will not
admit the possibility that anyone should honestly and sincerely
find aught to disapprove in them, or their country.

At Philadelphia I met with a little anonymous book, written to
show that Capt. Basil Hall was in no way to be depended on, for
that he not only slandered the Americans, but was himself, in
other respects, a person of very equivocal morals. One proof of
this is given by a quotation of the following playful account of
the distress occasioned by the want of a bell. The commentator
calls it an instance of "shocking coarseness."

"One day I was rather late for breakfast, and as there was no
water in my jug, I set off, post haste, half shaved, half
dressed, and more than half vexed, in quest of water, like a
seaman on short allowance, hunting for rivulets on some unknown
coast. I went up stairs, and down stairs, and in the course of
my researches into half a dozen different apartments, might have
stumbled on some lady's chamber, as the song says, which
considering the plight I was in, would have been awkward enough."

Another indication of this moral coarseness is pointed out in the
passage where Capt. Hall says, he never saw a flirtation all the
time he was in the Union.

The charge of ingratitude also was echoed from mouth to mouth.
That he should himself bear testimony to the unvarying kindness
of the reception he met with, and yet find fault with the
country, was declared on all hands to be a proof of the most
abominable ingratitude that it ever entered into the heart of man
to conceive. I once ventured before about a dozen people to ask
whether more blame would not attach to an author, if he suffered
himself to be bribed by individual kindness to falsify facts,
than if, despite all personal considerations, he stated them
truly?

"Facts!" cried the whole circle at once, "facts! I tell you there
is not a word of fact in it from beginning to end."

The American Reviews are, many of them, I believe, well known in
England; I need not, therefore, quote them here, but I sometimes
wondered that they, none of them, ever thought of translating
Obadiah's curse into classic American; if they had done so, only
placing (he, Basil Hall,) between brackets instead of (he,
Obadiah,) it would have saved them a world of trouble.

I can hardly describe the curiosity with which I sat down at
length to pursue these tremendous volumes; still less can I do
justice to my surprise at their contents. To say