I was walking to a house where I was engaged to dine, the other evening, when a fellow near me raised one of the most appalling street cries it was ever the misfortune of human ears to endure. The words were “Eve-ning Cou-ri-er—great news—Duke of Wellington—Evening Courier,” screeched without intermission, in a tremendous cracked voice, and with lungs that defied exhaustion. Such a cry, bursting suddenly on one, had the effect to make him believe that some portentous event had just broke upon an astounded world. I stopped and was about to follow the fellow, in order to buy a paper, when another cry, in a deep bass voice, that harmonized with the first in awful discord, roared from the opposite side of the street, “Contradiction of Evening Courier—more facts—truth developed—contradiction—Evening Courier.” In this manner did these raven-throated venders of lies roam the streets, until distance swallowed their yells—worthy agents of the falsehoods and follies of the hour.
This little occurrence has brought to mind the subject of the daily and periodical press, and that of literature, in general, in England, and the duty of communicating to you some of the facts that have reached me in relation to all these interests, which may have escaped one residing at a distance, and who can only know them as they are presented to the world, which is commonly under false appearances.
I presume it is a general rule, that the taste, intelligence, principles, tone, and civilization of a nation will be reflected in its popular publications, which will include the productions of its periodical press of every variety. The only circumstance that will qualify the operation of this law must be sought in the institutions. If these are popular, the rule is pretty absolute; since the press, by being addressed to an average intellect, will be certain to remain on a level with its constituency. Viewed in this light, and compared with the rest of the world rather than with moral and philosophical truths in the abstract, the American press is highly creditable to the American nation, corrupt, ignorant, and vulgar as so much of it notoriously is. If, however, we look to a higher standard, and consider the press as a means of instruction, we find less to take pride in. The first of these facts is owing less to the merits of the public at home, than to the misfortunes of masses of men in other countries; and the second to a system which has created an average opinion that over-shadows all ordinary attempts to resist it. The prevailing characteristic of America is mediocrity.
In England, though there are local political constituencies of the lowest scale of reason and knowledge, they exist as servants rather than as masters. The press has no motive to address them, and of course it aims at higher objects. But, while the strictly political constituencies of England are scarcely of any account in the action of the government, there is a public opinion that may be termed extra-constitutional, that is of great importance, and which it is necessary to manage with tact and delicacy. This common sentiment acts through various channels, of which a single example will serve to illustrate my meaning.
A rich man on ’change may not possess a single political right, beyond his general franchises as a subject. He has no vote, and so far as direct representation is concerned, no power in the state.
This is the situation of thousands in England, for while the government is strictly one of money, seats in parliament being bought as notoriously as commissions in the army, the system is one which does not give money its power through qualifications, but by a competition in large sums. But, while this stock-jobber may have no vote, in a government so factitious, so dependent on industry, so much in debt, so willing to borrow, and so sensitive on the subject of pecuniary claims, his opinion and goodwill become matters of the last moment.
I have selected this instance, because the worst features of the English press are connected with the mystifications, false principles, falsehoods, calumnies national and personal, and flagrant contradictions that are uttered precisely with a view to conciliate the varying and vacillating interests that depend on the fluctuations and hazards of trade, the public funds, and all those floating concerns of life, which, being by their very nature more liable to vicissitudes than homely industry, most completely demonstrate the truth of the profound aphorism which teaches us that “the love of money is the root of all evil.” It is not necessary to come to England to seek examples of the effect of such an influence, for our own city presses exhibit it, in a degree that is only qualified by the circumstances of a state of society, which, by being a good deal less complicated, and less liable to derangement, calls for less watchfulness and editorial ferocity.
As a whole, then, I should say the predominant characteristic of the English press, is dependent on the necessity of addressing itself to the support of interests so factitious, so certain, sooner or later, to give way, and, at the same time so all-important to the power and prosperity of the nation, for the time being. The struggles of parties are subservient to these ends, on which not only party but national power depend. If it has been said truly, that the sun, in its daily course around the earth, is accompanied by the roll of the British morning drum, it might with equal justice have been added, and followed by the sophisms to which interests so conflicting are the parent.
