BY THE AUTHOR OF “A MEMOIR OF MARY LUNDIE DUNCAN.” . li Cundic “That great country, the United States."-Sir Robert Peel in the “May Great Britain and the United States move hand in hand LONDON: MDCCCLII. 204 d. 106 PREFACE. ABOUT thirty years ago, articles appeared “Quarterly" in a London Review, which filled the surrounding atmosphere with their evil odours, and whose venom was unhappily not-spent when it had crossed three thousand miles of “ blue water," so that they excited swellings and high disdain as they spread in the United States. Yet it is probable all the articles dropped from one pen, filled with gall -the pen, one may suppose, of some ancient Tory, whose ancestors had suffered in the War of Independence, or whose political creed admitted not of safety except in feudality and hereditary government, and who therefore was embittered by hearing of prosperity beyond them. These splenetic articles originated or prolonged animosities in their day, though they probably emanated from the pen of a person sufficiently in |