Of my journey home, little remains to be said.
From the citizens of Colombia, I experienced kindness and attention,
and means of conveyance to Caraccas; where, embarking on board the
brig Juno, captain Withers, I once more set foot in New-York, on the
18th of August, 1826, after an absence of four years, resolved, for
the rest of my life, to travel only in books, and persuaded, from
experience, that the satisfaction which the wanderer gains from
actually beholding the wonders and curiosities of distant climes, is
dearly bought by the sacrifice of all the comforts and delights of
home."
We have thus placed before the reader an analysis of this interesting
Satirical Romance. The time and space we have occupied sufficiently
indicate the favourable sentiments respecting it with which we have
been impressed. Of the execution of the satires, from the several
extracts we have given, the reader will himself be enabled to judge.
This is of course unequal, but generally felicitous. In the personal
allusions which occur through the work, the author exhibits, as we
have before noticed, a freedom from malice and all uncharitableness,
and in many of them has attained that happy _desideratum_ which
Dryden considered a matter of so much difficulty:--
"How easy is it," he observes, "to call rogue and villain, and that
wittily! But how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a
knave, without using any of those opprobrious terms! To spare the
grossness of the names, and to do the thing yet more severely, is to
draw a full face, and to make the nose and cheeks stand out, and yet
not to employ any depth of shadowing.
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