same candid, but independent tone of thinking-pervades them both. The accuracy of reference to authorities, in support of every fact which is brought forward, forms a striking contrast to the careless negligence of some authors, who do not seem to consider such minuteness of research as at all necessary to render their narratives authentic. Access to public records was most readily granted, and the ample use made of this liberty will be admitted by every one who peruses the work. Upon the whole, the Life of Andrew Melville does great credit to Dr. M'Crie's industry, talents, and character, as a minister of the Gospel; and we entertain no doubt that the fruit of his labours will meet with that encouragement from the public to which his meritorious exer tions so well entitle him.

f

AMERICAN LITERATURE AND

INTELLIGENCE,

Why strive ye together, are ye not brethren?"

THE short text prefixed by way of motto to this article, expresses better than any terms which we can employ, the spirit that will ever characterize this novel and important department of our work. There is, we fear, but too much truth in the complaint which we are about to quote from the writings of an ingenious American, now resident in London, with one of whose lucubrations we gladly enrich our pages; not only on account of its great literary merit; of the excellency of its sentiments; their coincidence with our own; and the important advice which it gives alike to the Englishman and the American; but that we may seize the very earliest opportunity of strongly recommending the entire work to the attentive perusal of our readers, now that the parts, which were put into our hands as they successively appeared in America, have been published by their author on this side of the Atlantic.

The work to which we allude is "The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, gent.," the nom de guerre, pro hac vice, of Mr. Washington Irvine, a writer who has long been most deservedly popular in his native country, though seldom, if ever, appearing before the public in his own proper name and

eharacter. The period has, however, we trust, arrived, when this popularity will not be confined to the new world; but when all who can read the common language of America and the parent country whence she sprung, will gladly pay that tribute to his talents, which, in our judgment, few writers in the lighter style, which he has here adopted, have more justly earned, since the days of Addison, and the best of the essayists who trod in his footsteps, and varied and improved upon his plan. We shall rejoice, therefore, if the following extract, selected from its adaptation to the work of conciliation, and the cultivation of the kindliest dispositions between two important members of the same family-nations of the same generous race-scions of one common stock, which it is our determined purpose to pursue, shall induce any of our countrymen to make themselves better acquainted with the productions of this elegant and most interesting writer.

"It is with feelings of deep regret," says our author, in one of his sketches, very ably written, and in a higher style of composition than that which he has usually chosen to adopt for the expression of sentiments in which we most cordially participate,

"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 United States, and the London press has teemed with volumes of travels through the republic; but they seem intended to diffuse error rather than knowledge; and so successful have they been, that, notwithstanding the constant intercourse between the nations, there is no people concerning whom the great mass of the British public have less pure information, or entertain more numerous prejudices. English travellers are the best and the worst in the world. Where no motives of pride or interest intervene, none can equal them for profound and philosophical views of society, or faithful and graphical descriptions of external objects; but when either the interest or reputation of their own country comes in collision with that of another, they go to the opposite extreme, and forget their usual probity and candour, in the indulgence of spleen, and an illiberal spirit of ridicule. Hence, their travels are more honest and accurate, the more remote the country described. I would place implicit confidence in an Englishman's 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 account of his immediate neighbours, and of those na-> tions with which he is in habits of most frequent intercourse. How

ever I might be disposed to trust his probity, I dare not trust his prejudices.

"It has also been the peculiar lot of our country to be visited by the worst kind of English travellers. While men of philosophical spirit and cultivated minds have been envoys from England to ransack the poles, to penetrate the deserts, and to study the manners and customs of barbarous nations, with which she can have no permanent intercourse of profit or pleasure; it has been left to the broken down tradesman, the scheming adventurer, the wandering mechanic, the Manchester and Birmingham agent, to be her oracles respecting America. From such sources she is content to receive her informatian respecting a country in a singular state of moral and physical development: a country in which one of the greatest political experiments in the history of the world is now performing, and which presents the most profound and momentous studies to the statesman and the philosopher. That such men should give prejudiced accounts of America is not a matter of surprise. The themes it offers for contemplation 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 to strengthen and ennoble it, and its daily indications of admirable properties, are all lost upon these purblind observers, who are only affected by the little asperities incident to its present situation. They are capable of judging only of the surface of things; of those matters which come in contact with their private interests and personal gratifications. They miss some of the snug conveniences and petty comforts which belong to an old, highlyfinished, and over-populous state of society; where the ranks of useful labour are crowded, and many earn a painful and servile subsistence, by studying the very caprices of appetite and selfindulgence. These minor comforts, however, are all-important in the estimation of narrow minds; which either do not perceive, or will not acknowledge, that they are more than counterbalanced among us, by great and generally diffused blessings." [pp. 97-101.]

