civility, he informs the reader that an Englishman “never appears so disgusting as when he attempts to be especially kind; ...in affecting to oblige, he becomes insulting.”  He confesses, however, “I have known others in America whom you would never suspect of being Englishmen—­they were such good fellows; but they had been early transplanted from England.  If the sound oranges be removed from a barrel in which decay has commenced, they may be saved; but if suffered to remain, they are all soon reduced to the same disgusting state.”

His discriminating powers next penetrate some of the deep mysteries of animal nature:  he discovers that the peculiarities of the bullock and the sheep have been gradually absorbed into the national character, as far as conversation is concerned.  “They have not become woolly, nor do they wear horns, but the nobility are eternally bellowing forth the astounding deeds of their ancestors, whilst the muttonish middle classes bleat a timorous approval....  Such subjects constitute their fund of amusing small talk,” &c.  From the foregoing elegant description of conversation, he passes onwards to the subject of gentility, and describes a young honourable, on board a steamer, who refused to shut a window when asked by a sick and suffering lady, telling the husband, “he could not consent to be suffocated though his wife was sick.”  And having cooked up the story, he gives the following charming reason for his conduct:  “He dreaded the possibility of compromising his own position and that of his noble family at home by obliging an ordinary person.”  He afterwards touches upon English visitors to America, who, he says, “generally come among us in the undisguised nakedness of their vulgarity.  Wholly freed from the restraints imposed upon them at home by the different grades in society, they indolently luxuriate in the inherent brutality of their nature.  They constantly violate not only all rules of decorum, but the laws of decency itself....  They abuse our hospitality, insult our peculiar institutions, set at defiance all the refinements of life, and return home, lamenting the social anarchy of America, and retailing their own indecent conduct as the ordinary customs of the country....  The pranks which, in a backwoods American, would be stigmatized as shocking obscenity, become, when perpetrated by a rich Englishman, charming evidence of sportive humour,” &c.

A considerable portion of the volume is dedicated to Church matters; for which subject the meek and lowly style which characterizes his writing pre-eminently qualifies him, and to which, doubtless, he is indebted for the patronage of The Christian Advocate.  I shall only indulge the reader with the following beautiful description of the Established Church:—­“It is a bloated, unsightly mass of formalities, hypocrisy, bigotry, and selfishness, without a single charitable impulse or pious aspiration.”  After this touching display of genuine American feeling, he draws the picture of a clergyman in language so opposite, that one is reminded of a certain mysterious personage, usually represented with cloven feet, and who is said to be very apt at quoting Scripture.