American Newspaper Literature for the purposes of this review.

himself for its reception with men of all
opinions and parties. But such a man can
afford to "go on fearless," knowing the
audience he will address at last; and we
make a grave error, if his book is not found
in the long run to have hit the hardest, those
evils of the American character which cry
loudly for instant counteraction, and with
the most exquisite feeling and skill to have
developed those germs of good, in which,
rightly and generously cultivated, the endu-
ring safety of America and American insti-
tutions will alone at last be found. In two
French works named at the head of this
article (and to which we regret that we
have only left ourselves room for
slight allusion,) we have been struck with
the unconscious support which is given in
almost every page of one of them, to the

very

"When Lord Ashburton arrived in Washington, he took an early day to open the subject of his mission; and with the frankness which marked his whole course throughout the negotiation, he advised Mr. Webster that the nature ofhis instructions forbade his yielding any portion of the disputed territory north of the line of Highlands. claimed by the British government to be the true boundary. This, of course, presented the question in a very serious light; and Mr. Webster very promptly informed his lordship that he must recede from this demand or terminate his mission. As his instructions were peremptory, he was about to close his mission of peace, and war be tween the two countries appeared inevitable; when Mr. Webster persuaded him to enter into a full examination of the whole question, with a view to make himself acquainted with its real merits. This he did in obedience to Mr. Webster's urgent solicitations; and such was the character of Mr. Webster's representation of the facts-written by Daniel O'Connell to a correspondent in so perfectly simple did he render this intricate subject this country, Thank God Dickens is not an Irishby bringing to bear upon it the force of his mighty man-he is of the texture of a Saxon glutton-and intellect, that Lord Ashburton acknowledged his conviction of the injustice of the claims of his government to the extent insisted upon, and actually agreed to remain at Washington until he could receive additional instructions from his government, instead of promptly closing his mission, as he was authorized to do! A delay of six weeks followed, during which time nothing was heard in relation to this negotiation; but at the expiration of that period the anxiously looked for instructions arrived, and the treaty was actually made according to the line of boundary fixed upon by Mr. Webster after Lord Ashburton's mission under his first instructions had virtually closed. It is the secret history of that negotiation which can alone do justice to the Secretary of State."

As for the other British negotiator, who is said to have been " out-generalled," we suspect that some mistake may possibly before long be discovered in that quarter, too, and that they may not have won who have laughed the most. Mr. Dickens (to whom many allusions have been made in these pages,) having written a perfectly honest book, must be presumed to have prepared

*ur attention has been directed since this was written to an indignant disclaimer by Mr. O'Connell of a forged letter with his signature that had gone the round" of the American press. These practices are of such every-day occurrence, that though several are marked in the notes we had taken for our review, we found no opportunity or special occasion to refer to them. Indeed the abuse of Mr. Dickens has arrived at such an ultra-horrible and hyperbolical pitch of atrocity, as to render indignation needless, and be matter of simple laughter. We hardly open a paper of the States, half of which is not devoted to reprints of his writings, and some portion of the other half to libels on himself. We do not know the exact forgery to which Mr. O'Connell alludes, but we find among our memoranda the following, taken from the New York Herald.'

"An eastern paper contains an extract of a letter

the more you fill him and stuff him with the good things of this life, the more overbearing and ungrateful you make him. The more kindness you extend, and the more praise you bestow upon a gorturbulent notions you drive into his empty and symandizer of this order, the more aristocratic and cophantic noddle.... DANIEL O'CONNELL. This is capital-and is a pretty fair account of the celebrated Boz."

It may have been this, or it may have been some other-for Mr. O'Connell, as a great favorite with the "patriots" from the fact of himself and his great of England, is subject to have his authority daily Irish cause being supposed to be thorns in the side forged-on which remark is made in the following extracts from a letter addressed to the editor of the

"Pilot."

