That such was the
feeling of intelligent Americans towards England, at the beginning of
our troubles, we have no doubt. But for the scurrility heaped upon
us by what claims to be the higher British press we were totally
unprepared,--and for this good reason, that such malignity of
criticism as is possible in America could never have suggested it. Let
us not be misunderstood. We acknowledge the "Rowdy Journal" and Mr.
Jefferson Brick. Undoubtedly, newspapers exist among us of which the
description of Mr. Dickens is no very extravagant caricature. But
their editors, if not of notoriously infamous life, are those whose
minds are unenlarged by any generous education,--men whose lack of
grammar suggests a certain palliation of their want of veracity and
good-breeding. Such journals are seldom or never seen by the
large class of cultivated American readers, and are in no sense
representative of them. The "Saturday Review" and "Blackwood's
Magazine" are said to be conducted by men of University training.
Their articles are written in clear and precise English, and often
contain vigorous thought. They publish few papers which do not give
evidence of at least tolerable scholarship in their writers.
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