king stains from silks. We were flooded with essays upon housekeep ing, domestic economy, agriculture, horticulture, floriculture, the grape, the mulberry, the silkworm. Almost every authoress in our land, as soon as she had acquired a little reputation by her tales of fashionable life, appeared, first, with a treatise, professing to contain a system of education, but which was in reality confined almost exclusively to maxims and directions for behavior in society; and, after that, with a work on cookery. Books of etiquette for men, women, and children, appeared simultaneously in all our large cities. It is true that numbers of standard works continued to be published and republished in this country; but, alas! they were seldom made the sweet, domestic friends, a constant intercourse with whom, would have improved our tastes and dignified our leisure; whose deep and earnest, yet gentle and unobtrusive teachings could not have failed to lift the mind at times above the mere objects of sense, and to open a world where the higher parts of our nature might expand and grow. In seven instances out of ten, they were purchased and placed in bookcases, beautiful mahogany or rosewood book-cases, and there they remained, as bright and glittering as when brought from the bindery. They looked well in a room; they were useful as furniture. But the eager, changeful, restless spirit of our countrymen and country women, stimulated by the excitement of rapid changes and new situations, was more than ever averse from quiet, persevering study. Novelty must be had, and time must not be wasted on that which could be of no directly practical use. The last new work was sure to be the topic of conversation for a few days, and the ignorant could judge and speak of its merits as decidedly as the well-informed; there Vol. I.

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fore the last new work must be read.

To minds unaccustomed to the splendor and gayety of fashionable life, pictures of foreign society had a fascination not to be withstood. The newly rich lady, buried in her velvet fauteuil, loved to lose herself in the contemplation of those scenes of splendor and elegance, the enjoy ment of which she longed to realize, and for acting a part in which she prepared herself by the study of these precious productions. Lords and ladies flitted before her enraptured fancy, with their loves, their hates, their emulations; and when she arose from the contemplation of these charming representations, and mingled in the society of her peers, no wonder that she strove to imitate the models which had been so vividly pictured upon her imagination. Her furniture, her dress, her very language seemed vulgar, if not in known accordance with this foreign standard. Hence, Hannah More, and Miss Edgeworth, and Miss Hamilton, were thrown into the background by Lady Blessington, and Mrs. Gore, and the Honorable Mrs. Norton. Sir Walter Scott was displaced by Sir Edward Lytton Bul wer, and the younger D'Israeli.

It is by no means our intention to discuss the various merits of these. authors. We shall simply allude to their influence on prevailing modes of thinking, and their consequent effect upon manners. They all dwell mainly upon outward and artificial life. They may collectively be called the school of fashion, passion, and expediency. A certain kind of worldly wisdom may be found in them-wisdom useful to him who wishes to thoroughly understand his own inferior nature, and to learn the secret springs by which the minds of others may be swayed to his purposes; who would know the power and extent of the passions, and the influence they may be made to exert in forwarding the

designs of aspiring and ambitious men. But let one analyze and define the idea of good, as it is represented in these works, and he will uniformly find that it consists in the gratification of the passions, success in life, pleasure, wealth, and worldly honors; above all, in belonging to a certain exclusive set in society, and being in the height of the fashion. Of that higher wisdom, that holier light, that purer principle, which is at work among the affairs and in the souls of men; the beauty, the dignity, the independence, the peace-giving power of true virtue; that which makes its possessor superior to circumstances, and though neglected and solitary, not melancholy and dejected, we obtain but a faint idea. The great character is he who understands all the conventionalisms of polished life, and who has trained himself to repress every outward expression of feeling or emotion. The reader of these works rises from their perusal with the belief, not only that wealth and pleasure are absolutely necessary to happiness, but that man's highest dignity and felicity consist in adopting the fashions, and practicing the manners and habits there described.

Concerning Mr. Dickens, people have gone almost mad. He is certainly a man of genius, and if, as some say, laughter is good for indigestion, the whole tribe of dyspeptics should unite in raising a statue to his honor. Yet his school, which may be called the school of fun, is also a school of horror, and, we feel constrained to say it, of vulgarity. If he has improved the Yorkshire academies and the English parish poor-houses, which is said to have been in some degree the case, let us give him honor due. Let us honor him, too, for having, in two or three touching pictures, however unnatural, created a sympathy for the poor and unfortunate of our race. He deserves great credit for

some portions of his writings; but it is and it ever has been our opin ion, that their general effect is unfa vorable to manners, and to the development of true principles concerning them.

