flung out of the room with these cutting words, and I have never set eyes upon her since!

alias

It is now six years since this finishing stroke took place. There is now little left for me to say before I take a long leave of my reader. My wife, when she left me in the manner I have stated, went directly to England, and to her father. She told her own story in her own way, and took care to expose me wherever my unlucky name was known. My former friends were already extremely well disposed to believe any thing in my disfavour. I read my own story (it may be supposed how garbled!) in the newspapers; it appeared in the shape of a warning against a notorious character, "One Peter BPeter Perkins.' My father-in-law is since dead. He has left his daughter sole heir to his wealth, but under the conditions that she should resume and use only her maiden name, and never see her wretched husband more, nor help him with one farthing! in failure of which conditions she will forfeit the whole property in favour of the next heir. How I have supported life under all these trials is a riddle to myself. Sometimes I am half resolved to turn my back for ever upon my native land, and seek a new existence with Mr. Birkbeck in America; but there is a spell upon me, and it binds me to the spot where I first drew my breath, and I do believe I should pine and die in any other atmosphere.

Perhaps I may be expected to allude once more to the lady with whom, the attentive reader will recollect, I was left tête à tête, at the hotel of Monsieur at Calais, by my own wife! That lady took advantage of the opportunity thus afforded her, and made a pathetic appeal to my finest feelings. I had no better, indeed no other, compensation to offer her for the uneasiness and disappointment I had so unwittingly occasioned her, and I begged her acceptance of a sum which was the full half of the small pittance I had reserved from the wreck of my fortune. She accepted it with apparent confusion and reluctance; but, I soon discovered, was the first to laugh at me for my generosity. I likewise found that it was long since that lady had a character to lose. She had come to Calais upon a speculation, having answered an advertisement which appeared in a public print under the head of "Matrimony." The advertisement was a hoax. The reader knows who was the victim! That lady sent me, towards the end of the year, a great pug-nosed, red-headed, ill-disposed brat, of at least a year and a half old; and she has taken her Bible oath, before a magistrate, contrary to all probability, and, as far as I can judge, to truth, that he is my son! All I know about it is, that the law obliges me to educate, provide for, and own him; and that already he is the worst plague of my most miserable existence.

PETER B

NOTIONS OF THE AMERICANS.*

THE present attempt of Mr. Cooper, the well-known American novelist, to give a correct view of his countrymen, their manners and institutions, has been treated by some party critics in this country with affected ridicule, and by others with most unmerited vituperation. The Servile of England, as of Spain or Austria, bears an inflexible hatred to republics in general, but more particularly to that of the United States. Their greatness is gall and wormwood to him. His system is to conceal their prosperity, and belie facts which none but he could have the audacity to contradict. He considers love of country in an American a crime; and the love of freedom any where a damnable heresy. For years past, every high Tory publication, from the Quarterly down to Blackwood, has laboured to increase the spirit of dislike to America, among the partizans of their own man-degrading doctrines. Where America is worthy of imitation here, as in her economical government and rigid exclusion of favouritism, interest, and bribery, her merit is denied, or facts are wilfully perverted; her faults are magnified; and however essential it is, upon political grounds, that the truth relative to this rising empire should be thoroughly understood in England, they endeavour to blind and deceive as many as they may respecting her actual situation. It is not against Americans personally, but against their free and energetic institutions, that these malignant arrows are launched. Yet it is but natural that they who, under a constitutional monarchy like our own, are for ever grubbing, mole-like, to undermine all of a free and generous character we possess, should spirt their venom against every thing of the like description in other countries. Still though such are the practices and shallow arts of a rapidly-diminishing faction among the English aristocracy, they affect not the bulk of the people in this great nation, in whom the hereditary love of freedom survives. These last do not regard the Americans with increasing antipathy, nor pin their faith upon the gossiping of vagrant farmers, and bankrupt manufacturers, who visit the New World to better their condition, and, returning as ignorant as they went, save of American inns and canal navigators, write books about the character of an entire people. Their effusions are no criterion of English feelings on the one hand, or of truth on the other. We have been surprised, we admit, at times, at the sensitiveness of some Americans at a joke cut on the phraseology of their backwoodsmen, as if it were a test of the British opinion of America at large. We certainly should not deduce the American opinion of England from hearing a native of New York mock the Yorkshire dialect either in print, or viva voce. In the injustice done us by the Americans, and done them by the party I have already mentioned, and its tools, as well as by certain vagrant visitors, it must be candidly owned they are far more sinned against than sinning. As to the British Government, we do not believe it is guided in its views by any but motives which are purely political; and under the late great Minister, whose loss is a misfortune to the whole world, the leaning was decidedly towards free principles and governments: this was the reason of the calumnies heaped upon him by the enemies of mankind. That this policy is in some degree changed by his death is very probable; but even the present Premier, we are confident, will not suffer any lurking affection for arbitrary rule to interfere with clear and obvious duty. Were John Lord Eldon premier, by virtue of his bigotry and prejudices it might be otherwise; a war in and with Ireland and America might then be thought expedient for the advancement of "social order" in "church and state."

