Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/17

Rh The London Quarterly, under the editorship of Gifford, began in 1814 a series of articles in the guise of open caricatures, aimed at all things American, from literature to public inns, ridiculing our manners, customs, courts of justice, methods of government, and habits of private life. For ten years, at varying intervals, both the London and Edinburgh magazines indulged in acrimonious articles of this character, which were answered with recriminations by the North American Review and a number of reputable American authors.

Among the works that played a prominent part in this "War of the Reviewers," we have selected two of the best known, and most unfavorable in their report upon Western conditions, in order to show what English provincials, predisposed toward quiet, orderly, rural life in Britain, found to annoy and disgust them in the seething, turbulent frontier West, with its heterogeneous population, its raw conditions, its struggle with untamed nature.

William Faux, author of Memorable Days in America (London, 1823), was, according to his own ascription, "An English farmer," whose tour to the United States was "principally undertaken to ascertain, by positive evidence the condition and probable prospects of British emigrants; including accounts of Mr. Birkbeck's settlement in the Illinois: and intended to shew Men and Things as they are in America." According to the British reviewers, who quoted largely from him, he was a "simpleton of the first water, a capital specimen of a village John Bull, for the first time roaming far away from his native valley—staring at everything, and grumbling at most." His book reveals lack of manners and good taste, a coarse betrayal of hospitality, and a low-bred craving for