There are two American books, elder brethren of "The Biglow Papers," which it would be unjust in an Englishman not to mention while introducing their big younger brother to his own countrymen,--I mean, of course, "Major Downing's Letters," and "Sam Slick;" both of which are full of rare humour, and treat of the most exciting political questions of their day in a method and from points of view of which we are often reminded while reading the "Biglow Papers." In fact, Mr. Lowell borrows his name from the Major's Letters;--"Zekel Bigelow, Broker and Banker of Wall Street, New York," is the friend who corrects the spelling, and certifies to the genuineness, of the honest Major's effusions,[2] and is one of the raciest characters in the book. No one, I am sure, would be so ready as Mr. Lowell to acknowledge whatever obligations he may have to other men, and no one can do it more safely. For though he may owe a name or an idea to others, he seems to me to stand quite alone amongst Americans, and to be the only one who is beyond question entitled to take his place in the first rank, by the side of the great political satirists of ancient and modern Europe. Greece had her Aristophanes; Rome her Juvenal; Spain has had her Cervantes; France her Rabelais, her Molière, her Voltaire; Germany her Jean Paul, her Heine; England her Swift, her Thackeray; and America has her Lowell. By the side of all those great masters of satire, though kept somewhat in the rear by provincialism of style and subject, the author of the "Biglow Papers" holds his own place distinct from each and all. The man who reads the book for the first time, and is capable of understanding it, has received a new sensation. In Lowell the American mind has for the first time flowered out into thoroughly original genius.