• Notions of the Americans, picked up by a Travelling Bachelor. In 2 vols. 8vo.

+ It is true, one book has lately been published on the American character, by a writer who appears never to have been in one of the old States of the Union, but who had sailed up the Mississippi, and sojourned awhile among the Kentuckians on the Ohio!

These remarks are prompted by the injustice which has been dealt out to the author of the present work, by that class of publications to which I allude. Every paragraph that displays the writer's patriotic vanity, or that is obnoxious to censure, has been selected and strung together as a specimen of the whole work-as genuine criticism! In an early volume of "The New Monthly Magazine," we touched upon the bickerings between the writers of the two countries, and showed what the mutual feeling ought to be. Words, unsupported by truth, are but vapour. Recollecting this, all persons of sound judgment, on both sides the Atlantic, will view with contempt that which is false, and which is the act of isolated individuals, whether disappointed ramblers or ultra-Tory critics, nor fallaciously attribute to national opinion that with which it has no relation. What Englishman, even of the faction, unless matchless in impudence as Cobbett himself, would venture to assert that the opinions of Blackwood or the Quarterly, on such a question, are those of the nation, or even of a tithe of a tithe of its twenty-two millions? The first charge brought against Mr. Cooper is that of praising his country too much. This is a charge never brought against Englishmen by their own critics. We must place ourselves midway between the two countries, in the midst of the Atlantic as it were, and show no favour to either party. English tourists and travellers never assert that all out of England is a mere caput mortuum! They never go swearing from city to city abroad, against and at every thing They meet with, because it is not what they have been accustomed to at home, good or bad! They never make notes of every thing obnoxious among foreigners, that they may put them in array with all that is excellent at home! It is notorious that two-thirds of them do this; is it then just to censure the comparatively moderate exaggerations of Mr. Cooper respecting the land of his birth, when he is stimulated by misrepresentations and falsehoods on these very subjects? Is he guilty of a crime for asserting his countrywomen to be as charming as any in the world? and the advance of useful knowledge, among the mass in America, to be greater than in any nation of Europe?

The next charge is prejudice against England. Now, there is not in these two volumes one half the prejudice against England that might be found in a single article in the Quarterly against America. Mr. Cooper is a man of fancy, and a novelist; and he frequently goes to the superlative, where the comparative would have been far enough. This must be fairly admitted as his grand fault. From his previous writings, we should not think him so well calculated for the present task as some others of his countrymen whom we have known; but there are topics in his work with which few could have been as familiar as himself. Take, for example, the accounts of the American navy, and our blunders respecting it. Another fault (an error in judgment only, we admit,) was the giving it as the work of a fictitious character, instead of boldly affixing his own name, and thus sanctioning his assertions openly.

