me over, only a few of the most prominent of whom we have
mentioned above, not one in fifty is animated by a sincere impulse of
honest good-will. They have learned to mistrust them all, as triflers
with our reputation, if not predetermined calumniators. They have
witnessed over and over again the childish ignorance, the discourtesy,
the vulgar deceptions of this class of bookmakers. They are not blind to
these repeated struggles to digest a mass of mental food for years, in
days or weeks. They know their nation cannot be understood by these
chance viewers, feebly glancing through greenest spectacles, any more
than the Atlantic can be sounded with a seven-fathom line. They have
become familiar with the English traveller only to regard him with
contempt. Each new production has opened the old wound. Each new
announcement awakens only derisive expectations. As for "French and
Germans," with them it is very different; and Mr. Mackay ought to know
it. They commonly write, if not with comprehensive vision, at least with
integrity of purpose. The best works on America are by Frenchmen. What
Englishman has shown the sincerity and fairness of De Tocqueville or
Chevalier? Knowing, then, that absurd malice and a capacity for
microscopic investigation of superficial irregularities in a society not
yet defined are the principal, and in many cases the only,
qualifications deemed necessary to accomplish an English book on
America, is it matter for wonder that Americans should hesitate to kiss
the clumsy rods so liberally dispensed?

We hasten to say that Mr. Charles Mackay's "Life and Liberty in America"
is unusually free from the worst of these faults. Hasty judgments,
offences against taste, inaccuracies, occasional revelations of personal
pique it has; but it is not malicious. Sometimes it is even affecting in
its tenderness. It breathes a spirit of paternal regard. But it is,
perhaps, the dullest of books. If not "icily regular," it is "splendidly
null." The style is as oppressive as a London fog. It is marked, to use
the author's own words, by "elegant and drowsy stagnation." After the
first few pages, it is with weariness that we follow him. We are
inclined to think Mr. Mackay has written too much, Mr. Squeers had milk
for three of his pupils watered up to the necessities of five. Mr.
Mackay's experiences might have sustained him through a single small
volume, but he has diluted them to the requirements of two large ones.
This w