Before I present the reader specimens of ore from this valuable mine I must make a few observations.  The author is the son of one of the wealthiest families in Kentucky, a man of education and travel, and has appeared before the public in a work entitled The Three Continents: I have given extracts from the opinions of the Press at greater length than I otherwise should have done, because I think after the reader has followed me through a short review of English Items, he will see what strong internal testimony they bear to the truth of my previous observations.  I would also remark that I am not at all thin-skinned as to travellers giving vent to their true feelings with regard to my own country.  All countries have their weaknesses, their follies, and their wickednesses.  Public opinion in England, taken as a whole, is decidedly good, and therefore the more the wrong is laid bare the more hope for its correction; but, while admitting this right in its fullest extent, it is under two conditions:  one that the author speak the truth, the other that his language be not an outrage on decency or good manners.  Now then, come forth, thou aggregate outburst of the great American heart![BJ] Speak for thyself—­let the public be thy judge.

The following extracts are from the chapter on “Our Individual Relations with England,” the chaste style whereof must gratify the reader:—­“I am sorry to observe that it is becoming more and more the fashion, especially among travelled Americans, to pet the British beast; ... instead of treating him like other refractory brutes, they pusillanimously strive to soothe him by a forbearance he cannot appreciate; ... beasts are ruled through fear, not kindness:  they submissively lick the hand that wields the lash.”  Then follow instructions for his treatment, so terrible as to make future tourists to America tremble:—­“Seize him fearlessly by the throat, and once strangle him into involuntary silence, and the British lion will hereafter be as fawning as he has been hitherto spiteful.”  He then informs his countrymen that the English “cannot appreciate the retiring nature of true gentility ... nor can they realize how a nation can fail to be blustering except from cowardice.”  Towards the conclusion of the chapter he explains that “hard blows are the only logic the English understand;” and then, lest the important fact should be forgotten, he clothes the sentiment in the following burst of genuine American eloquence:—­“To affect their understandings, we must punch their heads.”  So much for the chapter on “Our Individual Relations with England,” which promise to be of so friendly a nature that future travellers had better take with them a supply of bandages, lint, and diachylon plaster, so as to be ready for the new genuine American process of intellectual expansion.