lished during the
last fifty years, may be numbered by hundreds. Of these, nearly half
have at different times been reprinted in this country. Most of them are
now unknown, having passed to that oblivion of letters from whose bourn
no short-sighted and narrow-minded traveller ever ought to return. The
annual harvest began to appear about a half-century ago, when little
more than descriptions of scenery and geographical statistics were
ventured upon,--although one quaint explorer, John Lambert, vouchsafed,
in 1810, some sketches of society, from which we learn, among other
interesting facts, that a species of Bloomerism pervaded New York, and
flourished on Broadway, even at that early day. Our visitors very soon
enlarged the sphere of their observations, and entered upon the widest
discussions of republican manners and morals. Slavery, as was to be
expected, received immediate attention. In the course of ten years,
"American Tours" had set in with such rigor, that one writer felt called
upon to apologize for adding another to the already profuse supply. This
was in 1818. For the next fifteen years, the principle of unlimited
mockery was quite faithfully observed. The Honorable De Roos, who made a
naval examination in 1826, and satisfied himself that the United States
could never be a maritime power,--Colonel Maxwell, who entered upon a
military investigation, and came to a similar conclusion respecting our
prospects as to army, and who gained great credit for independent
judgment by pronouncing Niagara a humbug,--Mrs. Kemble, frisky and
fragmentary, excepting when her father was concerned, and then filially
diffuse,--Mrs. Trollope, who refused to incumber herself with amiability
or veracity,--Mr. Lieber, who was principally troubled by a camp meeting
at which he assisted,--Miss Martineau, who retailed too much of the
gossip that had been decanted through the tunnel of her trumpet,--and
Captain Marryatt, who was simply clownish,--afford fair examples of the
style which dominated until about 1836 or 1837. Then works of a better
order began to appear. America received scientific attention. It had
been agriculturally worked up in 1818 by Cobbett, whose example was now
followed by Shirreff and others. In 1839, George Combe subjected us to
phrenological treatment, and had the frankness to acknowledge that it
was impossible for an individual to properly describe a great nation.
Afterwards came Lyell, the geologist, who did not, h