We love the spirit of gayety and mirth. The benevolence of nature has furnished much food for this spirit, in our domestic and social condition. It springs spontaneously in the hearts of the young and the happy, and the brow of age is softened by its genial influence. An active and playful imagination finds food for it, in the every-day occur rences of life, as well as in rare and uncommon incidents. The kind of mirth we mean, is perfectly consis tent with refinement of manners, and delicacy of sentiment. But the coarse caricatures of low life, the ludicrous and improbable adventures, the vulgar and ungrammatical talk with which these books abound, have no tendency "to mend the manners, or refine the heart." On the contrary, it is evident that such an incessant "dancing Jim Crow;" such a constant exhibition of the ex cessively ludicrous, mingled as it is with virtue, vice, and misfortune, and glaring forth under every as pect of life, particularly of common and low life, has the effect of hardening the heart, and preventing the spontaneous flow of generous, natu ral feeling. The spirit of ridicule, than which none is more averse to true politeness, though it is ever the handmaid of fashion, is fostered and grows apace. We learn to look at the things around us, not with a kindly benevolence, a sympathy in our common nature, nor yet with an ever ready smile for the gleams of genuine humor and originality; we are not content to smile, we must laugh; and no accident, or distor tion, or caricature, is too gross for an occasion. It is a great conve nience, no doubt, to a certain class of readers, those who live upon borrowed wit, the lovers of cant phra

ses, to have a broad and perennial supply of pithy and humorous sayings to quote from. To this class, Sam. Weller must be an inestimable treasure; and it is worthy of remark, that the oftener repeated, the more witty both the sayings and the repeaters of them seem to grow, until they become quite overpower ing, to one who is content with that kind of wit which darts its rays into the mind, and startles it with a delightful consciousness of a bright, original idea; but which often produces little more external effect than an intelligent, beaming smile, that eager lighting up of the features, which generally attends a sudden and pleasurable excitement of the imagination.

To Mr. Dickens' imitators, the great class who write droll stories for the periodicals, the above remarks will apply still more strongly. It must be observed that in these productions, even where satire is evidently the object, it is seldom the faults or follies of the world that are aimed at. Their remarks are confined to manners and external observances, and their object seems to be to flatter the higher and more exclusive classes, by placing every thing beneath or apart from them, in a ludicrous point of view, or, in homely phrase, by making fun of them. Does a tradesman or mechanic invite his friends to dinner, and are they joyous and happy in their honest and homely pleasures, they become, forsooth, a most delightful subject for quizzing, to the highly polished and refined circle in the next square. The picture is taken in excessive caricature, and presented. And what are the objects of ridicule? The lady who was obliged to leave her parlor, that dinner might be properly arranged; the accident that spoiled the soup; the scantiness or redundance of some particular dish; the mistakes of a raw footboy, or a new servantgirl from the country; every thing

is food for merriment. The sincerity, the hospitality, the hearti ness and cheerfulness of their enjoyments, go for nothing; they are not in high style; they do not understand bon-ton, and, therefore, are they to be derided, and either to renounce their social enjoyments, from fear of offending against some law of etiquette in their entertainments; or to spend their lives in a vain and fruitless imitation of the exclusive classes, which, if succeeded in, would rather lower, than exalt them in the scale of moral and rational beings. Who does not perceive that the disproportionate importance attached, in these works, to mere externals; the ridicule thrown upon every thing that differs from the arbitrary rules of a particular class, must have the effect not only of destroying all originality and variety of character, but of lowering the scale of intelligence, of morals, and particularly of manners, since a fearless and independent originality is far less vulgar than a timid and servile imitation. It is said that improvements have been made in English poor-houses, since the appearance of Oliver Twist. It is also said that certain comfortable, and formerly respectable streets and squares in London, have been almost depopulated, in consequence of the ridicule attached to them, by being made the supposed residen ces of some of these unfortunate people, so distressingly ignorant of the conventionalisms of high life. Such was the character and tenden cy of the greater part of the English literature, imported among us at the period of which we speak.

We have alluded to our own cookery books, our etiquette books, &c. But among the most remarkable phenomena of the time, was the change which came over two of the most popular and influential of our authors, Mr. N. P. Willis, and Mr. J. Fenimore Cooper. The former of these had acquired fame

as a poet. Perhaps there is nothing in the compass of American litera ture, which shows genius of a higher order, than the early poems, the scripture pieces of N. P. Willis. There is an elevation of thought, a chastened brilliancy of imagination, a depth of feeling, a beauty of expression, which mark the true poet, and indicate clearly enough what his vocation ought to have been. Had he persevered in his poetical career, he must have taken a high stand, perhaps the highest among the authors of his country; and he might have done much to preserve and foster in the general mind, the pure and elevating influences which poetry of a high order, always sheds around it. But he lowered himself to the yoke of popular opinion. The mere externals, the trivialities, the barren practicalities of life, took possession of his fine mind, his noble fancy, and fashion and high life became the objects of his ambition, and the themes of his pen. He went to Europe. But the thousand associations with the venerable past, the mighty dead, the fame, the glory, the poetic beauty and grandeur which fill the very atmosphere in which he moved, had now no power to stir his imagination. Inklings of Adventure, Letters from under a Bridge, descriptions of breakfasts, dinners, suppers, furniture, dress, and, above all, fashions, modes and customs; these were the subjects which filled his soul, and which, he rightly judged, would prove more acceptable to his countrymen and country women, than mere abstract idealisms, romantic nonsense, as it was the fashion to call every thing which had not an immediate practical bearing on the interests and pleasures of outward life. It may be said that Willis could not have lived on poetry. He could not have lived as he wished to live, as all wished to live, in splendor, in luxu ry, in the odor and sanctity of exclusive fashion. He followed the

general current; and it shows how strong that current must have been, when such minds as his, were not only drawn into it, but led to bend the whole strength of their genius and their talents, to foster and encourage the trivial, sensu ous, material taste and spirit of the time.