Thus much for objections; let us now come to facts. There are great and momentous truths in these volumes. Information which all Englishmen should possess, not less for the sake of truth than sound policy. There are statements from which the deductions are unanswerable; and notwithstanding the tone of exaggeration to which we have before alluded as pervading some parts, the work is well worthy attentive examination by all Englishmen, in forming an opinion of America. Let us proceed to a brief analysis of its contents.

These volumes are dedicated to John Cadwallader, of Cadwallader, in the State of New York, a fictitious character. In his preface, which should be attentively read before the body of the work is begun, a practice which readers often sin against, the author makes many observations which should be borne in mind respecting his objects, and America itself, arising out of the novel circumstances of a great nation beginning its career at once from an advanced state of civilization. Then that the rapid progress constantly making in the United States, would render a close "detailed statistical work" utterly useless as an authority in four or five years; for little but the

principles of the Government can yet be pronounced fixed; there are changes even in the state of society. The writer avows that he is aware he shall be condemned by many, because he opposes the opinions of certain people in Europe; but he relies upon his facts, and challenges evidence to disprove them. He says he is content with the umpire Time to decide the question with those who deny America to be of the importance he asserts she is. He admits he has printed a vast deal which should not have been printed, and omitted things which should have been added. He says, we have no doubt with perfect truth, that there is no country respecting which the foreigner is "so liable to fall into errors as the United States of America. The institutions, the state of society, and even the impulses of the people, are, in some measure, new and peculiar." The European, "under such circumstances, has a great deal to unlearn before he can begin to learn correctly." He complains, with great truth, that America has been viewed "in the exceptions, rather than in the rules." Those who are incredulous about the importance of America, he requests to examine what it was fifty years ago, and what it is now. He observes that a traveller, an Englishman in particular, the moment he lands, carefully avoiding all comparisons which might be disadvantageous to himself, begins his work of comparison between the Republic and his own country; seizing some unlucky tavern, highway, church, or theatre, the worst perhaps of its kind, which he contrasts with the best in his own country, and thus carries its character to Europe. In respect to vices, the author observes, fairly, that "If any one supposes that he wishes to paint the people of America as existing in a state superior to human passion, free from all uncharitableness and guile," he blunders egregiously. He also alludes to the attacks which are often made upon American writers for their anticipations in favour of the United States, which, he says truly, cannot affect the truth. A free nation that is observed to double its population every twentyfive years, and to increase in wealth and commerce nearly in the same ratio, that is free from public debts, tithes, and poor-rates, and with an overflowing revenue, may well be indulged in rational prospects of future increase. Who can look at the territory of North America on the map, not being an American, and not see the surface yet to be peopled; and know the present rapid advance of population, without anticipating her future magnitude and importance-a magnitude and importance mathematically demonstrable? The vanity of the American may indulge a little too far in such reflections, but it is very excusable. How is human life cherished but by anticipation! The past has no relation to hope; and with the old nations of Europe, the past bequeaths but little for honest exultation.

The work is divided into letters, of which the first volume contains seventeen. The first two letters are occupied with introductory subjects respecting the voyage, including speculations on the ability of the Americans to cope with the English in navigation. Here is most important matter for consideration. The tonnage of America is 1,400,000 to 12,000,000 of inhabitants; that of England 2,500,000, to 22,000,000. America has a vast advantage in cheapness of construction, provisions, and stores, together with the "unequalled activity" of her population. Let this be well looked to in our commercial regulations. There is much truth in the remark of the author that the "wisest government is that which protects, rather than directs the national prosperity," or rather, we presume, the means of it. We agree with the author also, that the secret of national prosperity is perfect freedom for man to exercise his "noblest energies" as he pleases. This is not less true than that he must also be free from prejudices of every kind, and ready to adopt any thing which it is clear may be of advantage. Here America is far before us. Steam-boats, for example, were invented in England, but if Fulton had not introduced them into use in America, we should not have had them here at this hour. It becomes us to be mindful of this reluctance on our side to admit innovation, for much of the secret of the flourishing state of America consists in the instant adoption of every thing useful, despite opposing interests or time-hallowed prejudices. Had this been the case here,

