"Dear Sir,—I was on the point of taking the boat at twelve to-day to go and have a talk with you about an idea which occurred to me yesterday; but as I have already been across three times this year, and, in a month or six weeks, shall have to set out for St. Petersburg and Japan, I am desirous, if possible, of arranging the matter I have at heart by correspondence...."
"I must make the acquaintance of that man," I exclaimed; "I must go and see Jonathan at home one of these days."
And as soon as circumstances allowed, I packed my trunks, took a cabin on board one of the brave "White Star" Liners, and set out to see Jonathan and his Continent.
CHAPTER II.
Jonathan and his Critics.—An eminent American gives me Salutary Advice.—Travelling Impressions.—Why Jonathan does not love John Bull.
few days before leaving America, I had a pleasant talk with Mr. Whitelaw Reid, the chief editor of the New York Tribune.
"Do not fall into the great error of fancying that you have seen America in six months," he said to me.
"But I do not fancy anything of the kind," I replied; "I have no such pretension. When a man of average intelligence returns home after having made a voyage to a foreign land, he cannot help having formed a certain number of impressions, and he has a right to communicate them to his friends. They are but impressions, notes taken by the wayside; and, if there is an error committed by anyone, it is by the critic or the reader, when either of these looks for a perfect picture of the manners and institutions of the people the author has visited, instead of simple impressions de voyage. Certainly, if there is a country in the world that it would be impossible to judge in six months, that country is America; and the author who, in such a little space of time, allowed himself to fall into the error of sitting in judgment upon her would write himself down an ass. In six months you cannot know America, you cannot even see the country; you can merely get a glimpse of it: but, by the end of a week, you may have been struck with various things, and have taken note of them. A serious study and an impression are two different things, and an error is committed by the person who takes one for the other. For instance, if, in criticising my little volume, you exclaim, 'The author has no deep knowledge of his subject,' it is you who commit an error, and not I. I do not pretend to a deep knowledge of my subject. How would that be possible in so short a time? How should you imagine it to be possible? To form a really exact idea of America, one would need to live twenty years in the country, nay, to be an American; and I may add that, in my opinion, the best books that exist upon the different countries of the world have been written by natives of those countries. Never has an author written of the English like Thackeray; never have the Scotch been painted with such fidelity as by Ramsay; and to describe Tartarin, it needed not only a Frenchman, but a Provençal, almost a Tarasconnais. I say all this to you, Mr. Reid, to warn you that, if on my return to Europe I should publish a little volume on America, it will be a book of impressions; and if you should persist in seeing in it anything but impressions, it is you who will be to blame. But in this matter I trust to the intelligence of those Americans who do me the honour of reading me. I shall be in good hands."