"I saw with great surprise, in the last 'Pilot,' a paragraph which you certainly took from some other newspaper, headed 'O'Connell and Dickens,' and purporting to be a quotation from an alleged letter of mine to the editor of a Maryland newspaper, pubvocate. The thing is, from beginning to end, a lished at Baltimore, and called the Hibernian Adgross lie. I never wrote a letter to that newspaper; nor am I in the habit of corresponding with editors of American papers. I have seen, indeed, with great contempt, but without much surprise, in several American newspapers, letters deliberately published under my signature, given to the American public as genuine documents-all, of course, being forgeries, but published by the editors as if perfectly genuine. This is a species of outrageous rascality which has been seldoin attempted in this country, and seems reserved for the vileness of a great portion of the newspaper press in the United States... Perhaps it is right that I should add, that few people admire more the writings of Dickens, or read them with a deeper interest than I do. I am greatly pleased with his 'American Notes.' They give me, I think, a clearer idea of every-day life in America than I ever entertained before; and his chapter containing the advertisements respecting negro slavery, is more calculated to augment the fixed detestation of slavery than the most brilliant declamation, or the most splendid eloquence. That chapter shows out the hideous features of the system far better than any dissertation on its evils could possibly produce them-odious and disgusting to the public eye."

sound and impartial observation of Mr. |sible interest comprehended or concerned. Dickens, and with the excellent means of Some such mistake as this, we think, is the judgment supplied by the other, as to the mistake of an eloquent, manly, thoughtful, way in which his style and manner of re- and most acute writer, in the last number cording those impressions would affect an of that excellent periodical, the "North intelligent, and perfectly impartial mind. American Review." He thinks that the M. Philarète Chasles (whom we are also profligate papers, "numerous as they are, happy to claim as an assenting party to our and widely as their circulation ranges,' views on the American press,) gives it as may "open their foul mouths in full cry his opinion, that after examining carefully upon a man of character, year after year, the late books of travels in the United and through every state in the Union," but, States, he has found the most recent of can harm him no more than the idle wind. them though neither piquing itself on They are read, despised, and the next day philosophy nor profundity, though neither utterly forgotten." We do not know all ill-humored nor presuming-by far the most that may lurk in that expression-a man of gay, the most spirited, the most effective character-but we do know that there has and complete, in its delineation of Ameri- not been a public man engaged in the sercan life and character. He quotes, in a vice of the American state, since the death capital translation, some of the comic of Washington, whose means of usefulness sketches of Mr. Dickens, and remarks of have not been impaired by these infamous them that no doubt they may be charged as assailants. But we discussed this fully on a dealing with petty and insignificant detail, former occasion, and will only put it to this but that this very detail it is which reveals honest writer now, whether ou greater rethe peculiarities of such a people. "It is flection he would feel as sure, supposing by those familiar and minute facts," he ob- these prints to be "despised," that they serves, that you arrive at the true under- would still continue to be "read." Of him, standing of a nation, as yet too young and and of others with the same cultivated already too powerful, too informed and yet mind and lofty purpose, we would earnestly too advanced, to have escaped the suscepti- implore to look abroad from the small and bilities, the weaknesses, the bullying, the select community in which they live, and 'niaiseries des parvenus.' I prefer these understand without further compromise, or sketches, for my own part," he adds, "to hinderances self-imposed, the mischiefs of learned dissertations." And this prefer- this wide-spread pestilence. We believe ence, we may safely predict, will be one that, by forming a rallying point for all that day pretty general. is good and virtuous in America, they have it in their power to stay the plague. Nor are we without the confident hope of hav ing, at no distant day, to record some gallant and successful effort towards that great end.

66

It will have been seen, in the course of our present remarks, that we are not without some expectation, fairly grounded, of a possible and early revolt of the educated classes of America against the odious tyranny which we have thus done our best to At any rate, when we meet the Ameriexpose. We have noted what we are fain cans next, it will be with some pleasanter to believe plain symptoms of its having al-things to say to them. It is our intention ready begun. In that case we shall not be easily tempted to return to a subject which it is on every account most decorous to leave in the hands of those whose welfare it most nearly concerns, and which we only in the first instance approached with deep and unaffected reluctance.

But it will not do to begin the strife by undervaluing the power of the antagonist. We never knew good result from a feeling of that kind. The first element of success in every such struggle is to grapple at once with the whole extent of evil: not to look at it with the reservation of your own delicacies and doubts, and perhaps limited field of experience, but fully, unreservedly, and with that broad-if you will, that vulgar-gaze, which shall take in every pos

to examine the more general characteristics of the original works they have put forth within the last few years, as their claim to the commencement of a literature of their own. Our former remark on this subject has been greatly misunderstood, if not greatly misrepresented. When we doubted if the foundations had yet been laid of a NATIONAL literature, we could not mean to imply any thing so manifestly unjust, as that natives of America, since the establishment of their Republic, have not written many able and admirable books.

