istinguishable wherever they are met; not
as Americans however, for of the habits and manners of Our country,
people know nothing this side the water. But there is something in an
American face, of which I never was aware till I met them in Europe,
that is altogether peculiar. The French take the Americans to be
English; but an Englishman, while he presumes him his countryman, shows
a curiosity to know who he is, which is very foreign to his usual
indifference. As far as I can analyze it, it is the independent,
self-possessed bearing of a man unused to look up to any one as his
superior in rank, united to the inquisitive, sensitive, communicative
expression which is the index to our national character. The first is
seldom possessed in England but by a man of decided rank, and the latter
is never possessed by an Englishman at all. The two are united in no
other nation. Nothing is easier than to tell the rank of an Englishman,
and nothing puzzles an European more than to know how to rate the
pretensions of an American....

* * * * *

From "Ephemera."

=_205._= CHARACTER AND WRITINGS OF JAMES HILLHOUSE.

Like the public feeling, the condition and powers of criticism toward
an author's fame, are essentially changed by his death. His personal
character, and the events of his life--the foreground, so to speak, in
the picture of his mind, are, till this event, wanting to the critical
perspective; and when the hand to correct is cold, and the ear to be
caressed and wounded is sealed, some of the uses of censure, and all
reserve in comparison and final estimate, are done away.

* * * * *

Such men as Hillhouse are not common, even in these days of universal
authorship. In accomplishment of mind and person, he was probably second
to no man. His poems show the first. They are fully conceived, nicely
balanced, exquisitely finished--works for the highest taste to relish,
and for the severest student in dramatic style to erect into a model.
Hadad was published in 1825, during my second year in college, and to
me it was the opening of a new heaven of imagination. The leading
characters possessed me for months, and the bright, clear, harmonious
language was, for a long time, constantly in my ears. The author was
pointed out to me, soon after, and for once, I saw a poet whose mind was
well imaged in his person. In no part of the world have I seen a man of
more distingu