Our attention has been directed since this was

majority of the American papers, until the having written a perfectly honest book," publication, in the Courier and Enquirer,' must be presumed to bave prepared hims If of what was called the "private history of the Ashburton Treaty." It was contained in a letter of remonstrance from a friend of Mr. Webster's, against the continued abuse of that statesman, and it certainly succeeded in turning aside wrath. Whether or not on reasonable grounds, we leave others to judge. Our present business is not to meddle with red-lined maps, or smart doings, and we simply give the so-called private history as a matter of some present interest, which occurred to us as we went through the painful and repulsive drudgery of transcribing specimens of American Newspaper Literature for the purposes of this review.

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. which is not devoted to reprints of his writings, and We hardly open a paper from the States, half of 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 memo

randa the following, taken from the New York Herald.'

"An eastern paper contains an extract of a letter written by Daniel O'Connell to a correspondent in this country,-Thank God Dickens is not an Irishman-he is of the texture of a Saxon glutton-and 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 gormandizer of this order, the more aristocratic and turbulent notions you drive into his empty and sycophantic noddle.... DANIEL O'CONNELL.' This is capital-and is a pretty fair account of the cele

brated Boz."

"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 of his instructions forbad 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 either recede from his demand It may have been this, or it may have been some or terminate his mission. As his instructions other for Mr. O'Connell, as a great favourite with were peremptory, he was about to close his mis- the patriots' from the fact of himself and his great sion of peace, and war between the two coun- Irish cause being supposed to be thorns in the side tries appeared inevitable; when Mr. Webster of England, is subject to have his authority daily persuaded him to enter into a full examination forged-on which remark is made the following exof the whole question, with a view to make tracts from a letter addressed to the editor of the himself acquainted with its real merits. This Pilot.' he did in obedience to Mr. Webster's urgent "I saw with great surprise, in the last Pilot,' a solicitations; and such was the character of Mr. paragraph which you certainly took from some other Webster's representation of the facts-so per- newspaper, headed O'Connell and Dickens,' and fectly simple did he render this intricate subject purporting to be a quotation from an alleged letter by bringing to bear upon it the force of his of mine to the editor of a Maryland newspaper, mighty intellect, that Lord Ashburton acknow-published at Baltimore, and called the Hibernian ledged his conviction of the injustice of the claim Advocate.' The thing is, from beginning to end, a gross lie. I never wrote a letter to that newspaper; of his government to the extent insisted upon, nor am I in the habit of corresponding with editors and actually agreed to remain at Washington of American papers. I have seen, indeed, with until he could receive additional instructions great contempt, but without much surprise, in sevefrom his government, instead of promptly closing ral American newspapers, letters deliberately pubhis mission, as he was authorised to do! A delay lished under my signature, given to the American of six weeks followed, during which time nothing public as genuine documents-all, of course, being was heard in relation to this negotiation; but at forgeries, but published by the editors as if perthe expiration of that period the anxiously looked fectly genuine. This is a species of outrageous for instructions arrived, and the treaty was ac- rascality which has been seldom attempted in this tually made according to the line of boundary country, and seems reserved for the vileness of a fixed upon by Mr. Webster after Lord Ashbur- great portion of the newspaper press in the United ton's mission under his first instructions had States.... Perhaps it is right that I should add, virtually closed. It is the secret history of that that few people admire more the writings of Dickens, negotiation which can alone do justice to the or read them with a deeper interest than I do. I am greatly pleased with his American Notes.' Secretary of State." They give me, I think, a clearer idea of every-day life in America than I ever entertained before; and negro slavery, is more calculated to augment the his chapter containing the advertisements respecting fixed detestation of slavery than the most brilliant declamation, or the most splendid eloquence. That chapter shows out the hideous features of the system possibly produce them-odious and disgusting to the far better than any dissertation on its evils could public eye."

