If we look at pages 208, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, we shall find that the word lady and ladies, which sound so mawkish and vulgar to English ears, occur fourteen times!! There is not a single instance above in which the word woman might not have been used with more propriety than lady, and yet this consistent reformer of abuses throws ridicule over a whole country for the very limited use that is made of the term by the worst specimens of our community!

Again:-"It seems to me that the Americans are generally unaware how one bad habit of their own, springing out of this very temper, [she has been eulogizing their cheerful and generous help of their neighbours in time of trouble,] goes to aggravate the evil offices of strangers. It is to me the most prominent of their bad habits."

This bad habit peculiar to the Americans is flattery. "The public orator flatters the people, the people flatter their orators; clergymen praise their flocks, and their flocks stand amazed at the excellence of their clergymen ; Sunday school teachers admire their pupils, and the scholars magnify their teachers. As to guests, especially from abroad, hospitality requires that some dark corner should be provided in every room, where they may look when their praises are being told to their very faces."

We wonder in what dark corner Dr. F. is to hide his head, for such inordinate praises-such fulsome flattery were never before administered. He must be thoroughly ashamed and mortified at being thus singled out from eighteen or twenty millions of people, to be made a jest of. What-Dr. F. "the most remarkable and the greatest man she saw in the United States!" If this be not flattery of the grossest kind, we do not understand the term. We doubt whether he will thank her for an epithet which is to stick to him for life. He will scarcely relish to be called the "greatest man in America ;" or, what is more likely, "Harriet Martineau's great man."

Does this lady, or woman, or perhaps she would rather be called Miss-does this Miss pretend to say that the practice is peculiar to the United States. Let her look at the gross flattery of all classes in England-the mean, servile, cringing flattery when an inferior speaks to one of those above him. It is on record in every page of their past and present history, and with no one is it more conspicuous and gross than with Miss Martineau. Every one recollects the anecdote that this woman related of that radical nobleman, Lord Durham; she eulogized him as one of the most enchanting and perfect of men-just as we hear she eulogized the Lord Chancellor Brougham before he drew away from her party, when they meditated an overthrow of the government. She speaks of our civility and forbearance; well may she do so, for if it were not true, we

should let her know that Lord Durham's character was well known to us, not on account of his deep, doubly dyed radicalism, but for his temper-his morose temper-not so morose, as exciting and uncomplying, nay, not so morose, exciting and uncomplying, as harsh and passionate.

We could multiply without end strong instances of this woman's inconsistencies, but we must pass to other portions of her precious patch-work-for patch-work it may be called-as every one will perceive, at once, that the arrangement of her work into chapters and sections is a mere sham. The theme she has chosen, to be sure, has a beginning, a middle, and an end; Aristotle himself could not have objected to it on this score. The beginning is agrarianism, abolition, amalgamation, Malthusianism, and radicalism, with a strong dash of egg and milk-ism the middle, ditto, with a still stronger mixture of humbugism—and the end, ditto, with a compound of conceit and maudlinism, which surpasses all that has gone before it.

Every one that reads the book will agree with us in our estimate of her talents and her work, and we may add, also, without fear of contradiction, that she has rendered herself liable to a still stronger objection than any that we have urged against her -that of giving her best friends-friends for whom she expreses the warmest interest-a sly cut, whenever she can do it without detection. Even Dr. F., the "greatest man in America," is made to appear craven, by implication, when journeying with him through mud and mire, corduroy roads, lake steamboats, and scantily supplied inus. In eulogizing Dr. Channing-a panegyric to which he is justly entitled, and which has never been withheld from him-her spiteful nature peeps out, and she concludes thus:-"Dr. Channing has an unfortunate habit of suiting his conversation to the supposed state of mind of the person he is conversing with, or to that person's supposed knowledge on a subject on which he wants information. The adaptation, not being natural, cannot be true, and something is thus given out which is the reflection of nobody's mind; and the conversation is fruitless or worse.”

After speaking of Miss Sedgwick in the most exalted terms, so as to gratify her friends-and who that knows her is not her friend? this sly slanderer, after speaking thus warmly and justly, adds a stinger, and, by way of note too, in order to render it more pungent and conspicuous. What right had this person to relate an anecdote never intended for, and which never would have met, the public eye but for her base spirit-thus justifying one of her grudgingly yielded concessions, "that the Americans are a ready-witted people, and catch at the meaning instantly." We see that Miss Sedgwick and Dr. Channing did not go with her in her programme of radicalism, Malthusianism, agraVOL. XXII. - No. 43.

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rianism, abolition, and amalgamation. It is this which has induced her to give both Dr. Channing and this highly esteemed lady an egg-shell full of flattery with one hand, and a strong corrective with the other. We have shown how nicely she disposes of Dr. Channing-a man who ranks far too high even to be flattered by such a person as Miss Martineau. Let us show the reader how she cancels all that she says of Miss Sedgwick.

"The author of Home arranged the Sunday, in her book, somewhat differently from the usual custom; describing the family, whose home she pictured, as spending the Sunday afternoon on the water after a laborious week, and an attendance on public worship in the morning. Religious conversation was described as going on through the day. So much offence was taken at the idea of a Sunday sail, that the editor of the book requested the author to alter the chapter; the first print being proposed to be cancelled. I am sorry to say that she did alter it. If she was converted to the popular superstitions (which could scarcely be conceived) no more is to be said. If not, it was a matter of principle which she ought not to have yielded. If books are to be altered, an author's convictions to be unrepresented, to avoid shocking religious prejudices, there is a surrender, not only of the author's noblest prerogative, but of his highest duty."

