AMERICAN JOURNALISM.

MR. NEAL, an American gentleman, who contributed some clever papers to the London Magazine and Blackwood's, has established a newspaper called The Yankee, in the United States ; and lays claim to advantages possessed by no other journalists of his na- tion, in respect of his better knowledge of England. Mr. NEAL is a clever man,—with this fault, that he imagines himself always under the immediate inspiration of Minerva, and appearsto regard with the reverence of oracles every combination of words that may proceed from his pen. He is prolix—diffuse to the last degree, simply from the persuasion that the value of what he says is so great that it cannot be too often repeated or firmly fixed on the memory of the reader. The substance of what he writes is oftener sound than otherwise ; but he fatigues to irritation by putting it through all the forms of expression it is capable of receiving, with a delibera- tion of conceit truly surprising. We have heard it charged against a superior writer, rather addicted to making the most of one thought, that " he trots it up and down" for the admiration of the beholder. Our main quarrel with Mr. NEAL is that he does not trot. He walks his idea up and down, with a stately leisure, which seems to demand the homage of patience in consideration of the object's worth and dignity. Nevertheless, we repeat that Mr. NEAL is a clever man ; and we are glad to see a gentleman of his acquaintance with England in possession of an American press. But one of the oddest features of the new journal is the apparent ignorance of our intimate friend of English matters. Did we not know that he had lived some time amongst us, we should indeed have the rashness to argue, from one or two indications, that the writer had never visited London Proper. For example, in his very first paper, when very favourably contrasting his position for ob- serving the English character compared with the opportunities of other men, he says, "They (the diplomatists) prefer the broad day- light, and a crowded carriage-way, and the dust of a thousand hoofs, to a solitary walk, a k tar-lighted labyrinth, or a green lane beset with shadow, and swept over by nothing but the vulgar breezes of the country ; and would rather circumnavigate Hyde Park by the year, or stroll through Kensington Gardens by the clock for half a day together, day after day, and year after year, than venture up to a suspzcious-looking wood, or loiter along by a hedgerow, which, for aught they can perceive, might lead them into the very thick of a good-for-nothing wilderness." We really are compelled to extract a moral lesson from this, and to reflect on the extreme fallacious- ness of the most apparently reasonable inferences ; for, had we not possessed positive knowledge to the contrary, we should have unhesitatingly referred the above passage to a person who had never visited the city of Westminster, in which he professes to have lived for three years ; anclavho had conceived "a small notion" of it, in the back settlements. For who, diplomatist or literatus, poet or philospher, has the choice of a "star-lighted labyrinth" in these parts ? There are indeed the Seven Dials, in which a man of a contemplative mind might hope to lose his way ; but he could not see the stars, by reason of the smoke. As for the green lanes in our vicinity, even granting the green, we must ob- serve that they are generally beset with more than shadows, which makes them disagreeable for walking, especially for high-thinking men, who do not look where they tread. For the "suspicious-looking wood," Peter Pastoral would, we apprehend, search in vain. There is St. John's Wood by the Regent's Park, indeed ; but we believe it to be a place of very frank and open brick and mortar. "Where there is a hedgerow which could by possibility, or the ge- nius of romance, be supposed to lead to "a good for-nothing wil- derness," we have not the remotest imagination. There is certainty a- TUld Street, Lincoln's Inn ; which being tanaentiel to the law- yer' - ye4' haunts, may be " good-for-nothing" enough; but a hedgerow is not to be found within three miles of it at the least. By habitat- ing for three years in Westminster, Mr. NEAL has, however, ac- quired such ideas of the lounges which a sensible man may with- out effort or inconvenience take. He then proceeds to dissert on the high society of London ;to find a footing in which, he shows to be as impossible as it is easy to stroll forth into labyrinths, and woods, and wildernesses. This is all very sensibly proved at great length ; and what would lie in six lines is spread with much pomp of exposition over six columns. Nevertheless the paper is a plea- sant paper, better in plan than any U.S. journal that we have seen, and yet not deficient in that rubbish which so especially recom- mends them to the lovers of waggery on this side of the Atlantic. In the first number, we have a dear, delightful paragraph copied from Zion's Herald, after the true pattern, relating, Tim two men with a lantern, food, and refreshments for one or two days' jour- ney, entered a cave with the design of making a grand tour of the bowels of the earth. Here they crawled pleasantly and gaily along for a day, passing over fathomless pits by the way, "with much difficulty," till—oh till !—the light was extinguished by "a fatal accident," which was also pleasuring in those parts ; whereupon one of the gentlemen, without loss of time, went out. of his wits, as he could not go out of the cave, and whirled round to such a degree that he span down into one of the aforesaid fathomless pits ! His companion " listened," and heard his fellow-traveller arrive in due course at the bottom : he called to ask him how he felt himself; but, contrary to all reasonable expectation, received no answer: upon which, he regretted that he had not made a descent too ; but, easy as it was for a man of any genius for tumbling to carry his wishes into fathomless effect, he for some reason or other preferred setting out on his crawls again ; and having mounted his hands and knees, " proceeded safely in this way about a day," when he baited by bursting into tears. This refreshment carried him on for another day's journey ; and on the morning of the third, " when nature was nearly exhausted, and hope had tumbled into a pit, he turned a corner, and there was the Morning Star staring him all in the face .k. " His feelings," (more especially about the knees, we guess,) he said, with infinite originality of expression, " must be imagined, for they could not be described."

