Captain Marryatt, who was simply clownish,—­afford fair examples of the style which dominated until about 1836 or 1837.  Then works of a better order began to appear.  America received scientific attention.  It had been agriculturally worked up in 1818 by Cobbett, whose example was now followed by Shirreff and others.  In 1839, George Combe subjected us to phrenological treatment, and had the frankness to acknowledge that it was impossible for an individual to properly describe a great nation.  Afterwards came Lyell, the geologist, who did not, however, confine himself to scientific research, but also analyzed the social deposits, and ascertained that Slavery was triturable.  The manufacturers of gossip, meanwhile, had revolutionized the old system.  Mr. Dickens blew hot and cold, uniting extremes.  Godley, in 1841, disavowed satire, and was solemnly severe.  Others evinced a similar disposition, but the result was not triumphant.  Alexander Mackay, in 1846, returned to ridicule; and Alfred Bunn, a few years after, surpassed even Marryatt in his flippant falsehood.  Mr. Arthur Cunynghame, a Canadian officer, entertained his friends, in 1850, with a dainty volume, in which the first personal pronoun averaged one hundred to a page, and the manner of which was as stiff as the ramrods of his regiment.  Of our more recent judges, the best remembered are Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley who gave to the world the details of her private experiences,—­Mr. Chambers, of whose book there is really nothing in particular to say,—­Mr. Baxter, who considered Peter Parley a shining light of American literature,—­Miss Murray, who sacrificed her interests at St. James’s upon the shrine of Antislavery,—­Mr. Phillipps, scientific,—­Mr. Russell, agricultural,—­Mr. Jobson, theological,—­and Mr. Colley Grattan, who may be termed the Sir Anthony Absolute of American censors, insisting that the Lady Columbia shall be as ugly as he chooses, shall have a hump on each shoulder, shall be as crooked as the crescent, and so forth.

Last of all comes Mr. Charles Mackay’s book.  Before proceeding to the few general words we have to say of it, let us look for a moment at a question which he, like a number of his predecessors, has considered with some attention.  Why it is that the people of the United States manifest such acute sensibility to the strictures of English writers, and receive their criticisms with so much suspicion, Mr. Mackay is unable fully to determine.  He is forced to believe that it is only their anxiety “to stand well in English opinion which causes them to wince”; particularly as “French and Germans may condemn, and nobody cares what they say.”  This is but a part of the truth.  Unquestionably, Americans do, as Mr. Mackay says, “attach undue importance to what English travellers may say”; but this does not account for the universal feeling of mortification which follows the appearance of each new tourist’s story.  Americans have not failed to observe, that,