ENGLISH WRITERS ON AMERICA.

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    Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation, rousting herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her as an eagle, mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her endazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam.--MILTON ON THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS.

    IT is with feelings of deep regret that I observe the literary animosity daily growing up between England and America. Great curiosity has been awakened of late with respect to the Uates, and the London press has teemed with volumes of travels through the Republic; but they seem inteo diffuse error rather than knowledge; and so successful have they been, that, notwithstanding the stant intercourse betweeions, there is no people ing whom the great mass of the British public have less pure information, or eain more numerous prejudices.

    English travellers are the best and the worst in the world. Where   no motives of pride or i intervene, none  equal them for profound and philosophical views of society, or faithful and graphical description of external objects; but wheher the i or reputation of their own try es in collision with that of ahey go to the opposite extreme, and fet their usual probity and dor, in the indulgence of spleic remark, and an illiberal spirit of ridicule.

    Heheir travels are more ho and accurate, the more remote the try described. I would place implicit ?den an Englishmans description of the regions beyond the cataracts of the Nile; of unknown islands in the Yellow Sea; of the interior of India; or of any other tract which other travellers might be apt to picture out with the illusions of their fancies. But I would cautiously receive his at of his immediate neighbors, and of those nations with which he is in habits of most frequent intercourse. However I might be disposed to trust his probity, I dare not trust his prejudices.

    It has also been the peculiar lot of our try to be visited by the worst kind of English travellers. While men of philosophical spirit and cultivated minds have bee from England to ransack the poles, to pee the deserts, and to study the manners and s of barbarous nations, with which she  have no perma intercourse of pro?t or pleasure; it has beeo the broken-down tradesman, the scheming adventure<bdo>９９ｌib?</bdo>r, the wandering meic, the Maer and Birmingham agent, to be her oracles respeg America. From such sources she is tent to receive her information respeg a try in a singular state of moral and physical development; a try in whie of the greatest political experiments in the history of the world is now perf; and which presents the most profound and momentous studies to the statesman and the philosopher.

    That such men should give prejudicial ats of America, is not   a matter of surprise. The themes it offers for plation, are too vast and elevated for their capacities. The national character is yet in a state of fermentation: it may have its frothiness and sediment, but its ingredients are sound and wholesome; it has already given proofs of powerful and generous qualities; and the whole promises to settle down into something substantially excellent. But the causes which are operating tthen and en, and its daily indications of admirable properties, are all lost upon these purblind observers; who are only affected by the little asperities io its present situation. They are capable of judging only of the surface of things; of those matters whie in tact with their private is and personal grati?cations. They miss some of the snug veniences ay forts which belong to an old, highly-?nished, and over-populous state of society; where the ranks of useful labor are crowded, and many earn a painful and servile subsistence, by studying the very caprices of appetite and self-indulgehese minor forts, however, are all-important iimation of narrow minds; which either do not perceive, or will not aowledge, that they are more than terbalanced among us, by great and generally diffused blessings.

    They may, perhaps, have been disappointed in some unreasonable expectation of sudden gain. They may have pictured America to themselves an El Dorado, where gold and silver abounded, and the natives were lag in sagacity, and where they were to bee strangely and suddenly rich, in some unforeseen but easy manner.

    The same weakness of mind that indulges absurd expectations, produces petulan disappoi. Such persons bee embittered against the try on ?nding that there, as everywhere else, a man must sow before he  reap; must wih by industry and talent; and must tend with the on dif?culties of nature, and the shrewdness of an intelligent aerprising people.

    Perhaps, through mistaken or ill-directed hospitality, or from the prompt disposition to cheer and tehe stranger, prevalent among my trymen, they may have beeed with unwonted respe America; and, having been aced all their lives to sider themselves below the surface of good society, and brought up in a servile feeling of inferiority, they bee arrogant, on the on boon of civility; they attribute to the lowliness of others their owion; and ue a society where there are no arti?cial distins, and where, by any ce, sudividuals as themselves  rise to sequence.

    One would suppose, however, that information ing from such sources, on a subject where the truth is so desirable, would be received with caution by the sors of the press; that the motives of these men, their veracity, their opportunities of inquiry and observation, and their capacities for judging correctly, would be rigorously scrutinized, before their evidence was admitted, in such sweepient, against a kindred nation.

    The very reverse, however, is the case, and it furnishes a striking instance of human insistenothing  surpass the vigilah whiglish critics will examihe credibility of the traveller who publishes an at of some distant and paratively unimportant try. How warily will they pare the measurements of a pyramid, or the description of a ruin; and how sternly will they sure any inaccura these tributions of merely curious knowledge, while they will receive, with eagerness and uating faith, the gross misrepresentations of coarse and obscure writers, ing a try with which their own is placed in the most important and delicate relations. Nay, they will even make these apocryphal volumes text-books, on which to enlarge, with a zeal and an ability worthy of a menerous cause.