In guarding these interests all parties unite. In this respect there is no difference between the Times and the Courier, the Edinburgh and the Quarterly. They may quarrel with each other about the fruits of these national advantages, which they proclaim to be national rights, but they will quarrel with all mankind to secure them to Great Britain. It must be remembered that vituperation and calumny are the natural resource of those who are weak in truth and argument, as stones and clubs are the weapons of children. A shameless, ill-concealed, national cupidity, then, I take to be the predominant quality of the English press. I do not mean that the man of England is a whit more selfish than the man of America, or the man of France, but that he lives in a condition of high pecuniary prosperity, (always a condition of peril) and under circumstances of constant and peculiar jeopardy, that keep the evil passions and evil practices of wealth in incessant excitement.
You know the mechanical appearance of the English press already. There is much talent, mingled with much vulgar ignorance, employed in the news departments; the journals, in this particular, appearing to address themselves to a wider range of tastes and information, than is usual even with us. Many of our journals, even in the towns, are essentially vulgar, in their tone and language, adapting both to the level of a very equivocal scale of tastes and manners, but I do not remember ever to have seen in an American journal of the smallest pretensions to respectability, as low and as intrinsically vulgar paragraphs as frequently are seen here, in journals of the first reputation. The language of the shop, such as “whole figure,” “good article,” “chalking up,” “shelling out,” and other Pearl-street terms, frequently find their way into the leading articles of a New York paper, whereas those of London are almost always worded in better taste; but, on the other hand, one daily sees the meanest and lowest cockneyisms, united with infamous grammar, (not faults of hurry and inadvertency, but faults of downright vulgarity) in the minor communications of the English press. Of this quality are the common expressions of “think of me (my) writing a letter,” “he was agreeable (he agreed) to go,” “I am recommended (advised) to stay,” &c. &c.
It is the fashion to extol the talents of the Times. I have now been an attentive reader of this journal for several years, and I must say its reputation strikes me as being singularly unmerited. That it occasionally contains a pretty strong article is true, for its circulation would secure the casual contributions of able men, but, as a whole, I rank it much below several other journals in this country, and very much below some in Paris. It is said this paper reflects the times, and that its name has been given with a view to this character. The simple solution of all this is, I fancy, that the paper is treated as a property, and that it looks to circulation more than to principles, humouring prejudices with a view to popularity. The mere calling of names, and the bold vituperation, for which the Times is notorious, does not require any talent, though nothing is more apt to impose on common understandings. The Morning Chronicle appears to me to possess the most true talent of any journal in London. This appearance, however, may be owing to the fact of its espousing liberal and just principles, for, unlike most of its contemporaries, it has no need of resorting to sophisms and laboured mystifications to maintain a state of things which is false in itself; for it should never be forgotten, in contemplating all the favourite theories of England, that the argument has been adapted to the fact, and not the fact to the argument.[4] I have seen occasional articles from a journal called the Scotsman, that appear to be written with the simple straight-forward power of truth and honesty. There is a lucid common sense about this paper, which gives it a high place in the scale of the journals of the day. No article that I have ever met with in either of these two papers betrays the cloven foot of the pecuniary interests mentioned, though I cannot take upon myself to say that they are entirely free from the imputation. Still they have always appeared to me to be conducted with too much talent, to lend themselves to a practice that one would think must offend the moral sense of every right-thinking and right-feeling man.
Mr. Canning, not long before his death, openly vaunted the moral influence of England, by way of supporting his political schemes. Nothing is more evident than the fact that the journals of this country frequently admit articles that are intended to produce an effect in other states. I think they over-estimate their influence, however, for I do not believe that the opinion of England has any material power, except in America. As a people the English are not liked on the continent of Europe, and I think the disposition is rather to cavil at their truths, than to receive their fallacies. The aristocracy of England has a great influence, by its wealth, power, and style, on the desires of all the other European aristocracies, which very naturally wish themselves to be as well off, but the dogmas of this school would hardly do for the daily journals. I do not say that the English press totally overlooks this class and its interests; on the contrary, it does much to sustain both, but it is by indirect means, and not by argument, or by appeals to the passions. It tells of the liberal acts of individuals of the body, recapitulates the amount of rent that has been remitted to the tenantry, and the number of blankets that has been distributed to the poor. The left hand is studiously made to know what the right hand has done in this way, among the great and noble, while the charities of the more humble are usually permitted to pass in silence. Not satisfied with this, the world is regularly enlightened on the subject of the large entertainments given by the great, the names of the guests, and not unfrequently with the dresses of the women. The ravenous appetite of the secondary classes to know something of their superiors, is fed daily in this extraordinary manner, (the practice exists nowhere else, I believe,) and thousands of dreamy bachelors and prim maidens, pass their days in the high enjoyment of contemplating at a distance, the rare felicities of a state of being to which a nearer approach is denied them, and which a nearer approach would destroy.
