His book gives one an uneasy notion of per- make the most of his materials. We shall petual and very unpleasant locomotion; as now, however, go rapidly over these volif you had been hurried along in company umes, making such observations as occur to with a queen's messenger over the greatest us in passing along. Boz must bear with possible space of ground in the shortest pos- us when we speak a little unpleasant truth sible space of time-in every possible vari-recollecting that sweet are the wounds of a ety of land and water carriage, continually friend. Boz is strong enough in his own thrown among disagreeable and vulgar fel- just consciousness of genius, and in his eslow travellers, experiencing all sorts of per-tablished reputation, to bear a little rough sonal inconveniences and annoyances; dash handling without being either shaken or hurt ing past cities, towns, villages, huts, forests, by it. plains, hills, rivers, canals: surely, surely, First, as to the title-" American Notes dear Boz, there was no necessity to give us for General Circulation "-we were a little minute and monotonous records of such uncomfortable at the view which our counmatters as these, great though we acknow- trymen might take of it; Jonathan's "notes" ledge even our interest in your movements.-his engagements in pecuniary mattersYou should have left all these to the hack not being latterly, at all events, in very high travellers and tourists who can see and de-estimation here; and before our mind's eye scribe nothing else. Why, again, are there rose, in large black letters, "REPUDIATION!" such reiterated, and sometimes most sick- As the Queen, however-God bless her, and ening details of the inattention to personal in his own good time send Jonathan such cleanliness, and of the filthy habits of the another!-nay legitimate foreign coin, and inferior Americans-have we not long ago make it pass current here whenever she heard of all them ad nauseam usque? Why pleases, so King Boz, by his fiat, can make, dwell so long and painfully on the disgust- and has made, even his American Notes ciring peculiarities of your commercial and culate very generally. other, fellow-travellers, and say nothing Then comes the "Dedication "—and we about the manners of the educated and su- think it calculated, by its air of pretension, perior classes the ladies and the gentlemen to lead the reader to form expectations as to of America? Are we right, or are we wrong, the character and object of the work, which in concluding from these volumes, that eve-will be quickly disappointed. ry man, from the highest to the lowest, at Chapter I., contains the "Going Away " all times and places-at meal times, in eve- of "Charles Dickens, Esquire, and Lady," ning society, in the houses of legislature which is feeble and exaggerated; its details in courts of justice-at the President's lev- are trivial and uninteresting, and display a ees-equally in ladies' as in gentlemen's so- highly Cockneyish ignorance of the comciety-chews tobacco, and-faugh!-spits monest nautical matters. From the repeatout his "tobacco-tinctured saliva?" Agained and pathetic leave-takings between Boz -we do not feel the least desire to accom- and his friends, and their tearful allusions to pany Boz in his character of inspector of the vast distance so soon to separate them, prisons and visitor of lunatic asylums; to you might have imagined, that instead of a discharge which melancholy duties seems to fourteen day's passage in her Majesty's snug be his first and anxious object on arriving at and stout steam-packet, Britannia, the adany new town. Boz is undoubtedly always venturous Boz was setting off, by some myseloquent and graphic on these occasions-terious electro-magnetic conveyance, on a often painfully so; and his sketch of the system of solitary confinement at Philadelphia, is powerful and harrowing. We did not want the many political or statistical details, nor the minute descriptions of buildings, streets, squares, villages, and towns, which so frequently appear in these volumes. They are neither interesting, valuable, nor new; we expected, at all events, different topics from Boz. Whenever he descends from the stilts of political and moral declamation, and walks quietly along on his own ground-the delineation of manners and character, especially among the lower classes-Boz is delightful and fresh as ever; though displaying, here and there, an evident anxiety to

fifty years' voyage to one of the fixed stars!
As soon, however, as Boz has got rid of his
companions, and is fairly off, his peculiar
talents are exhibited in describing "the
Voyage Out," by far the best portion of the
two volumes. Here are fully exhibited his
minute observation, his facility of descrip-
tive illustration-in fact, innumerable hap-
py touches of every sort. Here Boz, wheth-
er above or below deck, by day or by night,
whether well or ill, whether "sick
or go-
ing to be sick," whether awake or asleep,
even whether comic or pathetic, is inimita-
ble. Yet are there occasional symptoms
even here of forcing, and a tone of exagge-
ration.