    I shall not, however, dwell on this irksome and haeyed topior should I have adverted to it, but for the uerest apparently taken in it by my trymen, aain injurious effects which I apprehend it might produce upoional feeling. We attauch sequeo these attacks. They ot do us any essential injury. The tissue of misrepresentations attempted to be woven round us, are like cobwebs woven round the limbs of an infant giant. Our try tinually outgrows them. One falsehood after another falls off of itself. We have but to live on, and every day we live a whole volume of refutation.

    All the writers of England united, if we could for a moment suppose their great minds stooping to so unworthy a bination, could not ceal our rapidly growing importand matchless prosperity. They could not ceal that these are owing, not merely to physical and local, but also to moral ca<var>藏书网</var>uses--to the political liberty, the general diffusion of knowledge, the prevalence of sound, moral, and religious principles, which give ford sustained energy to the character of a people, and whi fact, have been the aowledged and wonderful supporters of their own national power and glory.

    But why are we so exquisitely alive to the aspersions of England?

    Why do we suffer ourselves to be so affected by the ely she has endeavored to cast upon us? It is not in the opinion of England alohat honor lives, aation has its being. The world at large is the arbiter of a nations fame: with its thousand eyes it witnesses a nations deeds, and from their collective testimony is national glory or national disgrace established.

    For ourselves, therefore, it is paratively of but little importance whether England does us justice or not; it is, perhaps, of far more importao herself. She is instilling   anger ament into the bosom of a youthful nation, to grow with its growth, and strengthen with its strength. If in America, as some of her writers are lab to vince her, she is hereafter to ?nd an invidious rival, and a gigantic foe, she may thank those very writers for having provoked rivalship, and irritated hostility. Every one knows the all-pervading in?uence of literature at the present day, and how much the opinions and passions of mankind are us trol. The mere tests of the sword are temporary; their wounds are but in the ?esh, and it is the pride of the generous tive and fet them; but the slanders of the pen pierce to the heart; they rankle lo in the  spirits; they dwell ever present in the mind, and re morbidly sensitive to the most tri?ing collision. It is but seldom that any one overt act produces hostilities between two nations; there exists, most only, a previous jealousy and ill-will, a predisposition to take offerace these to their cause, and how often will they be found tinate in the mischievous effusions of merary writers, who, secure in their closets, and fnominious bread, cod circulate the venom that is to ihe generous and the brave.

    I am not laying too much stress upon this point; for it applies most emphatically to our particular case. Over no natiohe press hold a more absolute trol thahe people of America; for the universal education of the poorest classes makes every individual a reader. There is nothing published in England on the subject of our try, that does not circulate through every part of it. There is not a calumny dropt from an English pen, nor an unworthy sarcasm uttered by an English statesman, that does not go to blight good-will, and add to the mass of latement. Possessing, then, as England does, the fountain-head whehe literature of the language ?ows, how pletely is it in her power, and how truly is it her duty, to make it the medium of amiable and magnanimous feeling--a stream where the two nations might meet together and drink in pead   kindness. Should she, however, persist in turning it to waters of bitterness, the time may e when she may repent her folly. The present friendship of America may be of but little moment to her; but the future destinies of that try do not admit of a doubt; over those of England, there lower some shadows of uainty.

    Should, then, a day of gloom arrive--should those reverses overtake her, from which the proudest empires have not bee--she may look back with regret at her infatuation, in repulsing from her side a nation she might have grappled to her bosom, and thus destroying her only ce for real friendship beyond the boundaries of her own dominions.

    There is a general impression in England, that the people of the Uates are inimical to the parent try. It is one of the errors which have been diligently propagated by designing writers. There is, doubtless, siderable political hostility, and a general soreness at the illiberality of the English press; but, collectively speaking, the prepossessions of the people are strongly in favor of England. Indeed, at oime they amounted, in many parts of the Union, to an absurd degree of bigotry. The bare name of Englishman assport to the ?dend hospitality of every family, and too often gave a tra currency to the worthless and the ungrateful. Throughout the try, there was something of enthusiasm ected with the idea of England. We looked to it with a hallowed feeling of tenderness and veion, as the land of our forefathers--the august repository of the mos and antiquities of our race--the birthplad mausoleum of the sages and heroes of our paternal history. After our own try, there was none in whose glory we more delighted--none whose good opinion we were more anxious to possess--oward which our hearts yearned with such throbbings of warm sanguinity. Even during the late war, whehere was the least opportunity for kind feelings t forth, it was the delight of the generous spirits of our try to show that, in the midst of hostilities, they still   kept alive the sparks of future friendship.

