ts own dirt, and died a putrid death."

Let me now turn from the Press to the literature of the United States.
Of the higher order of publications, it is needless to say anything in
these pages. Irving, Prescott, Ticknor, Stephens, Longfellow, Hawthorne,
and writers of that stamp, are an honour to any country, and are as well
known in England as they are in America, consequently any encomium from
my pen is as unnecessary as it would be presumptuous.

The literature on which I propose to comment, is that which I may
reasonably presume to be the popular literature of the masses, because
it is the staple commodity for sale on all railways and steamboats. I
need not refer again to the most objectionable works, inasmuch as the
very fact of their being sold by stealth proves that, however numerous
their purchasers, they are at all events an outrage on public opinion. I
made a point of always purchasing whatever books appeared to me to be
selling most freely among my fellow-travellers, and I am sorry to say
that the mass of trash I thus became possessed of was perfectly
inconceivable, and the most vulgar abuse of this country was decidedly
at a premium. But their language was of itself so penny-a-liny, that
they might have lain for weeks on the book-shelf at an ordinary
railway-station in England--price, _gratis_--and nobody but a trunkmaker
or a grocer would have been at the trouble of removing them.

Not content, however, with writing trash, they do not scruple to
deceive the public in the most barefaced way by deliberate falsehood. I
have in my possession two of these specimens of honesty, purchased
solely from seeing my brother's name as the author, which of course I
knew perfectly well to be false, and which they doubtless put there
because the American public had received favourably the volumes he
really had written. Of the contents of these works attributed to him I
will only say, the rubbish was worthy of the robber. I would not convey
the idea that all the books offered for sale are of this calibre; there
are also magazines and other works, some of which are both interesting
and well-written. If I found no quick sale going on, I generally
selected some work treating of either England or the English, so as to
ascertain the popular shape in which my countrymen were represented.

One work which I got hold of, called _Northwood_, amused me much: I
there found the Englishman living under a belief that the Americans were