"We all dined together that day; and a rather occupants, that they have startled me by their formidable party we were; no fewer than eighty-reality, which far exceeded, as it seemed to me, all six strong. The vessel being pretty deep in the power of mine to conjure up the absent; have, water, with all her coals on board and so many many and many a time, at such an hour, grown passengers, and the weather being calm and quiet, suddenly out of objects with whose real look, and there was but little motion; so that, before the use, and purpose, I was as well acquainted as with dinner was half over, even those passengers who my own two hands. were most distrustful of themselves plucked up "My own two hands, and feet likewise, being amazingly; and those who in the morning had re-very cold, however, on this particular occasion, I turned to the universal question, Are you a good crept below at midnight. It was not exactly comsailor?' a very decided negative, now either par-fortable below. It was decidedly close; and it ried the inquiry, with the evasive reply, 'Oh! 1 suppose I'm no worse than any body else,' or, reckless of all moral obligations, answered boldly, Yes;' and with some irritation too, as though they would add, I should like to know what you see in me, sir, particularly to justify suspicion!'

6

"Notwithstanding this high tone of courage and confidence, I could not but observe that very few remained long over their wine; and that every body had an unusual love of the open air; and that the favorite and most coveted seats were invariably those nearest to the door. The tea-table, too, was by no means as well attended as the dinner-table; and there was less whist-playing than might have been expected. Stili, with the exception of one lady, who had retired with some precipitation at dinner-time, immediately after being assisted to the finest cut of a very yellow boiled leg of mutton, with very green capers, there were no invalids as yet; and walking, and smoking, and drinking of brandy-and-water, (but always in the open air,) went on with unabated spirit, until eleven o'clock or thereabouts, when turning in'-no sailor of seven hours' experience talks of going to bed-became the order of the night. The perpetual tramp of boot-heels on the decks gave place to a heavy silence, and the whole human freight was stowed away below, excepting a very few stragglers like myself, who were probably, like me, afraid to go

there.

a

"To one unaccustomed to such scenes, this is very striking time on shipboard. Afterwards, and when its novelty had long worn off, it never ceased to have a peculiar interest and charm for me. The gloom through which the great black mass holds its direct and certain course; the rushing water, plainly heard, but dimly seen; the broad, white, glistening track that follows in the vessel's wake; the men on the look-out forward, who would be scarcely visible against the dark sky, but for their blotting out some score of glistening stars; the helmsman at the wheel, with the illuminated card before him, shining, a speck of light amidst the darkness, like something sentient and of divine intelligence; the melancholy sighing of the wind through block, and rope, and chain; the gleaming forth of light from every crevice, nook, and tiny piece of glass about the decks, as though the ship were filled with fire in hiding, ready to burst through any outlet, wild with its resistless power of death and ruin. At first, too, and even when the hour, and all the objects it exalts, have come to be familiar, it is difficult, alone and thoughtful, to hold them to their proper shapes and forms. They change with the wandering fancy; assume the semblance of things left far away; put on the well-remembered aspect of favorite places dearly loved; and even people them with shadows. Streets, houses, rooms; figures so like their usual

was impossible to be unconscious of the presence of that extraordinary compound of strange smells which is to be found nowhere but on board ship, and which is such a subtle perfume that it seems to enter at every pore of the skin, and whisper of the hold. Two passengers' wives (one of them my own) lay already in silent agonies on the sofa; and one lady's maid (my lady's) was a mere bundle on the floor, execrating her destiny, and pounding her curl papers among the stray boxes. Every thing sloped the wrong way; which in itself was an aggravation scarcely to be borne. I had left the door open, a moment before, in the bosom of a gentle declivity, and, when I turned to shut it, it was on the summit of a lofty eminence. Now every plank and timber creaked, as if the ship were made of wicker-work, and now crackled, like an enormous fire of the driest possible twigs. There was nothing for it but bed; so I went to bed.

