, who was also the London
publisher for Blackwood. It was full of dangerous, though somewhat
plausible errors, and mischievous, though perhaps unintentional,
misrepresentations of our whole political and social system. I did not
spare the book, nor the author, nor the publisher; and notwithstanding
the great length of the paper, which grew up of itself, as I read the
work with pen in hand, into most unreasonable proportions, though
divided into brief paragraphs, it appeared, nevertheless, in the next
following month, as a leader, with a note from "C. N.," which has
already been given in the sketch of Bentham.

Meanwhile this indefatigable purveyor, who knew I was engaged upon
"Brother Jonathan," recasting and rewriting the whole,--not for the
second time, but for the twentieth time, I verily believe,--and that I
was beginning to write for other journals upon American affairs, wanted
me to furnish an occasional paper for the "Noctes Ambrosianae," to be
incorporated, warp and woof, into the dialogues which appeared month
after month and year after year; up to the death of poor Wilson in 1853,
and were afterward embodied in a book by Dr. R. Shelton Mackenzie, and
republished here.

This I could not bring myself to undertake, without first seeing the
interlocutors face to face, and looking into their eyes, and hearing
them laugh together "like a rhinoceros," or like the chorus in "Der
Freischuetz." Though I knew Wilson, and Lockhart, and Hogg, and "Old
Christopher," and "O'Doherty," and "Timothy Tickler," and "Ebony," by
reputation, it was only as a company of shadows, and not as creatures of
substantial flesh and blood. The lightning had struck; my guns were in
position; I had got the range of the enemies' camp, and meant to be in
no hurry, but "to fight it out on the line" I had chosen, if it took me
till doomsday. I refused, therefore. I was willing to wait. I knew, to
be sure, the Chinese could grow oranges from the seed in half an hour;
but then the oranges were peas, and I wanted to grow "some pumpkins." In
short, I would not

"wear
My strength away in wrestling with the air."

Next he wanted me to write a review of "Margaret Lyndsay," a charming
story by Wilson himself, of which I had incidentally expressed the
highest opinion, in our correspondence. Mr. Blackwood sprang at the
idea, like a half-famished pickerel at a frog. But no. Although such a
paper would be quite in m