into the scale. The late overstrained civility of the Turk is a circumstance which, at least amongst all the tribes of the Aborigines of America, has been invariably found the surest indication of a deadly and well concerted scheme of hostility. When it shall be ascertained, then, that Turkey is now a mere masked battery of Russia on the Dardanelles, it will probably be difficult for England to avoid adopting some decisive measures. Come when the struggle may, it will of course, so far as she is concerned, be carried on by her Navy, and in sixty days after its commencement, the United States will be in a flame, in consequence of that practice of Impressment which authorises every British naval officer to take forcibly from American ships such seamen as-in his anxiety to complete his crew-he may choose to pronounce British subjects. Is it not worth a struggle, then, on the part of the moral and reflecting of both countries, to deprecate a temper which will render the calm discussion of such a subject quite hopeless? What possible advantage can result from the vulgar and stupid invective which, in a work of the standing of The Quarterly Review, is constantly poured on the United States? The very same number which condemns General Washington to speedy oblivion, uses the following language with regard to another favourite of the American people : "General Jackson is now at the top of the tree; how long he may maintain," &c. "The American statesman is but born to die and be forgotten. The Monroes, and Madisons, and Jeffersons, are sunk into the common herd. We do know that General Jackson's conduct at New Orleans was not such as in the English army would have promoted the captain of a company to a majority." Surely, this kind of language is calculated to answer no good purpose whatever; whilst its most obvious effect is to excite a deep feeling of resentment towards the only people from whom it is heard. Whither are our repelled affections to turn? The offer by the late Emperor Alexander of his mediation between Great Britain and the United States was promptly accepted by us, and the contemptuous rejection of it by the other party was heard of only after the American Commissioners had arrived at St. Petersburgh, and been received with the utmost warmth of kindness. The uniform courtesy-the friendly interest on all

*

occasions-the solid acts of service of that illustrious personage, have made a deep impression on the minds of the Americans, who are grateful even for kind words. It is scarcely necessary to add, that the memorable declaration of Russia on the subject of Neutral Rights in 1780, is to the last degree acceptable to the United States. The Abbe de Pradt, referring to the commerc advantages of Sweden, anticipates the time when her sailors, "reunis avec les marins des autres puissances de l'Europe forceront peut etre quelque jour l'Angleterre a temperer par la justice l'exercise de sa superiorité maritime." Why compel America to look forward with pleasure to such a period as bearing upon the fortunes of a spiteful, libellous, and malignant enemy?

But it is high time to revert to Captain Hall's Travels. The whole of the work, except what relates to the personal movements of the Captain and his family, consists of a comparison between the institutions, character, and manners of the Americans, compared with those of Great Britain, always to the disadvantage of the former, and generally conveyed in terms bitterly sarcastic and contemptuous. It will puzzle the reader to understand how he could express, on the one hand, more of eulogium, or, on the other, of reprobation; and yet there is found, at page 14 of his first volume, the following extraordinary declaration :-"Every word I now publish to the world, I have repeatedly and openly spoken in company in all parts of the United States; or, if there be any difference between the language I there used in conversation and that in which I now write, I am sure it will not be found to consist in overstatement, but rather the contrary." And again, "I repeated openly, and in all companies, every thing I have written in these volumes, and a great deal more than, upon cool reflection, I choose to say again." "I never yet saw an American out of temper: I fear I cannot say half so much for myself" &c. The additional bitterness imparted to his oral commucations could not have been in substance, but must have been in manner; and this idea is strengthened by another paragraph. "The Lady's suspicions, however, instantly took fire on seeing the expression of my countenance." That his own deportment

See Annual Register for that year, p. 347.

was uniformly offensive, may be inferred from his complaining with an amusing naïveté, "They were eternally on the defensive." Another favourite topic, and one which he, good-naturedly, urged upon the Americans on all occasions, was their utter insignificance in the scale of nations. "I will now ask, as if I have often ed, any candid American, how it would have been possible for us to look across the murky tempest of such days, in order to take a distinct view, or any view at all, of a country lying so far from us as America." 66 They cannot, or when brought to close quarters, they seldom deny that they have done scarcely anything," &c.

The females seem to have been the peculiar objects of his sarcastic "tone," and " expression of countenance." Thus, on visiting the High-school for girls, at New York, Captain Hall requested that the poem of Hohenlinden might be recited. This having been done, and his opinion given, "I suppose," says he, "there was something in my tone which did not quite satisfy the good school-mistress ;" and she asked him to state his objections. He complained, accordingly, that "in England, the word combat was pronounced as if the o, in the first syllable, was written u, cumbat, and that instead of saying shivalry, the ch, with us, was sounded hard, as in the word chin." It is not so much with his

criticism we have at present to do, as with the sneering question with which he represents himself to have prefaced it. "Pray," said I, "is it intended that the girls should pronounce the words according to the received usage in England, or according to some American variation in tone or emphasis ?"