[I beg your pardon, but I am interrupted. Fourthly, Did you not desecrateA man (a Dover waterman) has followed yes, desecrate-the eloquence of Monsieur me to my hotel to beg-that is, enforce-Dumas, when he turned a funeral oration "sixpence" for the accommodation of a on poor Orleans into a drama for the Porte plank from the wharf to the boat, the steam St.-Martin ?" company, the mayor and magistrates of Dover smiling blandly on the extortion.]

preach up what you insolently call the mis- | REMINISCENCES OF MEN AND THINGS.

chief of glory, and question the born right of every Frenchman to carry fire and bloodshed into every country he can get intoand more, do you not laugh at and denounce, what is as dear to every Frenchman as the recollection of his mother's milk, a hatred, an undying hatred, to England and all that's English?"

BY ONE WHO HAS A GOOD MEMORY.

From Fraser's Magazine.

M. THIERS.

WHEN first my eyes caught a glimpse of the shining silver spectacles of little Monsieur Thiers, he was living in a very modest "I own to every word of it." manner on a rather high étage in a by no "And more-do you not....?" means prepossessing house in Paris. Dingy, "I beg your pardon, monsieur," said a dark, and dirty was the staircase, and the stage-coachman, at this point entering the porter growled a sullen "our" when the room, "if you are the gentleman as is go- friend whom I accompanied inquired, if ing to Canterbury, time's up." Mr. Adolphe Thiers resided in the dwellThe Frenchman did not finish his sen-ing of which that illustrious keeper was the tence, but rising, and again lifting his hat, legally authorised preserver. I fear that he with a grim smile and flashing eyes, at that time the little man was not so genstalked away. erous in his "etrennes" to the aforesaid And now, my quondam friend Louis-porter as he was afterwards in a position Philippe, I have put the above colloquy to paper, that I may herewith ask you, if your subject and fellow-citizen is right as to the causes which (under your orders) have shut me out of France? If they be not, you will drop me a line. If they be, I will take your silence (and smuggle accordingly) for affirmation. Yours,

"As thou usest me," PUNCH.

to be, since at any rate it struck me forcibly, that Thiers was not a popular name in the establishment in question. This was prior to the Revolution of 1830, and at that time our hero loved and swore by that very Armand Carrel, whom afterwards he persecuted and traduced. The former was engaged in writing for the republican National, which he had assisted in establishing, and in preparing the minds of the too ardent "Jeunes Gens" for that call "to arms" which the tocsin of the capital soon after thundered in their ears. Thiers was one of those who conspired to bring about the Revolution of 1830. He did this, first, be

JULIA CESAREA.-The following is an extract from a letter written from Algiers by an artillery officer, and communicated to the Academy of Belles Let-cause his principles or his doctrines, his tres. "I have just spent some days amidst the convictions or his professions, were at that ruins of Julia Cesarea. I have some right to give time of a republican character. He did so, that name to the modern Cherchell, since I have been the first to discover four inscriptions bearing second, because I think he believed that it the name of that ancient city. I have found many was the intention of the elder branch of the other less important inscriptions. Would that house of Bourbon to overthrow the consticould also place under your eyes the admirable Co-tutional character of Louis XVIII., and to rinthian capital, the granite pillars, and the ancient tombs-the fellows of the Kebor Roumie, and, like it, no doubt, of Numidian origin. The English traveller Shaw mentions the gigantic wall of three leagues circuit which formed the inclosure of Cesarea, but he says nothing of the period of its con

struction. I think that the erection of this wall must be referred to the second occupation of Africa by the Romans, when ancient civilization shed its first light on these shores." Many persons, reckless of the lessons of history, begin to appreciate the ancients when they find that our engineers have nothing better to do than to fortify themselves behind walls raised by engineers who lived fourteen centuries ago. The old part of this city also bears witness to the power of the Romans."—Athen'm.

THE CHINESE TREASURE -Yesterday evening, at 7 o'clock, five waggons, each drawn by four horses, and a cart drawn by two horses, all heavily laden, entered the gateway of the Royal Mint, escorted by a detachment of the 60th Regiment, with the Chinese silver, amounting to £1,000,000 sterling, being the first consignment of the indemnity to be paid by the Celestial Empire.

render it purely monarchical. He did so, third, because he saw no hope for himself, or for the extreme party with which he was connected, of ever arriving at power and office, without "the men of the past" were all driven from their posts to make room for "Young France;" and he did so, fourth, because he belonged to those who hated the Bourbons. One of his associates at that time was Mignet, of whom they tell the following curious anecdote. When asked by the Duke de Guiche what was the reason of his animosity to the Bourbon race, as a race, he replied, " Parceque je n'aime pas les Bourbons." "But why do you not love the Bourbons?" demanded the duke. "It is not an answer to my inquiry why do you hate the Bourbons to say, because I do not love them." Mignet smiled, but retorted

on his political interrogator in the following manner :

"I once knew a lady who said she did not like mackerel. Now to me who was, and still am, a great lover of mackerel, this appeared extraordinary; and I asked her, 'Pray, madam, why do you not like mackerel ?' "Because I do not like mackerel," was her answer, and she would give me no other.

