Having made it a point to faithfully report all that is said of our country by foreign travellers or journalists, we deem it a duty to lay before our readers not only the more agreeable accounts given by those who have impartially examined our institutions and manners, but also the more prejudiced relations of those who, urged by interest or ill-nature, have sketched simply the darker and more irregular outlines. And we are the more induced to follow this course since we are fully convinced that it is productive of equal good with the former. We have--particularly to English eyes--appeared as a people who eagerly devour all that is said to our discredit, and at the same time fiercely repudiate the slightest insinuation that we in any thing fall short of perfection. As regards the latter, we shall content ourselves with remarking, that even the disposition to deny the existence of imperfection among us, redounds far more to our credit, than the complacent exaltation of our weaker points to virtues; while as to the former, we are certain that a higher feeling than mere nervous, sensitive vanity, induces in us the desire "To see ourselves as others see us," since there is no nation which more readily avails itself of the remarks of others, even when by far too bitter or unjust to improve. True to our national character of youthfulness, we are ever ready to act on every hint. We are, _par excellence_, a _learning_ nation. Send even the _young_ Englishman on his continental tour, and the chances are ten to one that he returns with every prejudice strengthened, and his vanity increased. But the American--ductile as wax, evinces himself even at an advanced period of life, susceptible of improvement, yet firm in its retention. That we earnestly strive in every respect to improve is evident from many "little things" which foreigners ridicule. For instance, the habitual use of "fine language," and the attempt to clothe even our ordinary trains of thought in an elegant garb, which has been time and again cruelly ridiculed by Yankee goaders, is to a reflecting mind suggestive of commendation, from the very fact, that an attempt at least is made _to improve_. Better a thousand times the impulse to progress, even through the whirlwinds of hyperbole and inflated expression, than the heavy miasma of a patois, the lightest breath of which at once proclaims the cockney or provincial.