Can there be a more insidious, yet malicious reproof than this!-of one of her best friends too?

That a shallow, insincere woman- -a woman who at all times declared that she did not intend to write a work on America at the very moment she was making notes for the purpose that she should rebuke the author of Home for having given up her principles, is too ridiculous. But we can tell this false friend, that instead of bringing down a host of angry fanatics to annihilate the author, which certainly was her intention, she has gained more friends by it.

It is the very perfection of a woman's character that she yields, in small matters, gracefully, to those whose interests are to be consulted. The author of Home knew that there was no point of vital importance involved in the "sail-boat." She did not conceive that she was surrendering one of her noblest prerogatives that she was "shrinking from her highest duty"when she changed the sail-boat for the "conversation table." If her publisher thought fit to make a representation of his fears, the author was bound to consider those fears and to allay them. He feared, and very justly, that, as the majority of readers were opposed to such a mode of spending half of the Sabbath, their displeasure would injure the sale of the book. It was the author's duty to listen to their fair representation, and her

having so altered the offensive part shows her good sense and her sweetness of temper.

But what right had Miss Martineau to place this fact-known only to very few-so conspicuously before the public eye? For what purpose did she tell the world that the author was friendly to bodily recreation on part of the Sabbath? We know her motive; it was to make the author unpopular among the strict church people. And she magnified the importance of it until she would make us believe that the author's honourable and upright principles were involved in this alteration of a common incident!

There is nothing too high or too low for Miss Martineau's criticism, and she despatches her subject with a celerity and self-complacency that are truly laughable. We should really like to know how it happened that Washington Irving chanced to affront the lady-it must amuse him to read her predictions"His writings have had their meed. He has lived in the sunshine of fame for many years, and in the pleasant consciousness that he has been a benefactor to the present generation, by shedding some gentle, benign influence on many intervals of their rough, busy lives. More than this, he has probably not expected, and more than this he does not seem likely to achieve. If any of his works live, it will be his Columbus, and the latter of his productions will be the first forgotten."

Nothing suits her; she finds fault with Bryant because he has not done more. Has Wordsworth obtained his undying reputation by any elaborate epic? It is to his smaller, insulated pieces that he owes his celebrity, and we doubt whether the "Excursion" has greatly added to his fame. Bryant is a true poet; his mind, though delicately and healthfully organized, as a whole, is capable of perceiving individual beauties, and of painting them in parts, so as to form cabinet pictures. Lord Byron let his thoughts run into cantos and long poems, but he could not stop to breathe the healthy yet enchanting strains that Bryant pours forth at short intervals. If all the beautiful, new, expressive, and faithful touches of natural feelings and imagery were selected from Lord Byron's works and placed together at one view, we should find that, as a poet, he would not compete with Bryant.

It is an easy matter to tell a poet to "live for his gifts," and to say that "if his future years could be devoted to clear poetical activity," "looking up," like the true artist, "to his dignity and his calling, that dignity and that calling may prove [why does she not say will prove?] to be as lofty, as they no doubt appeared in the reveries of his boyhood; and he may be listened to as lovingly, over the expanse of future time, as he already is over that of the ocean."

Is this all that Bryant is to expect! Devote his future years to clear poetical activity! But it is all of a piece with this strange woman's consistency; she forgets that poets are poor, and that, not being Malthusian, they have families to support. This clear poetical activity must be curbed for an activity that shall keep his family in the respectable sphere of life which he has earned for them by his genius. We should advise Mr. Bryant-only that he does not want any advice of this sortto go on as he has done; take care of his pecuniary fortunes in this life, and posterity will take care of his fame.

Every hackneyed writer dashes out with a regret that a poet does not "look up like the true artist to his dignity and his calling," when at the very moment he is looking down, like a true husband and father, to a whole pair of shoes and wholesome bread and butter for his family-perhaps butcher's meat. Malthusians should not encourage a man to spend his whole life in writing poetry: he would be sadly out at elbows if this sect-treading so closely on the heels of agrarianism—should get the ascendency. An agrarian could not afford to pay a man for speculations of genius, brilliant as they might be; and if he could afford it he would not do it, for it is against his creed-work, work, hardy work, is the order of the day with them.

But every thing is discussed in this book in the most flippant or bombastic manner; she finishes the most engrossing subjects with an old Joe Miller joke, which some one of our wags has palmed upon her as original-"Who killed Abel?" "General Jackson." Our early version was "Who killed Abel?" and the answer, "Oliver Cromwell." Then her conversations with different individuals are so evidently with the same gentleman and lady, Mr. and Mrs. Jack Straw, that we grow weary of their company. What fine speeches she makes, too, for the eldest son of this same Mr. Jack Straw. The young man utters the following sentiments when she asks him whether he knew what the law was, in the case of that "abolition apostle," Garrison. We allude to his rough handling in Boston.

"He told me of the sorrow of heart with which he saw the law the life of the republic-set at naught by those who should best understand its nature and value. He saw the time was come for the true men of the republic to oppose a cold front to the insolence of the rich and powerful, who were bearing down the liberties of the people for a matter of opinion. The young men, he saw, must brace themselves up against the tyranny of the moneyed mob, and defend the law, or the liberties of the country were gone."

Only that the young gentleman who proposes to show a cold front to the insolent and powerful rich men of the country, is of