There is, at present, in the United States of America, a fashionable, unwholsome, immoral practice of writing, which, although the ancients had not always been free of reproach, now a days, is rather too much frequented. I mean a kind of personal ridiculing, and retaliating each other’s national foible, unmercifully. If an english comes here, and finds faults with us, as no nation can be yet without faults, it is our duty to thank the writer, and correct ourselves. If the imputation is false, truth speaks for itself. But, to go into England with a spirit of revenge by retaliating with ostentation, pleasure, and self conceit, the faults which we find among that nation, faults which we have not, we must then have forgotten the very moral principle required to literature. He, or she who does not know charity, the former would do better to plant potatoes; and the latter to attend her family kitchen, or darn her husband’s stockings. A writer should look with pain at the faults of all nations; and could he have a little patriotic feeling without prejudice, he would not tell to his children they are the prettiest, because he finds others who are uglier. He should rather feel displeased not to find, on earth, another nation from whom he cannot learn how to become better. That book which does not elevate the human mind to noble, generous sentiments, is a dangerous book! He who ridicules others, should, in his turn, be the only subject worthy of being ridiculed: but, the innocent man who steps into a drawing room, laming as Byron with a wish to imitate Byron, if, unfortunately, he falls on the carpet, or cannot prevent his tumbler of lemonade from falling on a lady’s black satin dress, not only we should indulge his weak side; but, if we wish to be polite, we should turn our eyes from his uncomfortable position. Though to ridicule another it is the same as to say: I am a perfect being, I often found, that he who is fond of the fun, and laughs at his neighbor, because this has no nose, he turns angry, when another laughs at him, because he has only one eye: I mean to say, here; could we see the soul of the individual, so fond of ridiculing his fellow beings, such an exhibition would present a hideous grim face of envy without heart, without any worthy feeling.