H. Reeve, made under the immediate superintendence of the author.

Nothing is more embarrassing in the ordinary intercourse of life than this irritable patriotism of the Americans. A stranger may be very well inclined to praise many of the institutions of their country; but he begs permission to blame some of the peculiarities he observes a permission which is inexorably refused. America is, therefore, a free country, in which, lest any body should be hurt by your remarks, you are not allowed to speak freely of private individuals or of the state, of the citizens or of the authorities, of public or of private undertakings, or, in short, of any thing at all, except it be the climate and the soil; and even then Americans will be found ready to defend either the one or the other, as if they had been contrived by the inhabitants of the country.'

Again,

'Works have been published in the proudest nations of the Old World, expressly intended to censure the vices, and deride the follies of the times; Labruyère inhabited the palace of Louis XIV. when he composed his chapter upon the great; and Molière criticised the courtiers in the very pieces which were acted before the court. But the ruling power in the United States is not to be made game of; the smallest reproach irritates its sensibility, and the slightest joke which has any foundation in truth, renders it indignant. From the style of its language, to the more solid virtues of its character, every thing must be made the subject of encomium. No writer, whatever be his eminence, can escape from this tribute of adulation to his fellow-citizens. The majority lives in the perpetual practice of self-applause; and there are certain truths which the Americans can only learn from strangers, or from experience.'

Hence no great men either in literature or in politics. For thought, like affection, sinks to mediocrity when it ceases to be free.

A stranger does indeed sometimes meet with Americans who dissent from these rigorous formularies; with men who deplore the defects of the laws, the mutability and the ignorance of democracy; who even go so far as to observe the evil tendencies which impair the national character, and to point out such remedies as it might be possible to apply; but no one is there to hear these things beside yourself, and you, to whom these secret reflections are confided, are a stranger and a bird of passage. They are very ready to communicate truths which are useless to you, but they continue to hold a different language in public.

If ever these lines are read in America, I am well assured of two things in the first place, that all who peruse them will raise their voices to condemn me; and in the second place, that very many of them will acquit me at the bottom of their conscience.'

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This is a melancholy and disheartening point of view. whole nation employed from year's end to year's end in playing

the part of courtier to itself! The consequence is, it must gradually lose all relish for truth, and fall into the worst state of degradation (for a more humiliating and more penal one cannot be imagined), a preference of flatterers over friends. We say what we are saying out of a sincere regard for the Americans, but under a still greater reverence for freedom of opinion. If they compel us to choose between the two, we shall be sorry for it. In that case, our choice is made. We still hope, however, that they may find the means of reconciling our regard for both. The attempt to drive mankind into silent adoration of them is purely ludicrous. By perseverance in it, the blustering Demos of America would do more towards discrediting Republicanism by their intolerance, than they can ever do towards recommending it by their economy.

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Theatrical stars shoot too madly from the sphere' of ordinary womanhood, for ordinary rules of ' maiden meditation' to apply to them. Mrs Butler's idea of herself is, that she has even more than the national English abhorrence of coming in contact with strangers. At the same time, she has apparently no idea that any thing need be kept secret from the public; and would go through with her gambols round the room just the same, whoever might come in. Her father and herself accordingly are shown up with as little ceremony as the rest of the world. If Mr Charles Kemble chance to get a little elevated (in her language, how 'comed you so indeed ?') or if, walking home at night, he is betrayed into the frolic of longing for a gimlet to bore a hole in some wine casks, left imprudently in the street-out it comes. The merits and demerits of his acting, or his reading, could not be canvassed more impartially, were he a perfect stranger to her. She is to the full as nonchalant and explicit about herself. She knows she can behave as ill and be as odious as any body when she has a mind. She must have seemed a strange animal to the fashionables of New York, whilst they were seeming just as strange to her. She dislikes to wear a diamond ring on account of the abo'minable ugliness of her hand.' Lawrence's portrait of her is admirable, inasmuch as it has overcome the material impediments, and put her spirit into her face. The harder portions of her social creed, and personal character, are trotted out with the same indifference to effect, good or bad. We're a blessed pack of drudges, ' and deserve to be so.' Her satisfaction in occasionally escaping from our wearisome generation, and forgetting herself in Dante, is what many persons may manage to understand. But her declaration that the human race cannot stand in competition with a land-swallow for her favour, is not so easy to forgive. Poor 'little creature! how very much more I do love all things than

VOL. LXI. NO. CXXIV.

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⚫ men and women.' If that is the case, no wonder her fellow-creatures are less agreeable to her than herself. There is no moment of my life when I would not rather be alone than in company.' Yet she tires often of herself. I would give the world for a good 'shaking. I am dying of the blue devils.' This, however, is a consummation not always to be prevented even by hock and waltzing. Sweet German waltz, next to hock, the most intoxicating growth of the Rheinland!' These are more confidential revelations, it must be admitted, than the public is in the habit of receiving. A negro servant, who brought down her horse every morning, was asked by another if he had yet seen Miss Kemble at the theatre. He answered, No. I have had the pleasure of 'seeing Miss Kemble in private society.' Let him buy her book, and she herself could tell him little more. The Kentuckian who was doubtful about that 'ere gal,' but who guessed she was 'o' some account,' will do well to gratify his curiosity in the same

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manner.