"One would suppose that information coming from such sources, on a subject where the truth is so desirable, would be received with caution by the censors 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 sweeping extent, against a kindred nation. The very reverse, however, is the case, and it furnishes a striking instance of human inconsistency. Nothing can surpass the vigilance with which English critics will examine the credibility of the traveller who publishes an account of some distant, and comparatively unimportant, country.

How warily will they compare the measurements of a pyramid, or the descriptions of a ruin, and how sternly will they censure any inaccuracy in these contributions of merely curious knowledge; while they will receive, with eagerness and unhesitating faith, the gross misrepresentations of coarse and obscure writers, concerning a country 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 more generous cause. I shall not, however, dwell on this irksome and hackneyed topic; nor should I have adverted to it, but for the undue interest apparently taken in it by my countrymen, and certain injurious effects which I apprehended it might produce upon the national feeling. We attach too much consequence to these attacks. They cannot 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 country continually 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 combination, could not conceal our rapidly growing importance and matchless prosperity. They could not conceal that these are owing, not merely to physical and local, but also to moral causes. To the political liberty, the general diffusion of knowledge, the prevalence of sound moral and religious principles, which give force and sustained energy to the character of a people; and in fact, have been the acknowledged 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 contumely she has endeavoured to cast upon us? It is not in the opinion of England alone that honour lives, and reputation has its being. The world at large is the arbiter of a nation's fame: with its thousand eyes it witnesscs a nation's deeds, and from their collective testimony is national glory or national disgrace established. "For ourselves, therefore, it is comparatively of but little importance whether England does us justice or not; it is, perhaps, of far more importance to herself. She is instilling anger and resentment 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 labouring to convince her, she is hereafter to find 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 influence of literature at the present day, and how much the opinions and passions of mankind are under its control. The mere contests of the sword are temporary; their wounds are but in the flesh, and it is the pride of the generous to forgive and forget them; but the slanders of the pen pierce to

the heart; they rankle longest in the noblest spirits; they dwell ever present in the mind, and render it morbidly sensitive to the most trifling collision. It is but seldom that any one overt act produces hostilities between two nations; there exists, most com→ monly, a previous jealousy and ill will; a predisposition to take offence. Trace these to their cause, and how often will they be found to originate in the mischievous effusions of mercenary writers, who, secure in their closets, and for ignominious bread, concoct and circulate the venom that is to inflame the 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 nation does the press hold a more absolute control than over the 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 country, 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 latent resentment. Possessing, then, as England does, the fountain head from whence the literature of the language flows, how completely 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 peace and kindness. [pp. 103-108.]

"There is a general impression in England, that the people of the United States are inimical to the parent country. It is one of the errors which have been diligently propagated by designing writers. There is, doubtless, considerable political hostility, and a general soreness at the illiberality of the English press; but, collectively speaking, the prepossessions of the people are strongly in favour of England. Indeed, at one time they amounted, in many parts of the union, to an absurd degree of bigotry. The bare name of Englishman was a passport to the confidence and hospitality of every family, and often gave a transient currency to the worthless and the ungrateful. Throughout the country there was something of enthusiasm connected with the idea of England. We looked to it with a hallowed feeling of tenderness and veneration, as the land of our forefathers-the august repository of the monuments and antiquities of our race the birth-place and mausoleum of the sages and heroes of our paternal history. After our own country, there was none in whose glory we more delighted none whose good opinion we were more anxious to possess toward which our hearts yearned with such throbbings of warm consanguinity. Even during the late war, whenever there was the least opportunity for kind feelings to spring forth, it was the delight of the generous spirits of our country to shew that, in the midst of hostilities, they still kept alive the sparks of future friend

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