could the British Parliament have ventured to assert in the teeth of the fact, that when a guinea was really worth twenty-seven shillings in paper, it was in value only equal to a pound note and a shilling! Or could a sinking fund have been kept up by borrowing, instead of arising from a surplus, and the assertion be dared, that it was clearing a debt! The members of the American Congress mignt not so well understand the Eton Grammar, but they never could have dared to run their heads thus against truth and com

mon sense.

Mr. Cooper next describes, in glowing terms, the arrival of La Fayette in America. Those who read his account, and it is well worth reading, and mark the reception given to this truly great man, will confess, that putting themselves in the place of Americans, as they must do in considering such a subject, the meeting was a great and glorious one, to be handed down to posterity in the Republic with satisfaction and noble pride.

For American inns of the better class, see vol. i. p. 67: in general they are not at all equal to the British, but the best do not fall far below the superior ones in England; the worst may be supposed proportionably inferior, see also p. 391, vol. i. "Yankee" is in America applied only to a New Englander; out of America all natives of the country are content to be so denominated. The ignorance of Europeans respecting America is well pointed out; and the confounding together Northern and Southern States, as if they were one in manners and climate, trade and manufactures. The State of New England alone is equal in extent to England and Wales. It has yet but twentyseven of population to a square mile. The densest population in America averages about seventy to the like superficies. After describing the luxuriant appearance of the maize growing in America, and eulogising the New England villages for neatness and beauty of site, our author remarks that the latest built always exhibit fresh improvements upon the old. Of the scenery of New England he says:

"In order to bring to your mind's eye a sketch of New England scenery, you are to draw upon your imagination for the following objects: Fancy yourself on some elevation that will command the view of a horizon that embraces a dozen miles. The country within this boundary must be undulating, rising in bold swells, or occasionally exhibiting a broken, if not a ragged surface. But these inequalities must be counterbalanced by broad and rich swales of land, that frequently spread out into lovely little valleys. If there be a continued range of precipitous heights in view, let it be clad in the verdure of the forest. If not, wood must be scattered in profusion over the landscape, in leafy shadows that cover surfaces of twenty and thirty acres. Buildings, many white, relieved by Venetian blinds in green, some of the dun colour of time, and others of a dusky red, must be seen standing amid orchards, and marking, by their positions, the courses of the numberless highways. Here and there a spire, or often two, may be seen pointing towards the skies from the centre of a cluster of roofs. Perhaps a line of blue mountains is to be traced in the distance, or the course of a river to be followed by a long succession of fertile meadows. The whole country is to be subdivided by low stone walls, or wooden fences, made in various fashions, the quality of each improving, or deteriorating, as you approach or recede from the dwelling of the owner of the soil. Cattle are to be seen grazing in the fields, or ruminating beneath the branches of single trees, that are left for shade in every pasture, and flocks are to be seen clipping the closer herbage of the hill sides. In the midst of this picture man must be placed, quiet, orderly, and industrious. By limiting this rural picture to greater, or less extensive scenes of similar quiet and abundance, or occasionally swelling it out, until a succession of villages, a wider range of hills, and some broad valley, through which a third-rate American river winds its way to the ocean, are included, your imagination can embrace almost every variety of landscape I beheld in the course of my journey."

It appears that the English tongue is spoken in America without a patois; that an Englishman is discoverable in a moment, whereas an American in England is not. The grumbling of English travellers in America is not to be indulged there with the same impunity as on the Continent of Europe, among people of a different language. The following is very just:

"But after all, with a great deal that is not only absurd, but offensive, there is