I remember when I came to London in 1826, to have laughed at an account of the manner in which Lord A., and Lady B., and Sir Thomas C., had passed their mornings, with the usual gossip of fashionable life that the article contained, when an American who had been some time in England, gravely assured me that there were thousands in the nation, who would not buy the paper were this momentous stuff omitted. There have been books, for a very long time, which contain the pedigrees, titles, creations, and family alliances of the peers, and which furnish mental aliment for hundreds of devout admirers of aristocracy. These books, which are useful enough in a certain way, when it is remembered that the peers control the first empire of modern times, have been extended to the baronets and knights, and latterly to the gentry of the country. The whole forms a curious study, when one is disposed to ferret out the true principle of the government, and the modes by which families have attained power,[5] but they are read with avidity, in England, as a means of holding an intercourse with beings, who, as respects the mass, form quite another order of creation.
But if the journals, in this manner, contribute to support the aristocracy by feeding these morbid cravings of the excluded, they do more towards overturning it, just now, by their open and rude attacks. I do not say, that I have ever met with an Englishman, who is not, in some degree, under the influence of the national deference for nobility, for to be frank with you, I can scarcely recall twenty Americans, who are exempt from the same weakness; but there are a good many who, by drawing manfully on their reason and knowledge, are enabled to detect the fallacies of the system, and who do not scruple to expose them in the public journals. These men, of whom I may have made the acquaintance of a dozen, remind me of the lasting influence which the ghost stories of the nursery produce on the human mind. We drink in these tales eagerly in childhood, and, in after life, though reason and reflection teach us their absurdity, few of us go through a church-yard in a dark night, without fancying that its sheeted tenants may rise from their graves. Thus do the boldest of the English, when philosophising the most profoundly on the wrongs and inexpediency of aristocratic rule, look stealthily over their shoulders, as if they saw a lord! You may judge of the profoundness of the impression, here, by its remains in America. Certainly, the mass of the American people, care no more for a lord, than they care for a wood-chuck; perhaps, also the feeling of the real gentry of the country, is getting to be very much what it ought to be, on such a subject, seeing no more than a man of the upper classes of another country, in an English nobleman; but take the class immediately below those who are accustomed to our highest associations, and there is still a good deal of the sentiment of the tailor, in their manner of contemplating an English nobleman. Alas! it is much easier to declare war, and gain victories in the field, and establish a political independence, than to emancipate the mind. Thrice happy is it for America, that her facts are so potent, as to be irresistable; for were our fate left to opinion, I fear we should prove ourselves to be any thing but philosophers.
It will not be doing justice to the English press, if we overlook its disposition to indulge in coarse, national, and personal vituperation. The habit of resorting to low, personal abuse, against all who thwart the views of their government, or who have the manliness to promulgate their opinions of the national characteristics, let it be done as honestly, as temperately, or as justly as it may, is too well known to admit of dispute. It may be a natural weakness in man, to attempt to ridicule his enemies, but the English calumniate them. They calumniated every distinguished man of our revolution; no general can gain a victory over them, and escape their vituperation; and the moral enormities attributed to Napoleon, had their origin in the same national propensity. Some of the English, with whom I have spoken on this subject, while they have admitted this offensive trait in their press, have ascribed it to the morality of the nation, to whose wounded sensibilities, the abuse is addressed! This is very much like imputing uncharitableness to sins, to a Christian conscience. Certainly, I am no vindicator of the personal, or political, ethics of Napoleon. As respects his morals, I presume, they were very much like those of other Frenchmen of his time and opportunities, but if the sensibilities of England, were so exaggerated, on such subjects, why did they go abroad in quest of examples to scourge? I doubt, if there be any thing worse in the private career of Napoleon, than the intrigue with the “Fair Quaker,” in that of George III., or any thing approaching that, which every well-informed man here tells me, is the present condition of the court of Windsor. Did you ever hear the familiar French song of Malbrook?
