word upon any other subject
than our literature, authors, manners, politics, and painters, except in
two instances, that I now remember,--he wrote as follows.

"MY DEAR SIR,--You have finished your series in capital style. The whole
is spirited and most original. Many may differ from you on some points,
but, beauties or blemishes, no one will pretend to say that they are not
your own. And may I add, that I hardly know any work except 'Maga' where
you could have felt yourself so much at your ease in most fearlessly
saying what you thought right of men and things." All very true; and it
was for that reason that I launched forth in "Blackwood," hit or miss,
neck or nothing, determined to make a spoon or spoil a horn. And then he
adds,--"Washington Irving once told me that he considered my 'Maga' as a
daringly original work. It was too much for his delicate nerves."

Undoubtedly; and it was for that reason that the papers I wrote in a
different style for the "European Magazine," New Series,--out of which
grew the famous controversy with Mathews for his admirable
misrepresentations of Yankee character,--were attributed for a long
while to Washington Irving himself; but he could not have written them,
any more than I could have written the "Sketch-Book" or "Bracebridge
Hall."

"I hope," continues our friend "Ebony,"--"I hope you are thinking of
something else for me, as you must have much to communicate with regard
to America, men and matters, which we know nothing of in this country,
both as to what has been done and what is now doing. Perhaps it might be
well to give anything of this kind just in separate articles, as one is
sometimes rather fettered in a regular series. However, all this depends
upon the subject-matter and the way in which it happens to strike
yourself.... I enclose you an order on Mr. Cadell for fifteen guineas."

Thus much to show, that, however absolute and arbitrary "our worthy
friend Christopher" was on ordinary occasions, he was a man of the
kindest feelings, delicate, magnanimous, and liberal.

In the course of the next following three months "Brother Jonathan" was
finished, read, accepted, and paid for at my own price,--two hundred
guineas,--the same that Murray paid Irving for his "Sketch-Book," with a
contingent proviso for another hundred guineas, which never amounted to
anything.

Meanwhile, however, we were in constant communication by letter, and I
give now the following extracts to sh