tailed upon the succeeding generations. If, as we believe, this fact cannot be denied, may it not be ascribed, as far as certain systems may be considered as belonging to particular countries-to the circumstance, that, confined to their birth-place, they were constantly supported and attacked by the same arguments, and decided in the same manner? May it not be affirmed, that they underwent but extremely seldom, or never, that fulness of discussion, which, bringing them openly, continually in collision and comparison with foreign views and ideas, before an audience, knowing these views and ideas, as understood and meant by the foreigner, would have served for confirmation, or for correction, or at least for illustration?

The writer of this has contended in another article for the Western Monthly Review, printed immediately after the present, that in Europe, particularly on the continent and in France, a growing spirit of liberality is observable which, to take it only in its nearest and most direct applications, will enable those nations to avail themselves easier of each other's experience, to assist each other not unfrequently, although indirectly; and to recognize that their great interests are the same. Next to the best periodicals of those countries, he refers for the confirmation of his statement, particularly to the lectures of the three gentlemen above, as witnesses the most compendious and the most easily consulted. The interruption of these lectures, was by all friends of knowledge and truth in France, considered as a calamity; during their interruption, they lived in the remembrance of all the friends of liberty and learning; when resumed they were followed by undiminishing audiences of two thousand hearers; since they are taken down in short hand, a diligent press sends them in great numbers over France, as soon as each lecture is delivered; they are continually made the object of laudatory comments by those papers which, far from being confined to their city, have almost the monopoly of the political and literary intelligence, received by thirty-two millions of people. Thus these lectures assume an unusual importance, and persons who would differ with us as to their particular excellency, cannot reject them as good evidence of the state of opinions.

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The two essays of Mr. Villemain-on Pope and Shakspeare-which have been translated for the W. M. Review, and were originally written for that extensive and excellent work-the Biographie Universelle,' in 52 vols. 8vo., are the better fit, to serve as an illustration of Mr. Villemain's manner, as the subject is familiar to every English reader. This alone has determined their choice. We hope, however, that these two specimens will engage our readers, the sooner to seek the acquaintance of an author whose celebrity cannot fail to extend to distant countries. They will be amply repaid; to him they will owe in an eminent degree, the pleasure which is derived from the perusal of talented criticisms, and which heightens the enjoyment of literature by judicious discrimination and interesting discussion. They will not forget, how frequently, in extensive and attentive reading, they found themselves differing from those, who possess their highest confidence, especially if the arbiter of the disputed point is taste, that abstraction, open to so many and so various influences. But with this consideration, and with the exception of those VOL. III.-No. 5.

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occasional unimportant errors, which no judicious reader ever wondered at discovering in works of such vast design, we trust they will, after a longer and more complete acquaintance, coincide with the opinion of his countrymen. They will pay homage to the enlightened and generous independence with which the critic dispenses justice. This is the quality, in which, in this article, we have found his principal glory. It seems of difficult attainment, because superior minds are so often lamentably deficient in it. It is a quality most useful in support of opinions which, ia this and the following article, have been our leading idea. He does not evince, in repeated exclamations and protestations, his astonishment at his own impartiality: he is confident that no less will be expected of him, that his character has authorized his readers and hearers to confide in him. He judges the works of the mind, not by comparing them with the narrow system of a literary faction, with a confined circle of ideas, beyond which there is no salvation; but by holding them in view of that exalted idea of the beautiful, as simple as it is comprehensive, which he has imbibed in the fond and attentive study of the noblest works of man in all ages and countries.

ON THE PROGRESS OF POLITICAL AND LITERARY OPINIONS ON THE CONTINENT OF EUROPE.

We shall write down our thoughts on this subject, and the manner in which it is considered and understood in America, with entire frankness. We do not apprehend that the motive or tendency of our remarks will be misconstrued.

There are, in every civilized country, a considerable number of persons, who desire to be informed of the politics, the literature, the manners, &c. of foreign countries. This is evinced by the number of travels and newspapers with which the press teems. A part of the latter is regularly devoted to foreign news; they contain, very frequently, extracts from travels, and the taste of the readers is, upon the whole, very correctly represented by a paper. Some seek, in such reading, to pass the lingering moment; some believe thus to acquire knowledge and find that knowledge is no such great thing after all, some, however, wish to obtain real information. These latter we address; they cannot be indifferent about the kind of information they receive. Most are in this respect, almost confined to periodicals. But they are, perhaps, not aware of the character of the knowledge thus imparted to them.