Malbrook, you know, was the Duke of Marlborough, and the song is the French mode of revenging the nation, for the manifold floggings it received at his hands. The wisdom of thus killing an enemy in doggerel, whom they could neither slay, nor defeat, may be questioned, but imagine, for a moment, that Wellington, and his fortunes had been French, and then fancy the abuse he would have received. I never yet met with a Frenchman, who had not a most sincere antipathy to the Duke of Wellington; they tell fierce stories about the Bois de Boulogne, and other similar absurdities, the outbreakings of the mortified pride of a military people, but I never yet saw, or heard a personal calumny against him, in France, unless it was connected directly with his public acts. They say, he permitted the terms of the capitulation of Paris, to be violated; but they do not enter into his private life, to villify the man. I have, sometimes, been afraid, this tendency to blackguardism, was “Anglo-Saxon,” for it manifests itself in our own journals, more particularly among the editors of New England, who, if they have more of the sturdy common sense, and masculine propensities of the Fatherland, than their more southern contemporaries, have also the coarse-mindedness. I have industriously sought the cause of this peculiarity, and at one time, I was disposed to attribute it to a low taste in the mass of the nation, which I again ascribed to the effects of the institutions, just as with us, the strongest term of reproach among the blacks, is for one to call his fellow, a “nigger;” but observation has convinced me, that this national taste is only secondary, as a cause. The press now caters to it, it is true, but it first created it. I believe, its origin is to be found in the vulgarity inherent in the active management of capricious commercial interests, the factitious state of the national power, and the genuine and unaffected outbreakings of a pecuniary cupidity. Look at home, and you will see the presses under the control of those, who have the management of floating interests, tainted by the same vice. “The love of money, is the root of all evil,” and the propensity to blackguard those who thwart the rapacity of the grasping, is one of its most innocent enormities.
I think it very evident, that there is much writing in this country, that is especially intended for “our market.” The English, who control the reviews and journals, are fully aware of the influence they wield over the public mind in America, and you may be quite certain, that a nation, whose very power is the result of combination and method, does not neglect means so obvious to attain its ends. There is scarcely a doubt, that articles, unfavourable to America, low, blackguard abuse that was addressed to the least worthy of the national propensities of the English, were prepared under the direction of the government, and inserted in the Quarterly Review. Mr. Gifford admitted as much as this, to an American of my acquaintance, who has distinctly informed me of the fact. I presume the same is true, in reference to the daily press. Some fifty paragraphs have met my eye, since I have been here, in which the writers have pretty directly exulted in their power over the American mind. This power is wielded to advance the interests of England, and, as a matter of course, to thwart our own. It probably exceeds any thing of which you have any idea. Whether the English government actually employs writers about our own presses or not, at present, I cannot say, but it has, unquestionably, agents of this sort, on the continent of Europe, and I think it highly probable that it has them in America.
We talk of the predestination of the Turks, but I question if the earth contains a people who so recklessly abandon their dearest, and most important interests, so completely to chance, as ourselves. Both the government and the people, appear to me, to trust implicitly to Providence for their future safety, abandoning even opinion to the control of their most active enemies, and shamelessly deserting those who would serve them, unless they happen to be linked with the monster, party. The chief of a political faction may do almost any thing with impunity, but he who defends his country, unconnected with party, is abandoned to the tender mercies of the common enemy. In this respect, we are like the countryman in a crowd of pick-pockets, full of ourselves, but utterly unconscious of our risks.
The young Englishman who aspires to fortune will select his object, and support it, or attack it, as the case may be, with his pen. He will endeavour to counteract democracy, to sustain the English Free Trade system, to excite prejudice against America, to arouse antipathy to Russia, to prove France ought not to possess Antwerp, or, to uphold some other national interest, and, if a clever man, he is certain to be cherished by that government and rewarded. Some of the most eminent men England has produced, have forced themselves into notice in this manner.
Let us fancy an American to run a similar career. So little is the nation brought before the European world that the chances are, as one hundred to one, he would attract no notice here; but, we will imagine him in possession of the ear of Europe, and able to bring his matter before its bar. If England were opposed in either her prejudices, or interests, he would as a matter of course, be vituperated; for whom did the English press ever spare, under such circumstances? No doubt, a thousand honest and generous pens would be ready to be their countrymen’s vindicator; no doubt the government would throw its broad mantle around its friend, and manifest to the world its sense of its own dignity and interests? No such thing; the abuse of the English press would produce even more effect in America than in England; its tales, however idle or improbable, would be swallowed with avidity, as tales from the capital circulate in the provinces, and, as for the government, it already has a character here for confiding in those who openly repudiate its principles! Well may it be said, that we have reason to be thankful to God for our blessings, for if God did not take especial care of us, we should be without protection at all.
