ABSTRACT
Of the American writers who have more or less imitated the manner of Mr. Charles Brown, and attained some sort of place in public estimation, I shall notice but two-two only of them, in my opinion, deserving any kind of public criticism-Bret Harte, and the gentleman known to the reading public as Mark Twain. Among the crowd of self-constituted satirists of the day in the United States, only these two gentlemen have shown any distinctive manner as well as original power in their mode of exposing the follies and absurdities of the public. Of these two living authors I, of course, forbear to give any biographical details, further than to say that both are comparatively
young men, and that both have seen much of the new and wilder societies of the so-called Pacific Slope, of California, and the adjacent states and territories. The better known and the most read of the two is probably Mark Twain. His popularity at this moment, both in America and this cotmtry, is, I should imagine, greater than was ever Mr. Drown's, at least during his lifetime.