Halleck, before this, had ceased to write, and had taken to the count. ing house. What might not the author of Fanny and of Marco Bozzaris, have done to check the mere pride of wealth, and encourage the pride of noble feeling. Percival, too, shrank more and more from a society which grew more and more uncongenial to his taste. He could not write that which would not be read and approved; so he, for a time, left the haunts of men, and betook himself to the rocks and lonely fields; and in studying their secrets, and collecting their treas ures, in communing with wild and solitary nature, found a solace which he sought in vain from the sympathy and appreciation of his fellow men.

Mr. Cooper, the author of high and spirit-stirring tales of the forest and of the deep, works eminently calculated to cultivate the taste and imagination, and to enrich the lite rature of our country; he, too, for sook his high vocation, and on returning from his residence abroad, where he had assiduously striven to obtain the honors and distinctions of ton, produced his famous Home as Found, a book remarkable for many things, but for none so much as for showing how the naturally fine mind of the author had become enthralled to the prevailing low, contracted, mechanical spirit, as evinced in his strictures on society and manners. Mr. Cooper had it in his power, at this time, to do much to elevate the standard of manners, for all eyes and ears were open, looking for what should be said and done by those who had been abroad. Had

he written a book inculcating selfrespect and independence of thought and action; had he shown how our new and peculiar position enabled us to throw off the burden which time, and prejudice, and opinion, had thrown around an old and artificial society, and instead of imposing fashion and prescription as a guide, had directed us to the principles of fitness, of convenience, of true politeness, of genuine taste, he might, by his influence, have in creased our true respectability, both at home and abroad. But instead of this, much as he complained of provincialism, and want of inde. pendence, he certainly did his best to frighten the Americans (already, as we have seen, timid and anxious to a ridiculous degree,) into a belief that all manners were shocking, and vulgar, and unbearable, unless they were formed upon one particu. lar model, and that model, not founded as it should be, upon benevolence, nature, and fitness, but drawn from the arbitrary rules and customs of a cold-hearted and artificial foreign society. Miss Effingham is an impersonation of etiquette, and so is the elegant Mr. Effingham, her father. The French governess, who seems to have been introduced to utter oracles on fashionable usage, rings changes through the whole book, on reténue, good tone, and savoir vivre. The faults of our society, the manifold deficiencies in manners, are represented as spring ing from want of a capital, contain. ing a circle whose customs shall be a law unto all the rest. Nothing is left to good sense; nothing to peculiar circumstances, institutions, and habits of life. Wine must be drunk, eggs must be opened, puddings must be helped, rooms must be entered in a particular way, the way that Mr. Cooper had been accustomed to see in Square, or at the Hotel de or the unhappy wights were branded as naive, provincial, unfinished-terms, in Mr. Cooper's

vocabulary, the most humiliating and degrading.

Thus every thing, both from abroad and at home, conspired to raise the value of wealth, and the importance of mere externals, and to make manners an object of universal study and anxiety. Many circumstances were favorable to their cultivation, particularly the leisure, and the means of increased social intercourse, which were the concomitants of sudden and general wealth. How then did it happen that the springs of society did not work more easily? That there was not more of grace and elegance, of enjoyment, of ease and freedom, of gentle courtesy, of self and mutual respect among men and women?

In detailing the prevailing influences of the time, this question has been already almost answered. The influx of wealth had raised multitudes to situations, for which they were not by previous education and habits prepared. Where wealth and accidental circumstances were the only or principal objects of respect, society could not be otherwise than vulgar. Not having the resisting and self-directing power, which a cultivated judgment and taste would have bestowed, the severe strictures of foreigners caused an undue degree of distrust, and led to a servile spirit of imitation, than which a power more destructive of dignity, of ease, of grace, of variety, of ele vation of any kind, does not exist. Add to this the effect of a whole literature of direct or indirect ridi cule. The larger cities became afraid they should not resemble, in every particular, the state of things in London and Paris. The smaller cities and larger villages were in a panic, lest they should be supposed to differ in any of their modes and customs, from New York, or Bos ton, or Philadelphia. The old families of the country were frightened and disgusted at the encroachments of the new people, and retired with