r. Mackay gives correctly the most prominent names of American
literature, but his list of artists is very imperfect. The little that
he says about American music is all wrong. The first opera by an
American was produced in 1845; and it is not true that this is a
solitary example. Were it possible for us to pursue them, we should run
down more errors of this kind than a prudent man would have put into
print.

Altogether, while we readily admit that Mr. Mackay has honestly, and, in
general, good-naturedly, performed his duty as an American chronicler,
renouncing in a great measure the old principle of "blowing-up," and
that his essays do not reek with ignorance, like those of many of his
predecessors, it is yet proper to say that he has achieved a stupendous
bore. His two volumes are to us a melancholy remembrance. Their life is
spiced with no variety. The same dead level of dry personal detail
speaks through each chapter; or if occasional relief is afforded, it is
"in liquid lines mellifluously bland," and prosier than all the rest.
The one source of amusement that the reader will discover is the
complacent self-confidence which no assumption of modesty can hide. "A
controversy had been raging for at least a week" in Philadelphia about
the author's letters in the "Illustrated London News." His defender was
"one of the most influential and best-conducted papers of the Union";
his assailant behaved "scurvily." We cannot lavish examples. This is the
type of a hundred. Mr. Mackay seems to expect that his Jeremiad on
tobacco-chewing and spitting will act in America as St. Patrick's spells
did on the vermin of Ireland. Unfortunately, it will not. Mr. Dickens
attempted the same thing in a much better manner,--excepting where Mr.
Mackay has copied him exactly, as he has once or twice,--and even the
novelist's efforts were fruitless. On the other hand, the main source of
annoyance will be found in the needless elevation of minute evils, and
the determination to form general judgments from isolated experiences.
But of this we do not much complain. Rome derived some benefit from the
cackling of a goose. Possibly we may be made in some respects a wiser
and a better nation through Mr. Mackay's influence. For ourselves,
however, if our aspirations ever turn toward a literary Paradise, we
shall pray that it may be one where travellers cease from troubling and
dull tourists are at rest.

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