeling in Mr. Dicey's volumes; and whatever American homes may
have been opened to him would doubtless reopen far more readily than to
most publish