The Sun.
London, England, 1850-09-21 00:00:00

Alecitii •lii

LONDON, SATURDAY. SEPTEMBER 21, 1850.

Certainly nothing could be more singularly cha-
racteristic than the intelligence just received from
the United States. Every particular is on that
gigantic scale which appears to he peculiar to the
citizens of Yankaeland. Everything is of that moun-
tainous description which seems alone consonant with
the egotism of the trans-Atlantic democracy. For
exsmple, there are " Great Flo° Is" at Pottsville and
Philadelphia; " Great Storms" at *Virginia and North
Carolina; and " Great Gales" at Buffalo and Lake
Erie. Then there is the execution of the " Great
Murderer," Professor WEBSTE2—and much the
American journalists make of it, to the morbid
delight of their readers, expatiating on every
particular of that "great card," from the utterance of
his last ejaculation to the smoking of his last cabana!
Then, by the most preposterous misapplication of the
favourite adjective, there comes, to crown all, the
" Great Jenny Lind," who, as far as the New York
press is concerned at least, seems to be the " great
gun" of the occasion, the " cynosure of neighbouring
eye.," the " observed of all observers " Altogether
the news brought to our shores from America is of
the most grating kind imaginable to all just sense
of propriety, partaking of that distressing partiality
for exaggeration and hyperbole in which
has originated the fashionable weakness of being pre-
cociously " used up and prematurely blase. The
sword of DAMOCLES, the drunken helots of Sparta,
the death's head of the classic revellers, could not
have furnished more instructive lessons than those
which may be derived from the peculiarities percep-
tible in contemporary nations. A country like our
own, observing those peculiarities with impartiality
and vigilance, cannot fail to recognise here and there
a warning at any rate from the perpetration
of such extravagances. Not but that England is
guilty in her way of many absurdities and
fantastic blunders as the most absurd and fantastic of
her contemporaries. But, blinded by egotism and
habit as to our own blemishes, it is easier to detect
weaknesses in another than under any circumstances
in ourselves. Therefore it is that we cannot but re-
gard this critical analysis of our neighbours' tem-
perament as most laudable, beine• in a
great t„ fin ward our own advancement,
while it enables him to view himself as he appears in
the eyes of a remote community. Besides, it should
be remembered that foreigners, that is to say,
persons removed beyond the limits of our own
particular dominion, are to us in a manner
something like our posterity. They furnish
us with dispassionate estimates—the distances of
place being in this way almost as effectual or effica•
cieui as the distances of time. As they are to us,
moreover, so by necessity are we to them—not merely
carping, but judiciously censorious.
Looking, therefore, at the magnified examples of
folly set before us by our American brethren, we
are afforded a means of recognizing the ludicrous
aspect of some of those popular weaknesses to which
we English are in like manner addicted. Foremost
among these are—first, the toa lying of mere celebrity,
and, secondly, the diseased and prurient curiosity after
the notorious. We know not which is the more sense-
less, the more frivolous, or the more repulsive. Of each
we ourselves, as a community, are guilty, though not
to the enormous extent of the people of the Uniited
States. There the hunting after celebrities is carried
to a degree degrading to humanity. The ballet-
dancer and the philosopher, the mere vocalist and the
literary genius, the Jack-pudding of the histrionic
art and the apostle of a new school of philanthropy,
being each and all pursued alike, with an lindifiCritni..