who made letters their
profession; and of these, there were some who would hold a higher
rank in the great Republic (not of America, but of letters), did
they write for persons less given to the study of magazines and
newspapers; and they might hold a higher rank still, did they
write for the few and not for the many. I was always drawing a
parallel, perhaps a childish one, between the external and
internal deficiency of polish and of elegance in the native
volumes of the country. Their compositions have not that
condensation of thought, or that elaborate finish, which the
consciousness of writing for the scholar and the man of taste is
calculated to give; nor have their dirty blue paper and slovenly
types* the polished elegance that fits a volume for the hand or
the eye of the fastidious epicure in literary enjoyment. The
first book I bought in America was the "Chronicles of the
Cannongate." In asking the price, I was agreeably surprised to
hear a dollar and a half named, being about one sixth of what I
used to pay for its fellows in England; but on opening the grim
pages, it was long before I could again call them cheap. To be
sure the pleasure of a bright well-printed page ought to be quite
lost sight of in the glowing, galloping, bewitching course that
the imagination sets out upon with a new Waverley novel; and so
it was with me till I felt the want of it; and then I am almost
ashamed to confess how often, in turning the thin dusky pages,
my poor earth-born spirit paused in its pleasure, to sigh for
hot-pressed wire-wove.

*(I must make an exception in favour of the American
(Quarterly Review. To the eye of the body it is in
(all respects exactly the same thing as the English
(Quarterly Review.

CHAPTER 10

Removal to the country--Walk in the forest--Equality

At length my wish of obtaining a house in the country was
gratified. A very pretty cottage, the residence of a gentleman
who was removing into town, for the convenience of his business
as a lawyer, was to let, and I immediately secured it. It was
situated in a little village about a mile and a half from the
town, close to the foot of the hills formerly mentioned as the
northern boundary of it. We found ourselves much more
comfortable here than in the city. The house was pretty and
commodious, our sitting-rooms were cool and airy; we had got rid
of the detestable mosquitoes, and we had an ice-house that never
fai