AMERICA—JUDGE HALL.
LITERARY SPECTATOR.
THE " Letters from the West*" , are published as the work of the Hon. Judge HALL —a real judge? we are tempted to ask, like the children—a grave person who decides serious questions between man and man ? The Quarterly Review used to tell us of American judges retiring from the bench to settle their disputes by a set-to at fisticuffs ; but the world gave the Reviewer credit for malice. Here, however, is an honourable judge determined to publish to the universe a specimen of what stuff U. S. judges are actually made of ; and, as if he were afraid that the information would be slow in extending to this hemisphere, he has taken care to lay his enue in London itself.
Mix together a bundle of odds and ends of piano ballads and young ladies album verses—an assortment of romantic silliness about "blooming girls," "lovely lasses," and "the sex"—a par- ticularly good opinion of self—a profound ignorance—an egre- gious share of national as well as personal vanity—a flippant style, and a wretched taste ; and we shall get an idea (law excepted) of Judge HALL. Of his law, indeed, we know nothing ; and it is not the less creditable to him that he has given no proofs of his legal acquirements in such a work as the Letters from the West. Silly books are, however, no rarity; and we should probably not have taken the trouble to declare the honourable Judge a sum's, had he not also been very offensive as well as very absurd. Mr. COOPER is a vastly superior person to Judge HALL; and yet it is remarkable that they write relatively of England and America pre- cisely in the same spirit ; so that we shall scarcely err in con- sidering it the prevailing tone of the country. We have an ex- pressive word called brag: it is not a term in very good odour, because the habit it is descriptive of is chiefly to be Viet with in low public-houses and similar places of resort : a fellow cocks his hat on one side, or places his arms a-kimbo, and, half-swagger, half-banter, swears he can hit harder, leap farther, or drink more, than any man living of his inches ; offers to prove his assertion by a wager, and confirms it with an oath ; takes exception at silence ; challenges the most sheepish of the company ; kicks up a brawl if he is resisted, or if his antagonist sneaks, rides the high horse, and wishes only that the first fighters, leapers, or drinkers in the world were present, that he might shame them on the spot. Every thing that he has is the best in the world ; every thing that he has seen, the largest ; and all who are or may be supposed to be con- nected with him, are beyond comparison superior to every existing man, woman, or child. Judge HALL is a brag. If an English- man of as low a social tone as himself were to be half an hour in
his company, the honourable Judge and the low Englishman would quickly resort to the skittle-ground to end their dispute by the trial by battle. We are well inclined in this country to think highly both of Americans and their institutions ; but we are certain that if many more such publications as this are imported as the works of persons in authority, the United States man will necessarily be set down here as much lower in the scale of civilization than we were inclined to place him.
The publication is slight, and we have said the ignorance of the author is gross :—e. g. he says that he cannot make out, speaking of the falls of a river, to what language, Indian or American, the (common French) word chute belongs : lie has consulted, it seems, all the languages he is conversant with, and he cannot
make it out : he however seems to conclude that it is a corruption
of the English word shoot, because a boat shoots down a fall. He quotes from Goldsmith's " Hermit," &c. &c. In spite, however,
of these defects, the great fertility of his subject—the variety of the interesting topics that necessarily press upon the attention of a traveller in the Western States—absolutely forces from him many chapters which render us impatient for a better and more authentic work. His descriptions of many objects could not fail to be striking: those connected with emigration and emigrants chiefly struck us, and certainly infused in us an ardent longing to see the history of emigration towards the West well and copiously written. It is full of fine points, fine characters, romantic details, and in- teresting food for speculation. It is the transition between the savage and civilized states ; and both man and nature in that con- dition partake of the wildness of the one and the ingenuity of the other.
* Letters from the West, ceataining Sketches of Scenery, Manners, and Customs, with Anecdotes connected with the First Settlement of the Western Sections of the United States. By the iron: Judge Hall. London, 1528. Colburn.
Previous page
