MAJOR DOWNING'S LETTERS.
THESE epistles are addressed to the editor of a New York paper, by a supposed attendant and bosom friend of General JACKSON. They profess to narrate the events of the President's tour previous to the attack upon time Bank, and the difficulties in which that attack subsequently involved the Government. The views of the writer are in favour of the aristocratical party among the Ameri- cans; his style is that of the broadest Yankee slang,—so broad, as to be scarcely intelligible at times; his narrative is a strong bur- lesque, intermingled with some sensible remarks and clever illus- trations of economical questions. The general mode of treatment has a good deal of resemblance to Colonel CROCKETT'S Memoirs. but the Colonel treats of the early struggles and pranks of a young back-woodsman, the domestic life of a new settler, the adventures and escapes of an old hunter,—matters easily understood, and of a very general interest : the Major, on the contrary, deals chiefly in local politics, and in descriptions of the personal characteristics and peculiarities of American statesmen,—points of titillating in- terest to those who are intimately acquainted with the originals, and have an interest in the contest, but somewhat Hat and cold to strangers ; so that the humour of the allusions will scarcely be felt by English readers, and sometimes not perceived. The slang, too, appears to us overdone: in CROCKETT it enriched, in Dowel- ING it overlays.
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