"It was pretty much the same for the next two days, with a tolerably fair wind and dry weather. I read in bed (but to this hour I don't know what) a good deal; and reeled on deck a little; drank cold brandy-and-water with an unspeakable disgust, and ate hard biscuit perseveringly; not ill, but going to be.

"It is the third morning. I am awakened out of my sleep by a dismal shriek from my wife, who demands to know whether there's any danger. I rouse myself, and look out of bed. The water-jug is plunging and leaping like a lively dolphin; all the smaller articles are afloat, except my shoes, which are stranded on a carpet-bag, high and dry, like a couple of coal-barges. Suddenly I see them spring into the air, and behold the looking-glass, which is nailed to the wall, sticking fast upon the ceiling. At the same time the door entirely disappears, and a new one is opened in the floor. Then I begin to comprehend that the state-room is standing on its head.

"Before it is possible to make any arrangement at all compatible with this novel state of things, the ship rights. Before one can say, 'Thank heaven!' she wrongs again. Before one can cry she is wrong, she seems to have started forward, and to be a creature actively running of its own accord, with broken knees and failing legs, through every variety of hole and pitfall, and stumbling, constantly. Before one can so much as wonder, she takes a high leap into the air. Before she has well done that, she takes a deep dive into the water. Before she has gained the surface, she throws a summerset. The instant she is on her legs, she rushes backward. And so she goes on, staggering, heaving, wrestling, leaping, diving, jumping, pitching, throbbing, rolling, and rocking: and going through all these movements, sometimes by turns, and sometimes altogether; until one feels disposed to roar for mercy.

"A steward passes. Steward!' Sir?' 'What as no weak man in his senses could ever have got is the matter? what do you call this?' Rather a into. I found myself standing, when a gleam of heavy sea on, sir, and a head-wind.' consciousness came upon me, holding on to some"A head-wind! Imagine a human face upon thing. I don't know what. I think it was the the vessel's prow, with fifteen thousand Samsons in boatswain: or it may have been the pump: or posone bent upon driving her back, and hitting her sibly the cow. I can't say how long I had been exactly between the eyes whenever she attempts there; whether a day or a minute. I recollect tryto advance an inch. Imagine the ship herself, ing to think about something (about any thing in with every pulse and artery of her huge body the whole wide world, I was not particular,) withswoln and bursting under this mal-treatment, out the smallest effect. I could not even make out sworn to go on or die. Imagine the wind howling, which was the sea and which the sky; for the horithe sea roaring, the rain beating; all in furious zon seemed drunk, and was flying wildly about, in array against her. Picture the sky both dark and all directions. Even in that incapable state, howwild, and the clouds, in fearful sympathy with the ever, I recognised the lazy gentleman standing waves, making another ocean in the air. Add to before me: nautically clad in a suit of shaggy blue, all this, the clattering on deck and down below; with an oilskin hat. But I was too imbecile, althe tread of hurried feet; the loud hoarse shouts though I knew it to be he, to separate him from his of seamen; the gurgling in and out of water dress; and tried to call him, I remember, Pilot. through the scuppers; with, every now and then, After another interval of total unconsciousness, I the striking of a heavy sea upon the planks above, found he had gone, and recognised another figure with the deep, dead, heavy sound of thunder heard in its place. It seemed to wave and fluctuate bewithin a vault ;-and there is the head-wind of that fore me, as though I saw it reflected in an unsteady January morning. looking-glass; but I knew it for the captain; and such was the cheerful influence of his face, that I tried to smile; yes, even then, I tried to smile. I saw, by his gestures, that he addressed me; but it was a long time before I could make out that he remonstrated against my standing up to my knees in water, as I was; of course, I don't know why. I tried to thank him, but couldn't. I could only point to my boots-or wherever I supposed my boots to be-and say, in a plaintive voice, Cork soles :' at the same time endeavoring, I am told, to sit down in the pool. Finding that I was quite insensible, and for the time a maniac, he humanely conducted me below.

