, 



ENGLAND AND HER CRITICS. 507 



oi-di.mnt Anacharsis proceeds to the digestion and exaggeration of 

 his despicable incongruity,, and ridiculously designates so foul a mass 

 of falsehood, ignorance, and envy " an account" of countries, where 

 his information never ranged beyond the precincts of a steam-boat or 

 the limits of the king's highway. 



And Jet us ask, with what fair show of reason can such adventurers 

 complain of their exclusion from the homes of England ? we proudly 

 and emphatically say the homes to which no foreign system of 

 economy presents the shadow of a likeness ! how can such adven- 

 turers, unsanctioned by credentials of respectability, expect admission 

 to the pure, and amiable, and hospitable homes of England, when they 

 bring to their remembrance in how many instances these generous 

 benefits have been perfidiously abused, in how many instances the un- 

 suspecting frankness of an open-hearted host has been repaid by the 

 insidious artifice of some base though titled profligate, abandoned 

 sensualist, or scandalous traducer ; when they charge their recollection 

 with the dexterous feats of those mustachioed Barons, Counts, and 

 Marquesses, who prosecute their GRECIAN enterprises on the purses 

 of their entertainers, or, beneath the simulated purity of modest inter- 

 course, attempt a treacherous triumph over innocence and virtue ? 



Thus much we think it fair to offer, as a preamble to such remarks 

 as we shall make on parts of the pretending diatribe of Count Achilles 

 not that we impute to this proscribing nobleman the whole or any 

 of the motives specified in our incorporation of an imaginary character. 

 But as the Count appears assured that there is something quite un- 

 answerable in a strain of reckless ribaldry, it is salutary to inform the 

 versifying lord that every question has (for persons of his imperious 

 dogmatism) the disadvantage of two sides ; and that, as a natural re- 

 sult of so much turbulent abuse as the indignant peer has showered 

 upon the English people, some cool philanthropist may contemplate 

 his lordship's reformation by a little sober counsel, and, without ap- 

 plying to him all the various appellations to which his libel has so 

 bounteously subjected him, may prove my lord Jouffroy to have 

 shown, in many instances, unbounded ignorance, and in many others 

 to have erred most flagrantly from what he knew to be the truth. 

 And, though we should be as injudicious as we are unwilling to repel 

 the petulant and fanciful assertions of the Count Achilles, by recrimi- 

 nation on the fine country of which his lordship, we imagine, is a 

 native as it is very evident that the inculpation of our own " foggy, 

 inhospitable, and uncivilized country," is effected through the medium 

 of implied comparison we shall run the risk of proving our inferiority 

 on some few points, in the plain and open course of contrast ; points 

 on which the noble versifier has treated us poor, insular, contempt- 

 ible, manufacturing speculators as we are with rather more severity 

 than the high condition of candour and impartiality in revolutionary 

 France would have led us to expect at the hands of so astute and 

 just a censor. 



But let us enter fairly on the Count's effusion, which he appro- 

 priately commences, as he ends, on wings of smoke, which separate 

 him from " ces climats brumeux !" Here is the hacknied charge 

 upon our climate ; which, however^ has all the accessaries of consum- 