We labor under the impression that, owing to a particular connection of the American with the English press, it is very rare to find in an American paper, an article on continental politics or literature, which is not entirely ludicrous and deceives the reader in order to amuse him. This may be, by many persons, considered as a very little misfortune, but not by those who wish that the United States may, as a literary nation, draw

near that station which they occupy as a political one; who know how much, in learning, in higher literature, can be imported from the continent of Europe, and how useful, to highly civilized nations, mutual acquaintance must prove.

We have seen numerous proofs, in well conducted Reviews, in able aticles on continental works, that the writer was ignorant of those circumstances which it is indispensable to consider in literary criticism. We never pretend to read an ancient author, without drawing illustrations from other authors from history, from monuments, and in short, we read him exegetically. And we read, nay, we review modern foreign authors, without so many circumstances, we neglect all that information, probably because it is much easier obtained. The works that preceded that which we examine, the opinions which, as generally received in his country, the writer makes the basis of his reasoning, perhaps his own works, his profession, the events of his life, which occasioned the work or explain many parts of it-all that we do not mind, all that fastidious know ledge we dispense with, certain as we are, that our indulgent readers would not require us to take so much trouble.

We assure the grave authors of these articles, that we have endeavored in vain to find a more respectful word to express our idea of this management of the subject; but we are obliged to call it, from want of another equally appropriate term, by the name which we involuntarily pronounced when we read those articles: Flippancy, learned flippancy or flippancy of the learned.

If men, distinguished from the mass of their nation by their abilities and acquirements, sacrifice thus to mispractices, because they have crept into usage, it must be supposed what is abundantly proved by the fact, that publications intended for all kinds of readers, are still more thoroughly imbued with them. These mispractices, these errors consist `in imitating the English summary way of dealing with every thing foreign, and still more, in copying and receiving with implicit faith, and without an admixture of information derived from other sources, the articles on continental subjects, that appear in English papers.

We hear daily complaints about the ungenerous spirit, not to call it otherwise, of the English press. Wheresoever the line may lie between truth and exaggeration, what reason have we to presune, that English jealousy is exercised against America alone? What a strange inconsistency, first to prove a man a liar, and then to receive his testimony with confidence, whenever our personal interest or vanity is not concerned? When we see a uniform tone running through publications on a variety of subjects, to suppose it false on one, true on all the others? We are told of a plan which has been agreed upon in England, to depreciate this country. If, by England, a set of tourists and newspaper writers is meant, they have formed a conspiracy against the whole world. They nourish invidious feelings on particular subjects, against this, on others against other countries. There are many English publications, in which, when. ever our eyes fall upon a continental name which we respect, we expect to find heinous aspersions on a distinguished character, by some one who has discovered the impossibility of honesty and disinterestedness out of England. A foreign writer, in their hands, resembles an outlaw whom it

is not their duty to kill, whom it is even allowed to let escape, but whom every one may beat at his good pleasure, for the sport of the good people of England, and without apprehension of punishment or infamy.

From such writers, the American public consent to receive almost their whole knowledge of the continent of Europe; the effusions of those writers re-appear in numerous American prints, and extend their influence over a nation whose institutions and interest are entirely different. But it is time, it is expedient for that nation, to throw off this bondage. We call it a bondage, although it is little felt, as we are insensible to the fetters of fashion, because we have borne them long.

But to measure the extent of the error, we are obliged to bring truth into view. We solicit, therefore, respectfully, the attention of the reader, upon some rapid strictures which we shall make on the state of things on the continent. If our opinions strike him as different from those he has received, we wish he may put them to the test, But we beg him to test them in the writings and doings of the continent, in the conversation of well educated men of the continent who abound there, but who come and do wrong to come but very seldom to America. If our reader travels, may he travel differently from most Englishmen. Until he has thus formed his opinion, we wish he may distrust English publications, even, to a certain extent, the most talented and liberal ones: they also wear the fetters to which we alluded above. To prepare him for unbiased observation, we request him to inquire with us, into some of the reasons, why truth is thus discolored in English writings.