"I say nothing of what may be called the domestic noises of the ship; such as the breaking of glass and crockery, the tumbling down of stewards, the gambols, overhead, of loose casks and truant dozens of bottled porter, and the very remarkable and far from exhilarating sounds raised in their various state-rooms by the seventy passengers who were too ill to get up to breakfast. I say nothing of them; for although I lay listening to this concert for three or four days, I don't think I heard it for more than a quarter of a minute, at the expiration of which term I lay down again, excessively sea-sick.

"Not sea-sick, be it understood, in the ordinary acceptation of the term; I wish I had been; but in a form which I have never seen or heard described, though I have no doubt it is very common. I lay there, all the day long, quite coolly and contentedly; with no sense of weariness, with no desire to get up, or get better, or take the air; with no curiosity, or care, or regret, of any sort or degree, saving that I think I can remember, in this universal indifference, having a kind of lazy joyof fiendish delight, if any thing so lethargic can be dignified with the title-in the fact of my wife being too ill to talk to me. If I may be allowed to illustrate my state of mind by such an example, I should say that I was exactly in the condition of the elder Mr. Willet, after the incursion of the rioters into his bar at Chigwell. Nothing would have surprised me. If, in the momentary illumination of any ray of intelligence that may have come upon me in the way of thoughts of home, a goblin postman, with a scarlet coat and bell, had come into that little kennel before me, broad awake in broad day, and, apologizing for being damp through walking in the sea, had handed me a letter, directed to myself in familiar characters, I am certain I should not have felt one atom of astonishment; I should have been perfectly satisfied. If Neptune himself had walked in, with a toasted shark on his trident, I should have looked upon the event as one of the very commonest every-day occurrences.

"Once-once-I found myself on deck. I don't know how I got there, or what possessed me to go there, but there I was; and completely dressed too, with a huge pea-coat on, and a pair of boots, such

"There I remained until I got better: suffering, whenever I was recommended to eat any thing, an amount of anguish only second to that which is said to be endured by the apparently drowned, in the process of restoration to life. One gentleman on board had a letter of introduction to me from a mu. tual friend in London. He sent it below, with his card, on the morning of the head-wind; and I was long troubled with the idea that he might be up, and well, and a hundred times a-day expecting nie to call upon him in the saloon. I imagined him one of those cast-iron images-I will not call them men-who ask, with red faces and lusty voices, what sea-sickness means, and whether it really is as bad as it is represented to be. This was very orturing indeed; and I don't think I ever felt such perfect gratification and gratitude of heart as I did when I heard from the ship's doctor that he had been obliged to put a large mustard-poultice on this very gentleman's stomach. I date my recovery from the receipt of that intelligence."

After encountering a somewhat serious accident, at the close of their voyage, owing to the ignorance of the pilot, and the stress of weather-all of which is excellently well told-Boz lands at Boston, and soon finds the results of his previously announced arrival.

"Not being able, in the absence of any change of clothes, to go to church that day, we were compelled to decline these kindnesses, one and all: and I was reluctantly obliged to forego the delight