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),

6

for its reception with men of all opinions and that case we shall not be easily tempted to parties. But such a man can afford to go return to a subject which it is on every acon fearless,' knowing the audience he will count most decorous to leave in the hands of address at last; and we make a grave error, those whose welfare it most nearly concerns, if his book is not found in the long run to and which we only in the first instance aphave hit the hardest those evils of the Ame- proached with deep and unaffected reluctance. rican character which cry loudly for instant But it will not do to begin the strife by counteraction, and with the most exquisite undervaluing the power of the antagonist. feeling and skill to have developed those We never knew good result from a feeling germs of good, in which, rightly and gene- of that kind. The first element of success in rously cultivated, the enduring safety of every such struggle is to grapple at once with America and American institutions will alone the whole extent of evil: not to look at it at last be found. In two French works named with the reservation of your own delicacies at the head of this article (and to which we and doubts, and perhaps limited field of exregret that we have only left ourselves room perience, but fully, unreservedly, and with for very slight allusion), we have been struck that broad-if you will, that vulgar-gaze, with the unconscious support which is given which shall take in every possible interest in almost every page of one of them, to the comprehended or concerned. Some such sound and impartial observation of Mr. Dick- mistake as this, we think, is the mistake of ens, and with the excellent means of judg- an eloquent, manly, thoughtful, and most ment supplied by the other, as to the way in acute writer, in the last number of that exwhich his style and manner of recording cellent periodical, the North American Rethose impressions would affect an intelligent, view.' He thinks that the profligate papers, and perfectly impartial mind. M. Philarète numerous as they are, and widely as their Chasles (whom we are also happy to claim circulation ranges,' may open their foul as an assenting party to our views on the mouths in full cry upon a man of character, American press), gives it as his opinion, that year after year, and through every state in after examining carefully the late books of the Union,' but can harm him no more than travels in the United States, he has found the the idle wind. They are read, despised, and most recent of them-though neither piquing the next day utterly forgotten.' We do not itself on philosophy nor profundity, though know all that may lurk in that expression-a neither ill-humoured nor presuming-by far man of character-but we do know that there the most gay, the most spirited, the most has not been a public man engaged in the effective and complete, in its delineation of service of the American state, since the death American life and character. He quotes, in of Washington, whose means of usefulness a capital translation, some of the comic have not been impaired by these infamous sketches of Mr. Dickens, and remarks of assailants. But we discussed this fully on a them that no doubt they may be charged as former occasion, and will only put it to this dealing with petty and insignificant detail, honest writer now, whether on greater reflecbut that this very detail it is which reveals tion he would feel as sure, supposing these the peculiarities of such a people. "It is prints to be 'despised,' that they would still by those familiar and minute facts," he ob- continue to be 'read.' Of him, and of others serves, "that you arrive at the true under- with the same cultivated mind and lofty purstanding of a nation, as yet too young and pose, we would earnestly implore to look already too powerful, too informed and yet abroad from the small and select community too advanced, to have escaped the suscepti- in which they live, and understand, without bilities, the weaknesses, the bullyings, the further compromise, or hindrances self-im'niaiseries des parvenus.' I prefer these posed, the mischiefs of this wide-spread pessketches, for my own part," he adds, "to tilence. We believe that, by forming a rallearned dissertations." And this preference, we may safely predict, will be one day pretty general.

lying point for all that is good and virtuous in America, they have it in their power to stay the plague. Nor are we without the confident hope of having, at no distant day, to record some gallant and successful effort towards that great end.

It will have been seen, in the course of our present remarks, that we are not without some expectation, fairly grounded, of a possi- At any rate, when we meet the Americans ble and early revolt of the educated classes next, it will be with some pleasanter things of America against the odious tyranny which to say of them. It is our intention to exawe have thus done our best to expose. We mine the more general characteristics of the have noted what we are fain to believe plain original works they have put forth within the symptoms of its having already begun. In last few years, as their claim to the com

mencement of a literature of their own. [rature, we could not mean to imply anything Our former remark on this subject has been so manifestly unjust, as that natives of Amegreatly misunderstood, if not greatly misre- rica, since the establishment of their Republic, presented. When we doubted if the foun- have not written many able and admirable dations had yet been laid of a NATIONAL lite-books.

