It will probably be said, too, by some, that I view England with a partial eye.  Perhaps I do; for I can never forget that it is my “father land.”  And yet, the circumstances under which I have viewed it have by no means been such as were calculated to produce favourable impressions.  For the greater part of the time that I have resided in it, I have lived almost unknowing and unknown; seeking no favours, and receiving none:  “a stranger and a sojourner in the land,” and subject to all the chills and neglects that are the common lot of the stranger.

When I consider these circumstances, and recollect how often I have taken up my pen, with a mind ill at ease, and spirits much dejected and cast down, I cannot but think I was not likely to err on the favourable side of the picture.  The opinions I have given of English character have been the result of much quiet, dispassionate, and varied observation.  It is a character not to be hastily studied, for it always puts on a repulsive and ungracious aspect to a stranger.  Let those, then, who condemn my representations as too favourable, observe this people as closely and deliberately as I have done, and they will, probably, change their opinion.  Of one thing, at any rate, I am certain, that I have spoken honestly and sincerely, from the convictions of my mind, and the dictates of my heart.  When I first published my former writings, it was with no hope of gaining favour in English eyes, for I little thought they were to become current out of my own country:  and had I merely sought popularity among my own countrymen, I should have taken a more direct and obvious way, by gratifying rather than rebuking the angry feelings that were then prevalent against England.

And here let me acknowledge my warm, my thankful feelings, at the effect produced by one of my trivial lucubrations.  I allude to the essay in the Sketch-Book, on the subject of the literary feuds between England and America.  I cannot express the heartfelt delight I have experienced, at the unexpected sympathy and approbation with which those remarks have been received on both sides of the Atlantic.  I speak this not from any paltry feelings of gratified vanity; for I attribute the effect to no merit of my pen.  The paper in question was brief and casual, and the ideas it conveyed were simple and obvious.  “It was the cause:  it was the cause” alone.  There Vras a predisposition on the part of my readers to be favourably affected.  My countrymen responded in heart to the filial feelings I had avowed in their name towards the parent country:  and there was a generous sympathy in every English bosom towards a solitary individual, lifting up his voice in a strange land, to vindicate the injured character of his nation.  There are some causes sosacred as to carry with them an irresistible appeal to every virtuous bosom; and he needs but little power of eloquence, who defends the honour of his wife, his mother, or his country.