of the country, so generous and liberal in themselves, are outraged by every factitious attempt to overshadow them by these appeals to the prejudices and recollections of another state of society.  At least, we might be spared the parade in the journals, and the offensive appearance of monopolizing the land, which these accounts assume.  Intelligent travellers observe and comment on these things, and one of them quaintly asked me, not long since, “if really there were no Americans in America?” Can it be matter of surprise that when the stranger sees these men so prominent in print and in society, (in many instances quite deservedly), he should mistake their influence, and attach an importance to their opinions which they do not deserve?  That Europe has been receiving false notions of America from some source, during the present century, is proved by the results so completely discrediting her open predictions; and, while I know that many Americans have innocently aided in the deception, I have little doubt that the foreign merchants established in the country have been one of the principal causes of the errors.

It is only necessary to look back within our own time, to note the progress of opinion, and to appreciate the value of those notions that some still cherish, as containing all that is sound and true in human policy.  Thirty years ago, the opinion that it was unsafe to teach the inferior classes to read, “as it only enabled then to read bad books,” was a common and favourite sentiment of the upper classes in England.  To-day, it is a part of the established system of Austria to instruct her people!  I confess that I now feel mortified and grieved when I meet with an American gentleman who professes anything but liberal opinions, as respects the rights of his fellow-creatures.  Although never illiberal, I trust, I do not pretend that my own notions have not undergone changes, since, by being removed from the pressure of the society in which I was born, my position, perhaps, enables me to look around, less influenced by personal considerations than is usual; but one of the strongest feelings created by an absence of so many years from he me, is the conviction that no American can justly lay claim to be, what might be and ought to be the most exalted of human beings, the milder graces of the Christian character excepted, an American gentleman, without this liberality entering thoroughly into the whole composition of his mind.  By liberal sentiments, however, I do not mean any of the fraudulent cant that is used, in order to delude the credulous; but the generous, manly determination to let all enjoy equal political rights, and to bring those to whom authority is necessarily confided, as far as practicable, under the control of the community they serve.  Opinions like these have little in common with the miserable devices of demagogues, who teach the doctrine that the people are infallible; or that the aggregation of fallible parts, acting, too, with diminished responsibilities,