or imagination, it is but now and then, by an incidental remark, that we can obtain a clue to the author's feelings. Carried away by the interest. of the story, and the vivid scene presented to the imagination, we are apt to form a better opinion of the author than he deserves, because we feel kindly and grateful towards him for the amusement which he has afforded us; but when a writer puts off the holiday dress of fiction, and appears before us in his every day costume, giving us his thoughts and feelings upon matters of fact, then it is that we can appreciate the real character of the author. Mr. Cooper's character is not to be gained by reading his 'Pilot,' but it may be fairly estimated by reading his Travels in Switzerland,' and his remarks upon England. If, then, we are to judge of Mr. Cooper by the above works, I have no hesitation in asserting that he appears to be a disappointed democrat, with a determined hostility to England and the English. This hostility on the part of Mr. Cooper cannot proceed from any want of

attention shewn him in this country, or want of acknowledgment of his merits as an author. It must be sought for elsewhere. The attacks upon the English in a work professed to be written upon Switzerland, prove how rancorous this feeling is on his part; and not all the works published by English travellers upon America have added so much to the hostile feeling against us, as Mr. Cooper has done by his writings alone. Mr. Cooper would appear to wish to detach his countrymen, not only from us, but from the whole European Continent. He tells them in his work on Switzerland, that they are not liked or esteemed any where, and that to acknowledge yourself an American is quite sufficient to make those recoil who were intending to advance. Mr. Cooper is, in my opinion, very much mistaken in this point; the people of the Continent do not as yet know enough of the Americans to decide upon their national character. He observes very truly, that no one appears to think any thing

about the twelve millions; why so? because in Switzerland, Germany, and other nations in the heart of the Continent, they have no interest about a nation so widely separated from them, and from intercourse with which they receive neither profit nor loss. Neither do they think about the millions in South America, and not caring or hearing about them they can have formed no ideas of their character as a nation. If, then, the Americans are shunned (which I do not believe they are, for they are generally supposed to be a variety of Englishmen), it must be from the conduct of those individuals of the American nation who have travelled there, and not because, as Mr. Cooper would imply, they have a democratic form of government. Have not the Swiss something similar, and are they shunned? Who cares what may be the form of government of a country divided from them by three or four thousand miles of water, and of whom they have only read? Every nation, as well as every individual, makes

its own character; but Mr. Cooper would prove that the dislike shewn to the Americans abroad is owing to the slander of them by the English, and he points out that in the books containing the names of travellers, he no less than twentyfive times observed offensive remarks written beneath the names of those who acknowledged themselves Americans. These books were at different places, places to which all tourists in Switzerland naturally repair. Did it never occur to Mr. Cooper that one young fool of an Englishman, during his tour, might have been the author of all these obnoxious remarks, and is the folly of one insignificant individual to be gravely commented upon in a widely disseminated work, so as to occasion or increase the national ill-will? Surely there is little wisdom and much captiousness in this feeling.

How blinded by his ill-will must Mr. Cooper be, to enter into a long discussion in the work I refer to, to prove that England deserves the title, among other national characteristics, of a black

guarding nation! founding his assertion upon the language of our daily press. If the English, judged by the press, are a blackguarding nation, what are the Americans, if they are to be judged by the same standard? we must be indebted to the Americans themselves for an epithet. To wind up, he more than once pronounced the English to be parvenus. There is an old proverb which says, "A man whose house is built of glass should not be the first to throw stones;" and that these last two charges should be brought against us by an American, is certainly somewhat singular and unfortunate.

That there should be a hostile feeling when Englishmen go over to America to compete with them in business or in any profession, is natural; it would be the same every where; this feeling, however, in the United States is usually shewn by an attack upon the character of the party, so as to influence the public against him. There was an American practising phrenology, when a phrenologist arrived from