SHORT REVIEWS OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS.

Reise in Ungarn. (A Journey through Hungary). Von J. G. KOHL. Dresden and Leipzig. 1842.

just the sort of solitude that most people would have found it extremely easy to reconcile themselves to."

appurtenances, the glittering hermitage must soon have cloyed, and M. Kohl must have become conscious that the demon ennui was advancing to attack him in his fastness, when he could assign the following motive for selection of a breakfast:

And certainly the account of his stately secluTHESE two pleasant volumes form a sequel to sion among the sumptuous apartments, maguithe Hundred days in Austria,' of which a more ficent picture galleries, and extensive libraries detailed account is given in another part of our of his absent host, are well calculated to awaken present number. The tour through Hungary, strange covetings to those who sit ensconced in like that through Austria, is exclusively a per-city-bred apologies for rooms. Yet with all its sonal narrative, without any of those instructive chapters which gave so great a value to the author's works on Russia, and in which he so well presented to his readers, at once, the result of his general observations, while he conveyed, frequently in the course of a few pages, the most vivid picture of the country and its inhabitants. Still the same lively and amusing tone, which has distinguished all M. Kohl's works of a similar kind, pervades the volumes of Hungary; and in proportion as the country is one less known than Austria, the author enters more into minute details, appears to be more at home himself, and provides better entertainment for his guests. Hungary has now, thanks to steamboats and railroads, become easy of access, and M. Kohl's account will be sure to increase the number of visitors; but people must carry with them the knowledge of some language beside their own, or they must not be surprised, like some of the tourists M. Kohl makes free to laugh at, if they derive neither much information nor much amusement from their excursions.

The author, on leaving Vienna, proceeded towards the Neusiedler Lake, where he seems to have spent some days most agreeably in the castle of a Hungarian noble, from whom, previously to leaving the capital, he had received the necessary recommendation to the intendants of the baronial seat.

"While I remained here, I might have fancied myself the owner rather than the guest of this noble mansion. There are many people who talk of the charms of solitude. Now I think the hermitage of which I found myself thus suddenly possessed, was

"I was asked on the following morning what I would have for breakfast, coffee, chocolate, or the à l'Anglaise. I chose the last-named, because it brings with it a number of little occupations that are particularly welcome to a solitary hermit, such as breaking the shells of his eggs, leisurely spoonslices of roasted bread, and carefully picking up the ing out their contents, spreading butter upon his crumbs that happen to be scattered about during the operation."

From the hermitage our author had but a short distance to go before he reached the cele brated Castle of Esterhaz, the seat of the wealthy family whose possessions reach from Neusiedler to the Platten Lake, and form probably the largest private estate in the world. The railroad from Vienna to Raab has made the prince's chateau so easy of access, that we are not surprised to hear that a crowd of sight-seers had assembled for the purpose of feasting their eyes on the splendour of a mansion on the erection of which millions were expended, but which has of late years been abandoned by its princely owners, for other and more favourably situated palaces. The golden days for the castle of Esterhaz were in the reign of Maria Theresa. The castle was then distinguished for fêtes as splendid as those of Versailles under Louis XIV. At

present it is the chief residence of the Esterhazy, its place by the side of M. Kohl's best works of family, where the state they hold might put a similar character.

1. Le Château des Pyrénées.-2. Maison de Campagne à Vendre. Par FREDERIC SOULIE. Paris. 1843.

many a sovereign prince to the blush. At Eisenstadt too, the capital of the prince's dominions, is what is called the central administration of the estates, which occupy no insignificant portion of Western Hungary. The entire administration is under the direction of a president, a kind of prime minister on a small scale, who is assisted by four counsellors. The estates are then divided into five divisions, and at the head of each is a prefect, who has often to make a two days' journey when he wants to travel THE first of these tales addresses itself to a class from one point to another in the territory con- of readers, whose tastes may be presumed to fided to his care. Under these prefects, again, differ widely from those who will be pleased are the directors, each of whom has the man- with the second. Those who read for the gratiagement of what is considered a separate estate,fication of that sort of excitement, which, overwith its little army of stewards, collectors, &c. looking nice observation of character and manSome of these separate estates contain as many ners, or the display of passion, finds its source as twenty or thirty villages, but on an average in the pursuit of the plot of an entangled story, seldom more than eight or ten. will be gratified to their hearts' content with 'Le