of hearing Dr. Channing, who happened to preach wards whom his whole conduct-his patient that morning, for the first time in a very long in-training of the imprisoned soul, his gentleterval." ness, acuteness, and sagacity-is above all Dear Boz, we are disposed to be very an- praise. How suggestive of metaphysical gry with you! Fancy him deliberately fore- speculation is this powerfully interesting going the only opportunity he had of hear-case! What a treasure would it have been ing the most distinguished of American to Locke or Dugald Stewart! But we pass preachers, and expressed object of high ad-on, sincerely thanking Mr. Dickens for his miration to Boz himself, because he had not thoughtfulness in allowing so competent a a change of clothes! Why not have gone as person as Dr. How to tell his tale in his own he was! What if he had struck into a corner words. Mr. Dickens's own description of the of the gallery, with a glazed cap and dam- little girl is also beautiful and delicate. aged pea-jacket? We would have done so; At Hartford, Boz gets again into a lunatic but Boz was known to be Boz, and must asylum and jail, and describes the inmates dress accordingly! And now Dr. Channing of each. Yale College is then mentioned; is dead! How interesting and valuable now only, however, to be dismissed in half-awould have been such a graphic sketch as dozen lines, which are devoted to an indicaBoz could have given, of the countenance, tion of the style of the buildings. Here, person, carriage, conversation, and mode of again, was lost an opportunity of giving us delivery, of this eminent person! Yet there highly interesting information; for Yale is not a word on the subject. The universi- College is a really distinguished institution, ty-the first American university he saw and has very eminent professors. Then we is despatched in a very few words of vague roll rapidly along in a steam-boat, catching eulogy: not a word of professors, students, only hasty glimpses of what we pass-one or college-life-dress-buildings-mode of object, "a mad-house, (how the lunatics. procedure! Authors educated at our own flung up their caps, and roared in sympathy universities, at all events, would have seized with the headlong engine and the driving the opportunity of giving us an insight into tide!)" Once for all, one's feelings are the mode in which Jonathan manages mat- quite oppressed with the perpetual introters at college; and we are greatly disap- duction of these wretched topics of lunacy pointed at being left entirely in the dark. and lunatics; which, as in the above inWhat sort of discipline prevails? Have they stance, dash away all one's cheerfulness, private tutors?-lecturers? How are the and fill us with feelings and associations of classes divided? How many professors ? pain and melancholy. Arrived at New York, and of what? Do they or the students wear Boz gives some gay and graphic sketches any particular species of costumes, caps, or of its general appearance, and of its cotegowns? The following disagreeable allu- ries; and presently betakes himself-more sion to our own universities (of which Boz suo-to the lock-ups, the prisons, the lunatic can really know nothing personally or prac-asylums, and, at midnight, to those horrid tically) is quite uncalled-for, and in very bad

taste:

"Whatever the defects of American universities may be, they disseminate no prejudices; rear no bigots; dig up the buried ashes of no old superstitions; never interpose between the people and their improvement; exclude no man because of his religious opinions; above all, in their whole course of study and instruction, recognise a world, and a broad one too, lying beyond the college walls."

We regret to say that Boz takes many opportunities, in the same way, of making gratuitous disparaging allusions to our own institutions.

quarters of the town where the profligacy of the lowest of the low is being carried on. In all these scenes, we perceive the author of Oliver Twist, engaged, as it were, storing up fresh impressions, and images, and topics, for future use; but the reader is apt to turn aside, wearily, and with a sigh. Many of his touches are equally painful and pow

erful.

On his going to Philadelphia, amidst "a playful and incessant shower of expectora tion" (!) Boz makes a new acquaintance; though slight and brief, we think the following a specimen of Boz's exquisite percep tion of the humorous-and it is not overdone:

Twenty pages are then devoted to an account by Dr. How of a very remarkable occupant of that institution-a little girl, blind, deaf, dumb, and almost totally destitute of "I made acquaintance, on this journey, with a both taste and smell. We shall never hear discourse by informing me, in a grave whisper, that mild and modest young Quaker, who opened the the name of Dr. How again without feeling his grandfather was the inventor of cold-drawn grateful for his profoundly interesting and castor-oil. I mention the circumstance here, thinkinstructive account of his little patient, to-ing it probable that this is the first occasion on

which the valuable medicine in question was ever used as a conversational apcrient."