แ

was a thorough man of the world. He had lived in many countries and in very troublesome times; he had seen many religions at work, as well as in theory. He was a good scholar, and not far removed from being a philosopher, and those who called him a Jesuit were rogues or dunces. He was a man with a great mind, much wit, and sound discretion, and he was no more a Jesuit than Charles James Fox or Robert The duke thought that both M. Mignet Southey. When, then, little M. Thiers and the lady, might have given better rea- pretended to believe that the restoration of sons than they did for their mutual dislike, the Bourbons was the revival of popery, he but he perceived that the distastes of both either evinced great ignorance, or he inwere at any rate inveterate. I think this sulted and perverted truth and facts. If I story will illustrate that which I wish to dwell a little longer on this point, it is beimpress on the readers of "Regina," that cause I feel its importance. The eldest little M. Thiers had a constitutional hatred branch of the house of Bourbon was shamefor the Bourbons, just as his other friend, fully misrepresented. Louis XVIII. had no Béranger, had, when he sung his treasona- more the desire of reigning in a spirit of ble but witty song, "And still the Bourbons priestcraft, than he had of living on soupe held the Throne." The young men of maigre," or of dying in a cloister. But M. France knew nothing of the Bourbons. Thiers and the men of his age, opinions, How should they? The first revolution and calibre, knew that there was no better had banished them; and the empire with its way of running down the Bourbons in glory and its disgrace had been the period France than by adding to their royal titles during which the then youth of France had the epithet of "Jesuit:" and this plan was been nursed, cradled, and educated. Those eventually successful. who had not been carried off by the con- At the time to which I am now, however, scription, or mown down by the sabre or more especially alluding, Louis XVIII, was the grape-shot of the European alliance, dead. Those liberal tricksters who had were, in nine hundred out of every thou- libelled him when living, then affected to sand cases, wholly ignorant of why they believe that France had lost the most confought, or of who were the Bourbons, or stitutional of monarchs; and when Charles where they resided. They had heard of X. ascended the throne, the liberal prints the decapitation of Louis XVI. and of poured forth daily their regrets for the wise Marie Antoinette, but of Louis XVIII. and and enlightened prince, who had descended Count D'Artois, or the Duke d'Angoulême to the tomb of the Capets. It was then that and his admirable and immortal duchess, and especially of the son of Egalité Orleans, they were as ignorant as they were of the Emperor of China or the Governor of the Moon. The old republicans who had not in 1814 expired, undoubtedly took great pains to convince the people that the Bourbons were Jesuits, enthusiastically attached to all that was Romish, bigotted, and " saintly," and got up a sort of "charivari" against the priests and the altar. Now M. Thiers, living in a department far removed from civilization and good life, received his early impressions from those, who wholly mistook at any rate the character of Louis XVIII.; and being also opposed alike to the Protestant and to the Catholic churches, was prepared on his arrival at Paris to join in the cry of, "Down with the Jesuits!" This cry of "Down with the Jesuits!" was a senseless one, because Louis XVIII. was as free from popish, as he was from Protestant influences. He

M. Thiers first began to hope for the future; and then, also, it was that Laffitte declared that the house of Bourbon would be unable to stand against the power of the house of Laffitte. No man was more regular at the revolutionary, or quasi revolutionary soirées of the said M. Laffitte than Adolphe Thiers. There he spouted anarchy, and foamed sedition, and there it was that he often repeated the famous declaration, "That the king reigns, but does not govern." This was one of those French maxims which captivated the ignorant, and delighted the thoughtless.

The soirées of M. Laffitte were very little more violent, however, than those at the Palais Royal Undoubtedly, the then Duke of Orleans (now Louis Philippe) kept up the appearance of respect to his king and relative, Charles X.; but Barthélemy and Méry, Benjamin Constant and Laffitte, Béranger, Lafayette, and all the uproarious and discontented spirits of the age, were