PREFACE.

IN the early part of last year I went out to America as special correspondent of Macmillan's Magazine and the Spectator newspaper, and returned last autumn, after the failure of the Peninsular expedition. Accidental circumstances have delayed the appearance of this work; but the course of events since I left America has only confirmed the views which I formed during my residence there. The facts and reasons on which these views were formed I have endeavoured to relate in these volumes. Portions of the following pages have appeared already in the above-named periodicals. So much, however, has been added to them, and so much revised and re-written, that it is the writer

alone who must be considered responsible for any statements of fact or opinion contained therein.

If anything that I have written should jar upon the feelings of my friends on either side the Atlantic, I can only beg them to believe that I have stated simply what I conceive to be the truth, in the earnest hope that, by so doing, I might render some little service towards creating a more friendly feeling between the two great English-speaking nations of the world.

OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE CLUB.

March, 1863.