re so bitter
and unfriendly as that in which he indulged, both here and in "Martin
Chuzzlewit," was justifiable from what may be called an international
point of view, is another question. Publicists do not always remember
that a cut which would smart for a moment, and then be forgotten, if
aimed at a countryman, rankles and festers if administered to a
foreigner. And if this be true as regards the English publicist's
comment on the foreigner who does not understand our language, it is,
of course, true with tenfold force as regards the foreigner whose
language is our own. _He_ understands only too well the jibe and the
sneer, and the tone of superiority, more offensive perhaps than
either. Looked at in this way, it can, I think, but be accounted a
misfortune that the most popular of English writers penned two books
containing so much calculated to wound American feeling, as the
"Notes" and "Martin Chuzzlewit." Nor are signs entirely wanting that,
as the years went by, the mind of Dickens himself was haunted by some
such suspicion. A quarter of a century later, he visited the United
States a second time; and speaking at a public dinner given in his
honour by the journalists of New York, he took occasion to comment on
the enormous strides which the country had made in the interval, and
then said, "Nor am I, believe me, so arrogant as to suppose that in
five and twenty years there have been no changes in me, and that I had
nothing to learn, and no extreme impressions to correct when I was
here first." And he added that, in all future editions of the two
books just named, he would cause to be recorded, that, "wherever he
had been, in the smallest place equally with the largest, he had been
received with unsurpassable politeness, delicacy, sweet temper,
hospitality, consideration, and with unsurpassable respect for the
privacy daily enforced upon him by the nature of his avocation there"
(as a public reader), "and the state of his health."

And now, with three observations, I will conclude what I have to say
about the visit to America in 1842. The first is that the "Notes" are
entirely void of all vulgarity of reference to the private life of the
notable Americans whom Dickens had met. He seems to have known, more
or less intimately, the chief writers of the time--Washington Irving,
Channing, Dana, Bryant, Longfellow, Bancroft; but his intercourse with
them he held sacred, and he made no literary capital out of it.
Secondly