ere are daily papers, as well as periodicals
of my highest esteem: I mean only to say, here; monopoly can be found in
every trade; and fashion, not only ruins the feet of chinese, and the
shape of american ladies; fashion ruins also a National Literature.

There is, at present, in the United States of America, a fashionable,
unwholsome, immoral practice of writing, which, although the ancients had
not always been free of reproach, now a days, is rather too much
frequented. I mean a kind of personal ridiculing, and retaliating each
other's national foible, unmercifully. If an english comes here, and finds
faults with us, as no nation can be yet without faults, it is our duty to
thank the writer, and correct ourselves. If the imputation is false, truth
speaks for itself. But, to go into England with a spirit of revenge by
retaliating with ostentation, pleasure, and self conceit, the faults which
we find among that nation, faults which we have not, we must then have
forgotten the very moral principle required to literature. He, or she who
does not know charity, the former would do better to plant potatoes; and
the latter to attend her family kitchen, or darn her husband's stockings.
A writer should look with pain at the faults of all nations; and could he
have a little patriotic feeling without prejudice, he would not tell to
his children they are the prettiest, because he finds others who are
uglier. He should rather feel displeased not to find, on earth, another
nation from whom he cannot learn how to become better.

That book which does not elevate the human mind to noble, generous
sentiments, is a dangerous book! He who ridicules others, should, in his
turn, be the only subject worthy of being ridiculed: but, the innocent man
who steps into a drawing room, laming as Byron with a wish to imitate
Byron, if, unfortunately, he falls on the carpet, or cannot prevent his
tumbler of lemonade from falling on a lady's black satin dress, not only
we should indulge his weak side; but, if we wish to be polite, we should
turn our eyes from his uncomfortable position. Though to ridicule another
it is the same as to say: I am a perfect being, I often found, that he who
is fond of the fun, and laughs at his neighbor, because this has no nose,
he turns angry, when another laughs at him, because he has only one eye: I
mean to say, here; could we see the soul of the individual, so fond of
ridiculing his fellow beings, such an exhibition w