y will save me from
going over the same ground."

The remarks referred to were by Professor Wilson, I have good reason to
believe. They filled half a dozen pages, and were eminently judicious
and proper, and, I may add, far from being unpalatable.

"I shall now, in a rambling way," continues Mr. Blackwood, "state
anything that has occurred to me, and I shall make no apology for
offering you my crude remarks; only you will suppose me to be speaking
to you, and telling you such and such things strike me so and so, that I
may be quite wrong," &c., &c.

And then he proceeds to say,--

"The character of the Yankees (Chapter I.) is too didactic, though
excellent anywhere else than in the commencement of a novel."

Here, too, he was right. I threw the whole chapter aside in rewriting
the book as it now stands, and sent the substance to Campbell's "New
Monthly," where it appeared forthwith.

After frankly stating a number of well-founded objections, and
suggesting two or three important changes in the plot, he finishes after
the following fashion: allow me to commend it to all who find themselves
obliged to "give the mitten," or to snub a respectable aspirant. By so
doing, they may keep life in him, if nothing more:--

"I have said a good deal more than I intended to, as to what things have
struck me as defects in your work. Its excellences I need not take up
your time with dwelling upon. With all the power, interest, and
originality, I regret most exceedingly, that, in its present state, I
would most earnestly advise you not to publish. It would be doing
yourself the greatest injustice. I feel perfectly confident, however,
that, with such materials as these, you could make a glorious book, if
you would set about it again in the proper way. I do not think it would
cost you much trouble, provided that the thing were to strike you."

By way of postscript, he adds,--

"I received your parcel, with No. 3 of the American Writers, and the
critique on Cadell's American work. Are you not giving us too much of
the _Vitae Virum Obscurorum_? There is a danger of palling the public
with too much even of a very good thing. This, too, terrifies me at the
length of your critique, as we have had so many American articles
lately. It is, in fact, as you say, a work, not an article. However, we
shall see what can be done."

The critique here referred to was a review of a book entitled "Summary
View of America," and published by Cadell