contradicting Miss Martineau; and who can rejoice in the refutation of an almost forgotten book by a still more forgotten book? The incidents of the visit form an interesting passage in Marryat’s life. He reached New York in the midst of the great financial smash of 1837, and saw the “Empire City” in all the excitement of panic. He stayed in America till after the suppression of the Canadian rising, and himself took part in the fighting. Of course he had a newspaper controversy--and it was of a kind sufficiently honourable to himself. When he first landed Marryat seems to have been well received, though with a certain reserve. By reserve is not to be understood anything so absurd as that he was left alone. On the contrary, he was abundantly overwhelmed with inquiry and comment. But the Americans were then in the midst of one of the sorest of their sore fits with foreign comment, and were (not quite unjustifiably) on their guard against travellers who came to spy out the land, and make a book about it. They were not averse to comment, but they were anxious that it should not only be favourable, but of exactly that kind of favourableness of which they approved. Therefore they were intent to know whether Marryat meant to write about them, and, if so, what he meant to say. He extricated himself from the difficulty dexterously enough, and, on the whole, succeeded in keeping on friendly terms with his hosts. As a matter of course, American copyright institutions, and their effect on the national character of the publisher, had their share of his attentions. In this respect, also, his experiences were pleasing enough in America. He was working in the intervals of observation. For American consumption he wrote a play, “The Ocean Waif; or, The Channel Outlaw,” which appeared at a New York theatre; and he was moreover engaged on “The Phantom Ship.” In 1838 he made an arrangement with Messrs. Carey and Hart to sell them “proof sheets of his ‘Diary in America’ and ‘Phantom Ship,’ a month prior to their publication in London, for the sum of two thousand two hundred and fifty dollars; and provided no one else published the works in America within thirty days from the date they issued from their press, a further sum of two hundred and fifty dollars.” Whether pirate enterprise deprived him of the extra sum needed to make up the round two thousand five hundred, does not appear, but at least Marryat, with his usual turn for business, contrived to get something out of America for the amusement he had given it. A letter to his mother, pleasant and manly as all his letters to her were, gives a sufficient picture of the first part of his stay in America. “_October, 1837._