I have been much struck, here, with the little impression that is made by the reviews. Exceptions certainly exist, but the critical remarks that, written here, produce no visible effect, would give a work its character with us. Every body, that is at all above the vulgar, appears to understand that reviewing “is the great standing mystification of the age.”
In making all these comparisons, however, we are too apt to overlook the statistical facts of America. A short digression will explain my meaning. If we speak of the civilization of England in the abstract, it is not easy to employ exaggerated terms, for it challenges high praise; but when we come to compare it to our own, we are to take the whole subject in connection. Were the entire population of the United States compressed into the single state of New York, we should get something like the proportions between surface and people, that exist in England. In reflecting on such a fact, one of the first things that strike the mind, is connected with the immense physical results that are dependent on such a circumstance. The mean of the population of New York for the last thirty years, has been considerably below a million; but had it been fourteen millions during the same period, leaving the difference in wealth out of the question, how little would even England have to boast over us! Losing sight entirely of the primary changes that are dependent on a settlement, and which perhaps seem to be more than they really are, we have actually done as much in the same time as England, in canals, rail-roads, bridges, steam-boats, and all those higher modes of improvement, that mark an advanced state of society. These are the things of which we may justly be proud, and they are allied to the great principle on which the future power and glory of the nation are to be based. They are strictly the offspring of the institutions.
We offer our weak side when we lay claim to the refinements, tastes, and elegancies of an older, or, in our case, it would be better to say, a more compact condition of society. The class to which these exclusively belong is every where relatively small. I firmly believe it is larger with us, than among the same number of people, in any other country, though this opinion is liable to a good deal of qualification. We know little or nothing of music, or painting, or statuary, or any of those arts whose fruits must be studied to be felt and understood; but, in more essential things, we have even sometimes the advantage; while in others, again, owing to our colonial habits of thought, we have still less reason to be proud.
To apply these facts to our present subject, you will easily understand the manner in which a nation so situated will feel the influence of opinions of an inferior quality. In all communities men will defer to actual superiority, when it acts steadily and in sufficient force to create a standard. Unluckily manners, tastes, knowledge, and tone are all too much diffused in America to make head against the sturdy advances of an overwhelming mediocrity. As a basis of national greatness, this mediocrity commands our respect, but it is a little premature to set it up as a standard for the imitation of others. It even over-shadows, more particularly in the towns, the qualities that might better be its substitute. Its influence on the whole is genial, for so broad a foundation will, sooner or later, receive an appropriate superstructure, but, ad interim, it places a great deal too much at the disposal of empirics and pretenders. This is the reason (coupled with the deference that the provinces always show to the capital) why reviews and newspaper strictures produce an effect in America, of which they entirely fail in England. Here the highest intellectual classes give reputation, while in America it is derived from the mediocrity I have mentioned, through the agency, half the time, of as impudent a set of literary quacks as probably a civilized country ever tolerated. There are as flagrant things of the sort perpetrated here, as in America, but their influence is limited to the milliners and shop-men. A national prejudice may take any shape, in England, for no one is exempt from the feeling, from the king on his throne to the groom in his stable; but, keeping this influence out of sight, the standard of taste and knowledge is too high, to be easily imposed on.
Some one has said, with more smartness than truth perhaps, so far as one’s own contemporaries are concerned at least, “that no author was ever written down except by himself.” Many an author however, has been temporarily written up by others. I have just had a proof of this truth.
A work has lately appeared here, of rather more pretension than common. This book is deemed a failure in the literary circles of London. Of its merits I know nothing, not having read it, but in the fact, I cannot be mistaken, for I have heard it spoken of, by every literary man of my acquaintance, from Sir Walter Scott down; and but one among them all, has spoken well of it, and he, notoriously a friend of the author, “damned it with faint praise” more than any thing else. The bookseller paid too much for the manuscript, however, to put up with a loss, and a concerted and combined effort has been made to write the book up. In England these puffs, which are elaborate and suited to a grave subject, have had no visible effect, while I see, by the journals at home, that the work in question is deemed established, on this authority!