The insulated situation of England, before the facility and multiplicity of modern communications, has produced striking results: institutions, the most enlightened, and in some respects the most barbarous in Europe, many honorable and distinctive qualities, united with incongruous and as distinctive oddities. Confined to themselves, the English, as a nation, resembled a young man who has the habit of study and business, but not of the world, who makes, in polite company, a thousand strange blunders and absurd reasonings and deduces logically, from the unobserved caprice of some fashion, new to him, many ponderous consequences!* However well known this fact may be, the foreigner who expected perhaps singularity, cannot but be struck with the character he finds displayed in English tours and newspapers, which are the writings to which we advert. In these, the English seem the most prejudiced, the most invidious, the most peevish set of people on earth. In these, that great nation displays all the spite, the impotent wrath, the imbecile rage of an insulted dwarf.

Is this then, a radical and constitutional defect of the English character? We shall not be seduced, by low practices and vulgar vanity, into unprincipled recrimination. It is, in a great measure, the powerful

"We have actually English papers before us, in which passages of the book and the lectures of two gentlemen are given, who break out in violent objurgations against the French and Italian nations; the one-a reverend clergyman-in speaking of English singing, which he compares with Italian and French music, the other-Mr. Reinagle, in a lecture at the Royal Institution-in speaking of ladies bonnets. According to these gentlemen, such singing and such bonnets, are striking proofs of the vices and degraded morality of those nations, and they predict to their countrymen and women, that they shall verily fall to the level of those nations, if they continue to countenance such 'monstrosities.'

effect of habit; reared in prejudices, they seek, when grown up, the confirmation of them; they follow a current which has been flowing from times of ignorance, and from which few have now the power to emerge. It is certainly much easier in England than elsewhere, to find individuals who, exaggerating the characteristic perseverance of the English, make it the business of their whole lives to strengthen themselves in the errors they imbibed in their youth; who really contrive to become blind to palpable evidence, and hardened against reason; whose last word is, when it is clear that a thing cannot be: that it must be, and of whose obstinacy, proof against showers of arguments and facts, it may truly be said:

'Et si fractus illabatur orbis,
Impavidum ferient ruinae !

But we may safely affirm, that in the great majority of cases, the Englishman who is open to the reproach of the partiality, against which our remarks are directed, falls into that error, because he is one of the many, because he is carried along by the prevailing custom. He would, if left to his own uninfluenced judgment, arrive frequently at correct results: the more so as, in setting out upon his travels or researches, he would know less positively what, at the end of them, he wished to be persuaded of.

We are of opinion that, as every body may certainly state the result of his observations, if he thinks proper, most explicitely, on the other hand, the critic should exact of the traveller who ventures to write, of the journalist who ventures to judge, that severity of investigation, that fulness of research and cautiousness of assertion which has, with so much benefit, been introduced into the least positive studies. How far these conditions are complied with, in regard to continental matters, by English tours and newspapers, we shall endeavor to show, by collecting those traits which are common to most of them, and which constitute what we might call, their family physiognomy.

A tour on the continent of Europe, is the most comfortable kind of writing in existence. Instead of covering himself, like an another author, with dust, among the folios of a library, instead of beating his brains to invent something, the tourist prepares a trunk, a purse and some quires of paper, and now he may as well begin to write the first chapter, or, like Yorick, the preface in the coach, before the horses are put to. They start, and the conversation begins; and if his fellow-travellers have some wit, he can appropriate it to himself-his eye glides passively over the country, and whatever comes in his way is set off, arranged and put into the book. Many a thought that long pined to be printed, finds its place there; he travels over chapters as he does over provinces; he enjoys the pleasures of authorship without the torments of it, no knowledge of the thing he talks about is required of him, mistakes and misrepresentations, for which, in other works he would have been loaded with contempt, are here received with a condescending smile,' que voulez-vous? he is a Tourist! He is above all, a 'clever fellow,' an 'homme de bonne compagnie. He spoils no pleasure, and if his tale is not true, why, it is well told. For the rest, sure to be soon superseded, he writes to be super