Though Mrs Butler has said nothing about the Americans, which, whether we look at the matter or the manner, she had not a perfect right to say; on the other hand, she has given the Americans, without any breach of gallantry, certain rights as against herself. An ornamental tube is not a barometer, unless it is properly constructed, the quicksilver what it ought to be, and the scale correctly noted. Now, this is not the nature of Mrs Butler's book. It is, at the best, a mirror; and not so much a mirror reflecting an image of America as of herself. General Jackson appears to have suspected her of belonging to the family of scribbling ladies, when he told her that the South Carolina disturbances had no larger source than the nib of a lady's pen.' It is curious to see the influence of the sex as powerful over American politics, as in the court of Queen Anne or Louis the Fifteenth. But the representation which Mrs Butler has given of herself, is a conclusive proof that the possibility of making a national or political use of her pages never entered into her head. Otherwise she would have been upon her guard; and written less in the headlong capricious style of a moonish youth, changeable, longing, and liking, for every passion something, and for no passion truly any thing, as boys and women are for the most part cattle of this colour.' Now, this is too much her way of going on, upon her own showing; her book being a window to her mind, in which all is seen that for the time is uppermost in it.

While yet a girl, Miss Kemble rose up on a sudden the selftaught ornament of the London theatre. Naturally of a vivid temperament, and of mercurial and uncertain spirits very clever, running one feeling into another, without the slightest warning

made, from her talents and celebrity, the principal attraction of almost every circle where she appeared-pursued from place to place by anonymous love letters and bouquets-wandering over the world in a profession which places a woman to a certain degree in a false position, and which, loathe it as she may, and perhaps in proportion as she loathes it, must act upon her sentiment and character-being all this, it necessarily follows, that a picturesque exhibition of her authentic self cannot be a very grave, uniform, business-like affair. The outpourings of her volatile spirits, o'er-wrought feelings, and rich embroidered fancy, make at times glorious confusion. It is the emptyings of Falstaff's pockets, with many finer things besides. With regard to her notices of America, she does not affect to disguise her foolish weaknesses, and to pass herself off for more than she is worth. A passion for England, the yearning of the roots for the soil in which they grew' (call it patriotism or what you will), is indulged and gloried in, so as to take from her comparisons between country and country, every thing of a judicial character. For instance, her avowed panting after a wreath of English fog in preference to the surpassing sunsets of New York, is one of those sentimental bravadoes in which a pretty woman is allowed to exhaust the sorrows of exile, or any other sorrow.

Mrs Butler gets rapidly over the ground. Like one of the Baltimore schooners which she describes-of light build and raking masts, she is away and back again, before the reader is aware. The skill with which she gracefully touches serious subjects, and the depth and beauty of many passages, are in comical juxtaposition with the other half of her nature and occupations. At one moment she is absorbed in the principles of her art, or half mystified in dim spiritual metaphysics, or walks out to breathe more freely a bright poetical atmosphere of her own, or is found almost transfigured on a mountain top, ready for any extravagance that enthusiasm can devise, or drops down suddenly from out of her heaven, and wishes herself dead. We fall in with her at the next, pottering,' as she calls it, over the frivolous frippery of her theatrical toilette; paying compliments to her new furbished bonnet, it is a worthy old thing that ;' or coaxing herself, dear little good me,' for her economy in abstaining from the purchase of a pelerine which she did not want. She has recorded within the twelvemonth, we are sorry to perceive, cryings enough to last any reasonable person a life and more. However, if she " can weep for nothing, like Diana in the fountain,' she wants as little also to make her merry. There is always an ecstatic hour to be got arranging flowers. A nosegay reconciles her in a minute to our prison-house of torments. The public are bound, we think, to

look with interest on the history of all who are born and trained and in a great degree sacrificed to our enjoyment. And sacrifice is, alas! far too much the history of all genius and of every species of public life. It is pleasant, therefore, to see that prima donnas do not necessarily lose their animal spirits and natural pleasures from the wear and tear and artificial habits of the stage. The frolicsome humour of our young heroine at times took eccentric flights, and must have put her in some danger of the tread-mill or a lunatic asylum, with a generation who are not very indulgent to a joke. As they went through the streets of Philadelphia, during the riot of an election, she kept brandishing her father's theatrical sword out of the carriage window. Another of her freaks was bolder still. They were travelling from New York to Boston, en voiturier; or, in American phraseology, as exclusive extras. The following adventure occurred to them on the journey:- At one place where we stopped, I saw a meek-eyed, yellowish-white cart-horse, standing with a man's saddle on his back. The opportunity was irresistible, and the desire too. I had not backed a horse for so long. So I got upon the amazed quadruped, woman's fashion, and took a gallop through the fields, with infinite risk of falling off, and pro'portionate satisfaction.'

This was the mixed and somewhat tangled skein of thought and feeling that she took out with her to America, and out of which, sailor-fashion, she has spun a very pleasant yarn. It is not, to be sure, as full of detail and philosophy as De Tocqueville. There are readers enow, however, whom it will not suit the worse for that. In former days, Carneades and a Greek mima, visiting Rome, were not expected to look for the same things, or, seeing the same things, to see them in the same spirit. What are trifles to philosophers or day labourers, are serious matters in the eyes of a Rosalind or a Beatrice. The difference between a good or a bad horse in the rides which did her ten thousand goods;' between a pleasant neighbour at dinner and a bel esprit who, by way of critical conversation, tells her that the Hunchback is by no 'means as good as Shakspeare;' between milliners that can make a gown to meet behind and that cannot; between an audience readily electrified and an audience of cabbages; between acting with such sticks as Mr Keppel and acting with her father -were points of more immediate concern to Miss Kemble on her theatrical trip to New York and Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore (for that is all), than the issue of the South Carolina insurrection against the Tariff, or of Jackson's struggle with the Bank. Such is accordingly the character of her Journal. American kinsman made out for her that the Kembles were ori

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