    Is all this to be at an end? Is this golden band of kindred sympathies, so rare between nations, to be broken forever?--Perhaps it is for the best--it may dispel an allusion which might have kept us ial vassalage; which might have interfered occasionally with our true is, and prevehe growth of proper national pride. But it is hard to give up the kiie! and there are feelings dearer than i--closer to the heart than pride--that will still make us cast back a look ret as we wander farther and farther from the paternal roof, and lament the waywardness of the parent that would repel the affes of the child.

    Short-sighted and injudicious, however, as the duct land may be in this system of aspersion, recrimination on our part would be equally ill-judged. I speak not of a prompt and spirited vindication of our try, or the kee castigation of her slanderers--but I allude to a disposition to retaliate in kind, to retort sarcasm and inspire prejudice, which seems to be spreading widely among our writers. Let us guard particularly against such a temper; for it would double the evil, instead of redressing the wrong. Nothing is so easy and inviting as the retort of abuse and sarcasm; but it is a paltry and an unpro?table test. It is the alternative of a morbid mind, fretted into petulance, rather than warmed into indignation. If England is willing to permit the mean jealousies of trade, or the rancorous animosities of politics, to<u>藏书网</u> deprave the iy of her press, and poison the fountain of public opinio us beware of her example. She may deem it her io diffuse error, and engender antipathy, for the purpose of cheg emigration: we have no purpose of the kind to serve. her have we any spirit of national jealousy to gratify; for as yet, in all our rivalships with England, we are the rising and the gaining party. There  be o aherefore, but the   grati?cation of rese--a mere spirit of retaliation--and even that is impotent. Our retorts are never republished in England; they fall short, therefore, of their aim; but they foster a querulous and peevish temper among our writers; they sour the sweet ?ow of our early literature, and sow thorns and brambles among its blossoms. What is still worse, they circulate through our own try, and, as far as they have effect, excite virulent national prejudices. This last is the evil most especially to be deprecated. Governed, as we are, entirely by public opinion, the utmost care should be taken to preserve the purity of the publid. Knowledge is power, and truth is knowledge; whoever, therefore, knowingly propagates a prejudice, wilfully saps the foundation of his trys strength.

    The members of a republic, above all other men, should be did and dispassiohey are, individually, portions of the sn mind and sn will, and should be eo e to all questions of national  with calm and unbiassed judgments. From the peculiar nature of our relations with England, we must have more frequent questions of a dif?cult and delicate character with her, than with any other nation,--questions that affect the most acute aable feelings: and as, in the adjustment of these, our national measures must ultimately be determined by popular se, we ot be too anxiously atteo purify it from all latent passion or prepossession.

    Opening, too, as we do, an asylum for strangers every portion of the earth, we should receive all with impartiality. It should be our pride to exhibit an example of oion, at least, destitute of national antipathies, and exerg, not merely the overt acts of hospitality, but those more rare and noble courtesies which spring from liberality of opinion.

    What have we to do with national prejudices? They are the   ie diseases of old tries, tracted in rude and ignorant ages, when nations knew but little of each other, and looked beyond their own boundaries with distrust and hostility.

    We, on the trary, have sprung into natioen an enlightened and philosophic age, when the different parts of the habitable world, and the various branches of the human family, have been iigably studied and made known to each other; and we fo the advantages of our birth, if we do not shake off the national prejudices, as we would the local superstitions, of the old world.

    But above all let us not be in?uenced by any angry feelings, so far as to shut our eyes to the perception of what is really excellent and amiable in the English character. We are a young people, necessarily an imitative one, and must take our examples and models, in a great degree, from the existing nations of Europe. There is no try more worthy of our study than England. The spirit of her stitution is most analogous to ours. The manners of her people--their intellectual activity--their freedom of opinion--their habits of thinking on those subjects which  the dearest is and most sacred charities of private life, are all genial to the Ameri character; and, in fact, are all intrinsically excellent: for it is in the moral feeling of the people that the deep foundations of British prosperity are laid; and however the superstructure may be timeworn, or overrun by abuses, there must be something solid in the basis, admirable ierials, and stable iructure of an edi?ce that so long has towered unshaken amidst the tempests of the world.

    Let it be the pride of our writers, therefore, discarding all feelings of irritation, and disdaining to retaliate the illiberality of British authors, to speak of the English nation without prejudice, and with determined dor. While they rebuke the indiscriminating bigotry with whie of our trymen   admire and imitate every thing English, merely because it is English, let them frankly point out what is really worthy of approbation. We may thus plagland before us as a perpetual volume of reference, wherein are recorded souions from ages of experience; and while we avoid the errors and absurdities which may have crept into the page, we may draw thence golden maxims of practical wisdom, wherewith tthen and to embellish our national character.

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