r the curiosity I
felt to know the contents of a work so violently anathematised,
led me to make enquiries which elicited a great deal of curious
feeling.

An ardent desire for approbation, and delicate sensitiveness
under censure, have always, I believe, been considered as amiable
traits of character; but the condition into which the appearance
of Capt. Hall's work threw the Republic, shows plainly that
these feelings, if carried to excess, produce a weakness which
amounts to imbecility.

It was perfectly astonishing to hear men, who, on other subjects,
were sane of judgment, utter their opinions upon this. I never
heard of any instance in which the common sense generally found
in national criticism was so overthrown by passion. I do not
speak of the want of justice, and of fair and liberal
interpretation: these, perhaps, were hardly to be expected.
Other nations have been called thin-skinned, but the citizens of
the Union have, apparently, no skins at all; they wince if a
breeze blows over them, unless it be tempered with adulation. It
was not, therefore, very surprising that the acute and forcible
observations of a traveller they knew would be listened to,
should be received testily. The extraordinary features of the
business were, first, the excess of the rage into which they
lashed themselves; and secondly, the puerility of the inventions
by which they attempted to account for the severity with which
they fancied they had been treated.

Not content with declaring that the volumes contained no word of
truth from beginning to end (which is an assertion I heard made
very nearly as often as they were mentioned), the whole country
set to work to discover the causes why Capt. Hall had visited
the United States, and why he had published his book.

I have heard it said with as much precision and gravity as if the
statement had been conveyed by an official report, that Capt.
Hall had been sent out by the British government expressly for
the purpose of checking the growing admiration of England for the
government of the United States, that it was by a commission from
the Treasury he had come, and that it was only in obedience to
orders that he had found anything to object to.

I do not give this as the gossip of a coterie; I am persuaded
that it is the belief of a very considerable portion of the
country. So deep is the conviction of this singular people that
they cannot be seen without being admired, that they