[13] For that strong nationality which ballads and other rude productions written in a rude age exhibit, America comes, of course, too late. But we doubt not that an attentive examination would already detect in the productions of the American mind as striking traits of national character as are usually seen in the works of civilized epochs. A new species of wit is one of the last things which a student of Joe Miller would have thought it possible to invent. Yet this the Americans have achieved. Whatever may be the value attached to it, many a laugh has been created by that monstrous exaggeration, so worded as to give a momentary and bewildering sense of possibility to something most egregiously absurd, which as decidedly belongs to America as the bull does to Ireland. "A man is so tall that he has to climb a ladder to shave himself." Not only is the feat impossible, but no conception can be formed of its manner of execution, yet the turn of the expression for an instant disguises, before it reveals, its most flagrant nonsense. There is also a certain grave hoax, where some fabulous matter is most veraciously reported, in which the Americans have shown great success and something of a national predilection. Some time ago we were all mystified by what seemed a most authentic account of the sudden subsidence of the falls of Niagara. The wall of rock over which the waters rush had been worn away, and, contrary to the expectations of geologists, the bed of the river, immediately behind it, had proved to be of a soft soil that could not resist the torrent. The river had therefore formed for itself an inclined plane, and the great fall had been converted into a _rapid_ of equally astonishing character. If we do not mistake, the true and particular account of certain animals which Herschel discovered in the moon at the time he moved his great telescope, we believe, to the Cape of Good Hope, came to us from the same quarter. It is a pity that _Gulliver's Travels_ are already in existence. It is a book the Americans should have written; they have been unjustly forestalled and defrauded by that work. No doubt, other peculiar and national traits, and of a higher order, would suggest themselves to any one who made it a subject of examination.