Philadelphia is a "handsome city, but distractingly regular." Boz thinks Philadelphian society "more provincial than Boston or New-York;" and "that there is afloat in the fair city an assumption of taste and criticism, savoring rather of those genteel discussions of the same themes, in connection with Shakspeare and the Musical Glasses, of which we read in the Vicar of Wakefield." The remainder of the chapter (thirty pages) we spend within the gloomy walls of the "Penitentiary," and the petrifying horrors of its "Silent System" described with fearful force, and most justly condemned.

which is fairly described, Boz saw "his dear friend Washington Irving," whom he takes the opportunity of paying a high compliment.

their representstives should be corrupted! May they not, however, be only desirous, with a reasonable pride, of preserving for ever, for public exhibition, these various mementos of the respect paid to the State, through its organs and representatives? Boz, by the way, calls them "Ambassadors," but erroneously; for Chancellor Kent informs us, (1 Commentaries, p. 40, note, 4th edition,) "that the United States are usually represented by ministers, plenipotentiaries, and chargés d'affaires, and have never sent a person of the rank of ambassador in the diplomatic house." The Prince of Orange once expressed to Mr. Adams his surprise that the United States had not put At Washington, Boz comically figures as themselves, in that respect, on a level with a very angry lion, (and well he may be,) the crowned heads. The morning after among the little street-urchins. If he be in Boz's arrival at Washington, he is "carearnest here, these young gentlemen are ried" (as he tells us, with rather an amusing the most impudent varlets we ever saw or swell of expression,) "to the President's heard of. The general character and unfin-house by an official gentleman, who was so ished appearance of the buildings of Wash- kind as to charge himself with every presentaington, are thus humorously described: "To tion to the President!" The President Tythe admirers of cities, it is a Barmecide ler is very slightly noticed. At a levee, Feast; a pleasant field for the imagination to rove in; a monument raised to a deceased project, with not even a legible inscription to record its departed greatness." His descriptions of the Senate and House of Representatives, then sitting, are very meagre and unsatisfactory; and nothing can be more turgid and feeble than the long paragraph of declamation which follows them; most irritating and offensive in tone to the Americans, however well founded in fact. Topics of this sort should be handled with great delicacy and sobriety, in order to have a chance of being beneficial in America, or appreciated by persons of judgment here. Here again, too, Boz goes out of his way to indulge in a very foolish and puerile sneer at our Houses of Lords and Commons. Its tone is more that of some wearied reporter for a radical newspaper, than of an intelligent and independent observer; and it affords a strong illustration of a remark we have already made, on the perpetual tendency of Mr. Dickens to undervalue and abuse our best institutions. We see, and even say, this, with real pain, and consider it our duty to point it out as very reprehensible. To proceed, however: Boz's ire is excited by seeing, in one of the rooms at the Post-Office, all the presents received by American Ministers and Plenipotentiaries from foreign potentates. May not this custom be supported by a reason less discreditable to the Americans than that assigned by Boz? He thinks that reason to be, their foolish fears lest by means of such petty presents

Here ends Vol. I. We feel compelled to say generally of Vol. II. that it is almost totally destitute of interest: a record of the personal inconveniences and annoyances experienced by Boz, while pelting over the country in steam-boats, canal-boats, railroads, and coaches, in which a vast portion of his time seems to have been passed, surrounded by very unpleasant and unfavora ble specimens of American travellers, viz., the lower orders of commercial persons, and of settlers-almost always described as most offensively intrusive, inquisitive, vulgar, and filthy in their persons, and most disgusting in their habits. The reader will, we fear, rise from the perusal of this volume with feelings of weariness and ennui. Now, however, for a brief account of its contents. After dropping a hint that he travelled ac companied by a "faithful secretary," (!) Boz takes us into a night steamer on the Potomac river, where we are kept for eight pages. Then he travels by land along a Virginia road, which, together with the stagecoach and its sable Jehu, are described with broad comic humor, but a little strained. Then Boz reaches Virginia, justly oppressed and disgusted at the consciousness of being in a slave country. He looks in at the Legislative Assembly then sitting; and goes over a manufactory for tobacco, (for chewing,) worked entirely by slaves, whom he is