It is difficult to conceive what could originally Château des Pyrénées.' They will have to folhave induced the Esterhazy family to select so low a certain Prince Puzzano, who changes his detestable a site for a castle, as is that of Ester-costume as rapidly and as often as the once celhaz. It is situated on the margin of a hideous ebrated Monsieur Alexandre. He is a corsair, marsh; which is totally inaccessible, except in monk, sorcerer, muleteer, &c., &c., alternately; frosty weather, or in summers more than usually now he is disturbing the peace of families, and, dry; and the exhalations of which cannot but anon, receiving the dying confession of the pri be highly deleterious, as is shown by the pres-oress of a convent, by virtue of an authority from ence of a great number of cretins and cripples of every kind, in all the villages bordering on this great swamp, known under the name of the Hansag.

But

the pope. He is in fact a sort of walking dissolving view. By his means an avaricious lawyer, whose wife he has dishonoured, is shut up in a madhouse. Then the prince, whose crimes At Raab our author embarked in a steamboat, are punished by disappointment in an unworthy and went down the Danube to Orsova. These son, visits his victim, the lawyer, and is by him steamboats on the river seem to offer irresistible stabbed with a knife. The end of the lawyer's attractions to travellers, of whom few venture wife is not less fatal. She has retired to the into the interior of the country-where bad lonely convent of St. Benoit in the Pyrenees, roads, worse inns, and a certain throat-cutting whose beautiful situation is well contrasted with monomania which is supposed to prevail among the prison-like nakedness of its walls. some of the population, have long had the effect thirty years' penance and seclusion have not proof deterring tourists from solitary rambles. We cured her a peaceful deathbed, for she regrets have an amusing account of the places along the having sacrificed the world, without finding tranriver; and a very lively description of the author's quillity, nor can she at the last moment exclude visit to a Turkish pacha, whither he was accom- certain worldly wishes, the appearance of which panied by a whole posse of health officers, to she takes to be evidence of Heaven's wrath. We see that he did not come into that immediate have, too, the history of another unhappy fecontact with the unbelievers, which would have male, who, rather than betray her own shame, subjected him to a quarantine of some weeks, and the interests of a daughter, hides herself in on his return into the dominions of his Austrian the same savage retirement, and being then disMajesty. Several highly entertaining chapters covered by the same daughter, falls dead from are devoted to a description of that singular por-disappointment at the fruitlessness of fifteen tion of the emperor's territory, known under the years' dull wretchedness. We know not if all denomination of the Military Frontier; a narrow this be intended to operate as a moral example; strip of land, which separates the Austrian em- but, as we have indicated the class which can pire from Turkey; but which is likely to lose alone find pleasure in a romance of this kindmuch of its importance in proportion as those being made up of incidents which cross each provinces of Turkey that border on Austria, other without connection, and which do not delay assume more and more a character of indepen-pursuit by unnecessary display of sentiment, or dence, and draw closer those bonds, by which portraiture of character-we think we have they are beginning to connect themselves with dropped sufficient hints to stimulate the curiosity the great republic of civilized Europe. of such readers. They do not, happily for us, require any more at our hands.

From Orsova our traveller returned to Vienna, through the interior of Hungary, visiting the Turn now to the Maison de Campagne à Vencelebrated baths of Mehadia, traversing the dre. It is a light and pleasantly written bagafertile plains of the Bannat, and spending a short telle, reading like a smart vaudeville turned into time with some German and Walachian colo- a tale. Yet, unpretending as it is in form, it nists, of whose way of life he does not fail to presents some of those happy turns of sentiment, present us amusing descriptions. Upon the which charm us the more because of their unwhole, the tour in Hungary is worthy of taking expected appearance, and because they lead to