I am told that the practice of writers reviewing themselves, is much more prevalent here than one would be apt to suspect. One can tolerate such a thing as a joke, but it is ticklish ground, and liable to misconstruction. But man loves mystification. The very being who would bristle up and resent a frank, manly vindication of a writer that should appear under his own name, would permit his judgment to be guided by the same opinions when produced covertly, nor would the modesty of the author, who glorifies himself in this sneaking manner, be half as much called in question, as that of him who, disdaining deceit, and met his enemies openly!
There is less of simulated public opinion in the English press than in our own, I presume; owing to the simple fact, that public opinion is neither so overwhelming nor so easily influenced. The constant practice of appealing to the public, in America, has given rise to the vilest frauds of this character, that are of constant occurrence. When it is wished to induce the public to think in a particular way, the first step is to affect that such is already the common sentiment, in the expectation that deference to the general impression will bring about the desired end. I have known frauds of this nature, connected with personal malice, which, if exposed, would draw down the indignation of every honest man in the nation, on those who practised them; some of whom now pass for men of fair characters. It is scarcely necessary to say that such fellows are thieves in principle.
There is another all-important point on which, in the spirit of imitation, we have permitted the English press to mislead us. Nothing can be more apparent, in a healthful and natural state of the public mind, that a lie told to influence an election, or to mislead on a matter of general policy, ought to be just so much the more reprobated than a lie that affects an individual merely, as the concerns of a nation are more engrossing and important than the concerns of a private citizen. In America, an election ought to be, and in the main it is, an expression of the popular will for great national objects; in England, it is merely a struggle for personal power, between the owners of property. The voter with us, is one of a body which controls the results; in England, he is one of a body controlled by direct personal influence. No greater, ordinary crime, against good morals and the public safety, can be committed, than to mislead the public in matters of facts connected with an election; and yet an “electioneering lie,” is almost deemed a venial offence in America, because they are so deemed here, where, as a rule, every thing is settled by direct personal influence and bribery.
Some very false notions exist in America, on the subject of the liberty of the press. We give it by far too much latitude, perhaps not so much in the law itself, as by opinion and in the construction of the law. The leaning is in favour of publication; firstly, because man is inherently selfish, and he cares little what private wrongs are committed in feeding the morbid appetites of the majority; and, secondly, by confounding a remedy with diet. When power is to be overturned, the press becomes a sure engine, and its abuses may be tolerated, in order to secure the inestimable advantages of liberty; but liberty attained, it should not be forgotten, that while arsenic may cure a disease, taken as daily food it is certain death. Every honest man appears to admit that the press, in America, is fast getting to be intolerable. In escaping from the tyranny of foreign aristocrats, we have created in our bosom a tyranny of a character so unsupportable, that a change of some sort is getting to be indispensable to peace. Truth appears to be no longer expected. Nor is this all. An evident dishonesty of sentiment pervades the public itself, which is beginning to regard acts of private delinquency with a dangerous indifference; and acts, too, that are inseparably connected with the character, security, and a right administration of the state; political jockeyship being now regarded very much as jockeyship of another order is notoriously esteemed by those who engage in it. In this respect, England has the advantage of us, for here the arts of politics are exercised with greater ménagement, being confined to the few; whereas, in America, acting on the public, they require public demoralization to be tolerated.
In ferocity and brutality I think the English press, under high excitement, much worse than our own; in general tone and manliness, greatly its superior. In both cases the better part of the community is exposed to the rudest assaults from men who belong to the worst. In England, the public is generally spared the impertinence of personal, editorial controversies, a failing of rusticity, and the press is but little used for the purposes of individual malice; while in America, it is a machine, half the time, which, under the pretence of serving the public, in addition to pecuniary profit, is made to serve the ambition, or to gratify the antipathies, of the editor, who obtains, through its use, an importance and power he could, probably, never obtain in any other manner. This distinction is a consequence of presses being stock-property in England, which is not owned by the editors; while in America, the man who writes is master of the limited establishment. It is his machine of personal advancement.
There is one point connected with this subject, on which we admit a degradation unknown to all other countries. Every community is obliged to submit to the existence of its own impurities, but we imbibe those which are generated in the most factitious and high-wrought, and, consequently, the most corrupt state of society, in christendom. This is another of the evils arising from a want of pride and national character, the people which is thrown into convulsions by the worthless strictures of any foreign traveller, on their elegance and tastes, permitting the very putridity of foreign corruption to fester in and pollute its bosom!