The universal hospitality with which Captain Hall was received, seems to have excited his suspicion. "Every one, as usual, more kind than another, and all so anxious to be useful." He ate, it is true, of the "goodly suppers of oyster soup, ham, salads, lobsters, ices, and jellies, to say nothing of the champaigne, rich old Madeira, fruits, and sweetmeats, and various other good things;" yet he mused over all this. It wore an air of concert. "Foregad they are in a tale," says the sagacious and wary Dogberry, on hearing both prisoners protest their innocence. What could the crafty Yankees mean by thus fattening him up? What ulterior objects had they? At length, with his accustomed ingenuity, he

C

contrived to frame an hypothesis which settled the difficulty. This hospitality has its origin in a kind of superstitious feeling about their deadly hatred of England, and is designed, like the giving of alms or founding a church in old times, as a sort of compromise with conscience, for harbouring the most unchristianlike propensities. An American, according to Captain Hall, is "glad of any opportunity to make up, by his attention to individuals, for the habitual hostility which, as a sort of duty, they appear collectively to cherish against England as a nation."

Lord Chesterfield, writing to his son, has the following remarks as to the Parisians:

"In Paris they are particularly kind to all strangers who will be civil to them, and shew a desire of pleasing. But they must be flattered a little; not only by words, but by a seeming preference given to their country, their manners, and their customs; which is but a very small price to pay for a very good reception. Were I in Africa, I would pay it to a negro." Le Sage, too, in making a hit at what he found the universal human nature of his day, represents poor Gil Blas as turned off by the Archbishop of Granada, for gently hinting the truth, after having been expressly ordered to notice and report theleast failure of intellectual vigour. But the Americans, according to Captain Hall, manifested nothing of this silly weakness. They did not make their hospitality at all contingent on his willingness to humour their prepossessions. He said to their faces all the contemptuous things which we find in his work, and a great deal more. There was nothing about him of "that gentleness and urbanity" which, in the language of Sir Walter Scott, when sketching his favourite character, "almost universally attract corresponding kindness." Yet these people were proof against all provocation. Captain Hall says, he went the length of declaring, that it was "characteristic" of Americans to retain that animosity which, with the more generous Englishman, had passed off with the flash of the guns. They did not thrust him out of doors, as the Archbishop did Santillane, wishing him a great deal of happiness, with a little more taste. When he returned from Canada to New York, after his philippic at Brockville, he thus describes his reception: "We were soon, indeed, made still more sensible of our sympathy with it by the

renewed attentions and kind offices of every description, on the part of friends, who would give the character of home to every quarter of the world." He expresses a hope, that his book will be received" with the same frank and manly good humour, which I felt as the highest compliment to my sincerity, and the most friendly encouragement that could possibly be offered to a stranger wishing to investigate the truth. Had it been otherwise, or had any ill temper slipped out on these occasions, my researches must have been cut short." And so of another City, after his return from the West, "We could scarcely believe that Philadelphia, which, however, we had always liked, was the same. place, every thing looked so clean and comfortable, and the people were all so kind, and so anxious to be useful, as if they wished to recompense us for the hardships we had been exposed to in the West." Speaking" of the entire population, he declares, “I must do them the justice to say, that I have rarely met a more good natured, or perhaps, I should say, a more good tempered people; for during the whole course of my journey, though I never disguised my sentiments, even when opposed to the avowed favourite opinions of the company, I never yet saw an American out of temper." Yet Captain Hall has meanly consented to borrow the epithet of The Quarterly Review (No. 78, p. 356), and to designate the Americans as 66 this most thinskinned of all people." Another of Captain Hall's favourite topics, was, it seems, a reference, in a style of his own, to the War of the Revolution. The following passages may be grouped together, and will suggest a few remarks.

"I have often met with people in that country who could scarcely believe me sincere, and thought I must be surely jesting, when I declared my entire ignorance of many military and political events of the period alluded to, so momentous to them, however, that every child was familiar with the minutest details. And they would hardly credit me when I said I had never once heard the names of men, who I learnt, afterwards, were highly distinguished on both sides, during the Revolutionary War." "We on this side of the Atlantic, in the Old Mother Country, who have been robbed of our young, are not only left without any encouragement to speak or think of such things with pleasure, at this hour