Mr. Dickens had plenty of objects besides his future self at which to aim his satirical shot.  At the time he discharged it, the literary market of England was overstocked with books on America, the authors of which had apparently tasked the best energies of their lungs in incessant “blowings-up” of all that came within range of their breath.  Up to that period, though viewing America from various stand-points, they had seldom failed to recognize this one essential element of success.  Since then, however, attempts have been made to satisfy the prejudices of all sides,—­in which the bitter and the sweet have been deftly mingled, with the obvious belief that persons aggrieved, while suffering from the authors’ stings, would derive comfort from the consciousness of accompanying honey.  These hopes generally proved fallacious, and the authors, falling to the ground between the two stools of American sensitiveness and British asperity, were regarded in the light of stern warnings by many of their successors, who straightway became pitiless.

The critical works on America by English writers, published during the last fifty years, may be numbered by hundreds.  Of these, nearly half have at different times been reprinted in this country.  Most of them are now unknown, having passed to that oblivion of letters from whose bourn no short-sighted and narrow-minded traveller ever ought to return.  The annual harvest began to appear about a half-century ago, when little more than descriptions of scenery and geographical statistics were ventured upon,—­although one quaint explorer, John Lambert, vouchsafed, in 1810, some sketches of society, from which we learn, among other interesting facts, that a species of Bloomerism pervaded New York, and flourished on Broadway, even at that early day.  Our visitors very soon enlarged the sphere of their observations, and entered upon the widest discussions of republican manners and morals.  Slavery, as was to be expected, received immediate attention.  In the course of ten years, “American Tours” had set in with such rigor, that one writer felt called upon to apologize for adding another to the already profuse supply.  This was in 1818.  For the next fifteen years, the principle of unlimited mockery was quite faithfully observed.  The Honorable De Roos, who made a naval examination in 1826, and satisfied himself that the United States could never be a maritime power,—­Colonel Maxwell, who entered upon a military investigation, and came to a similar conclusion respecting our prospects as to army, and who gained great credit for independent judgment by pronouncing Niagara a humbug,—­Mrs. Kemble, frisky and fragmentary, excepting when her father was concerned, and then filially diffuse,—­Mrs. Trollope, who refused to incumber herself with amiability or veracity,—­Mr. Lieber, who was principally troubled by a camp meeting at which he assisted,—­Miss Martineau, who retailed too much of the gossip that had been decanted through the tunnel of her trumpet,—­and