A good example of sagacious criticism on a misquoted passage occurs in the Third Number of the Yankee.

"Very strange errors (says theEditor) appear to prevail on this subject, (i. C. evidence). An article from the late London Magazine has been travelling the round of our papers, and doing, we do not scruple to say, a deal of injury to the very cause it purports to argue in favour of—the free admission of all witnesses, whatever may be their faith, under the penalty for false swearing. The idea is borrowed from Bentham's "Swear Not ;"—but it has been childishly misunderstood by the writer, and the law as it is in Great Britain is about as childishly misrepresented. Let us take a single paragraph.

While we find the most hardened rogues in the country professing religion, we see justice denied to men because they will not play the hypocrite, and pretend to a belief they do not entertain. An individual, %veil aware of the odium he is about to incur, and of all the legal and social disadvantages to which he is about to subject himself, nevertheless spurns falsehood, and avows himself a Deist, when interro- nated as to his opinions. In doing so he discovers in himself the quality which is first lobe desired in a witness—a fearless adherence to the truth; but the evidence of this man is rejected by justice. The law is here only consistent. It encourages lying in every conceivable manner ; it gives a bounty in every possible case to falsehood.'

"Now it happens that in England, as here, no man is to be excluded for being a Deist. An Atheist may be excluded, and by the law must be —there as well as here."

By reference to the London Magazine, the Editor will see that "Atheist" is the text, and that "Deist" must have been substi- tuted by the blundering copyists. Had not the Editor of the Yankee been a gentleman apt to imagine that an error could never be corrected without his aid, he would have considered the extreme probability, that, had the London committed so gross a mistake, it would have been immediately observed upon. The following are just remarks on vulgarity ; and it only strikes us that we have seen them somewhere before—only, as the people always say on such occasions, "not so well expressed."

" It is never the genteel who talk most about a genteel air, a genteel this, or a genteel that ; nor is it the well-bred who talk most about vul- garity, or throw up their noses with most of a flourish, when a creature who is vulgar enough to be born of nobody, or to cat fish with a knife, or to ask twice for soup, happens to fall in their way ; just as it is never the noblemen of our earth, nor the great soldiers, nor the chief writers, nor the first chop ladies, who call themselves so, or their neighbours; at every breath, or between every two words they speak ; but your raw militia, your boy-poets, and your retail shopkeepers or attorneys' wives and daughters—for they are never anything but ladies—they are never gentlewomen."

We should admire to know what "a first chop lady" is. We extract a really good anecdote.

"We have beard of a Natyve, who, on his return from England, about half a century ago, when Lord North was in power, was asked if he had ever seen his Lordship. "That I have !" was the reply, "and should have dined with him—but 'was washing day." The people of England may not know that, in this country, there is a general wash every Monday morning—that Monday, therefore, is washing day in America, and a day on which we never like to see company, because of what we call our picked-up dinners. And the people of France, who have but two washing- days in the year, never heard of our extravagance in this behalf. They wash but every six months ; we every week ; and the Dutch every day. But then the French people have more household linen for every family, than we have in a small township."

The following again is a genuine American paragraph, of a mysterious and profound importance.

"We had a fire in our neighbourhood, a few days ago, in the very heart of a large square of wooden buildings. After due inquiry, we found that it proceeded from what we regard as very culpable neglect; and we are informed (on good quthority) that it had caught in the same way two or three times before, and that the proprietor of the shop 4; had been in the habit of squirting it out with a syringe. We hope the story is not true ; but we fear it is."

* 4 particular friend of ours.

Squirting a fire out with a syringe, seems, somehow or other unknown, as culpable as selling nutmegs made of mahogany. There can surely be no sort of likeness between great, big, bouncing America, and Lilliput ?

The Editor has an article about a Mr. Fairfield, who, by his report, was, or is, what the world describes as a man not altogether unexceptionable. This person, according to the following report of his habits, must have been a most singular and extraordinary individual.

"I never knew where to find him ; nor did anybody else that I had inte- rested in Ids behalf. Ile seldom staid in the same lodgings above a week ; and when he left them, he always took especial care not to leave his ad- dress; and to go into some part of the neighbourhood of London (as Hammersmith) where nobody would think of looking for him; and where, if I found him out and paid him a visit, it was generally at the cost of half a day, to say nothing of coach-hire and other matters. If I ever heard from him at all, it was (by the help of his mother) to say that he had been robbed or murdered in the street, or was dreadfully sick, or in a state of starvation; and yet if I went in person to relieve their misery, or to hunt them up, I was sure to find them both in comfortable quarters, or doing before a slow Are.

"At last a stop was put to my sympathy ; for I found him deliberately preparing an article for publication in an English Magazine."

A man frequently murdered in the street must be a prodigy ; and so much was he expected to survive murder, that the Editor having heard of such little accidents, went thereupon to relieve his misery. For funny journals, commend us to the Americans.