done.” The simple American reader will have a chance to make up his mind, on independent evidence, of how far Willis was qualified to write of Scotch dukes, etc.; but meanwhile it is not true that the audacious article in the “Mirror” of September 6, 1834 (which was not an “article,” by the way, but an extract from a private letter to Morris), conveyed any implication of an intimacy between Willis and Miss Martineau. On the contrary, it expressly says that his acquaintance with the lady was of only one day’s standing. “I was taken yesterday,” it begins, “by the clever translator of ‘Faust’ to see the celebrated Miss Martineau. She has perhaps at this moment the most general and enviable reputation in England, and is the only one of the literary _clique_ whose name is mentioned without some envious qualification.” After some entirely respectful mention of her manner and appearance, the letter then goes on to say:-- “There is no necessity of bespeaking for so distinguished a visitor as Miss Martineau the warmest attentions of our country. She goes with high anticipations, and whatever she may find to object to in our society and institutions, it will be done, there cannot be a doubt, in a spirit of womanly and simple candor. She is sped on her way by the best wishes of the best hearts in England. I trust she will be met over there by wishes and welcomes as warm and as many.” Any one who knew Willis would have felt sure that his “prodigious efforts” on Miss Martineau’s behalf sprang from his always good-natured and sometimes even officious eagerness to be of service. And most who knew him would probably have admitted that there was some mixture of a “desire to increase his consequence” in his offer of introductions. Motives are usually mixed in this bad world and Willis was seldom indifferent to opportunities for ingratiating himself with people worth knowing. But even so, it would have been more gracious in the lady if, after accepting his offers and the attentions of his partner at West Point, she had taken his professions for what they were worth, and omitted this spiteful mention of him in her book. Had he lived to read the passage, he would probably have consoled himself with the reflection that it was better to win smiles from beauty than approbation from a strong-minded Unitarian female with an ear-trumpet, or, as he politely paraphrased it in his letter to Morris, a “pliable, acoustic tube.”