"It is a notorious fact, that British criticism, for many years past, has been, to a great extent, free from all the restraints of a regard to literary truth. Assuming the political creed of an author, it would be a very easy thing to predict the sort of criticism his writings would meet with, in any or all of the leading periodicals of the kingdom. This tendency has been carried so far, that even discussions of points in ancient classical literature have been shaped and colored by it. Thus, Aristophanes' comedies are turned against modern democracy, and Pindar, the Theban Eagle, has been unceremoniously classed with British Tories, by the London Quarterly. Instead of inquiring 'What is the author's object? How far has he accomplished it? How far is that object worthy of approbation?'--three questions that are essential to all just criticism; the questions put by English Reviewers are substantially 'What party does he belong to? Is he a Whig, Tory, Radical, or is he an American?' And the sentence in such cases depends on the answer to them. Even where British criticism is favorable to an American author, its tone is likely to be haughty and insulting; like the language of a condescending city gentleman toward some country cousin, whom he is kind enough to honor with his patronage. "Now, to critics of this sort, Mr. Willis was a tempting mark. No one can for a moment believe that the London Quarterly, Frazer's Magazine, and Captain Marryat's monthly, are honest in the language they hold toward Mr. Willis. Motives, wide enough from a love of truth, guided the conduct of these journals. The editor of the London Quarterly, it is well known, is the author of 'Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk,' a work full of personalities, ten times more objectionable than anything to be found in the 'Pencillings.' Yet this same editor did not blush to write and print a long and most abusive tirade upon the American traveller, for doing what he had himself done to a much greater and more reprehensible extent; and, to cap the climax of inconsistency, republished in his journal the very personalities, names and all, which had so shocked his delicate sensibilities. It is much more likely that a disrespectful notice of the London Quarterly and its editor, in these 'Pencillings,' was the source from which this bitterness flowed, than that any sense of literary justice dictated the harsh review. Another furious attack on Mr. Willis's book appeared in the monthly journal, under the editorial management of Captain Marryat, the author of a series of very popular sea novels. Whoever was the author of that article, ought to be held disgraced in the opinions of all honorable men. It is the most extraordinary tissue of insolence and coarseness, with one exception, that we have ever seen, in any periodical which pretended to respectability of literary character. It carries its grossness to the intolerable length of attacking the private character of Mr. Willis, and throwing out