its cause. Feeling always that the struggle, whatever its nominal object, is really for right against wrong, freedom against slavery, constitutionalism against military power, they cannot imagine why men, free like themselves, should hesitate to aid the cause to which they profess devotion. Forgetting the endless coil of Federal rights and State pretensions, Acts of Congress, and election legalities, in which they themselves have enmeshed the great issue really involved, they expect, on the plain ground of morality, the sympathy they have done nothing to secure. England, they say, "professes to hate slavery; our war is against slavery; unless, therefore, her hate be hypocritical, England is with us." The first postulate is correct, and the deduction one every Englishman will draw; but the second remains, up to this hour, only a hope or an assumption. Let the North once distinctly proclaim that issue, declare that the object of the war is the extinction of slavery, that no peace is possible which shall leave slavery in existence, and in the unanimous response of Englishmen even the dread of a cotton famine will be removed. The better Americans believe that this issue is stated, that the death-throe of slavery is drawing nigh, and so believing, they look on our lukewarmness as treachery, not only to them but to humanity. It is, consequently, from the very best and calmest Americans, from Boston rather than New York, that the most earnest denunciation comes. The feeling is the more bitter because our statesmen, true to their dread of all enthusiasm, persist in talking only of the material interests involved. Fellowship with a slave-owner is more impossible to Lord John Russell than to Mr. Seward; yet the Foreign Secretary, questioned as to his policy, would talk of Northern wheat, and quote tables about the cotton of the Confederacy. He would meet famine and short time together sooner than check the emancipation of the slave; but till the hour for action comes he will talk like Mr. Gregory, as if England had not an aspiration beyond cheap calicoes. Americans cannot understand this reticence. Secure of their own motives, they forget that those motives are not visible to the world, and hate with the virulence of sincere Puritans who believe Christianity attacked. There is no violence like that shown by a man whose interests and whose principles tend to the same end, whose present and future are equally at stake. This is not an emotion which Englishmen, however they may regret the action it involves, can heartily contemn. From The Saturday Review, 15 June. THE extraordinary and irrational indignation of the Northern Americans against England is the more melancholy because it is, in a certain sense, sincere. It is easy to understand that New York journalists may only wish to flatter and to excite the momentary passions of the unthinking multitude which they address; but the correspondents of the London papers, who may be supposed not to expect sympathy from readers on this side of the Atlantic, almost unanimously adopt the insolent language of their noisy and unreasonable countrymen. The people of England are assured that no future expressions or proofs of good-will can ever obliterate the resentment which has been produced by the neutrality of their Government between the Northern and Southern States. They are reminded that the United States neither recognized the belligerent rights of the Sepoy mutineers, nor armed privateers under Russian letters of marque to plunder the commerce of England. It is useless to answer that America might as well have interfered with a civil war in the moon as with the remote contest at Delhi or Lucknow. On the other hand, a privateer from Mobile or New Orleans may at any moment overhaul an English merchantman, and it was necessary that naval officers and consuls should know whether such an act would be legal or piratical according to the laws of England. If the Confederate flag had been treated as non-existent, any attack on English commerce under the authority which it represents must have been treated either as piracy or as a ground for demanding redress from the United States. It is not too much to say that the Government of Washington would have resented as an injury to itself any act of hostility against the seceders, whom it still claims as citizens of the Union. The shameful and causeless violence of the popular feeling would have been more excusable under almost any circumstances than on the pretext of the timely and prudent proclamation which was issued for the guidance of English subjects. The claims which are founded on the conduct of America during the Russian war display an obtuse audacity which it is difficult to characterize. It is true that the United States did not necessitate, by the employment of privateers, an immediate declaration of war by England; but all the sympathy of all their political parties was ostentatiously given to Russia. Individual Americans sometimes assert that the unfriendly policy of their suc AMERICA. cessive Governments really proceeded from 191 and their consolidation into a new Con- The un The ostensible charge against England consists in the reiterated assertion that the The Southern officers of the army and position of the seceding states has been The journalists and navy have, almost without exception, prealtogether mistaken. stump-orators who have spent their lives in ferred their State allegiance to their duties glorifying the original rebellion against the to the Union. The magistrates, the corpor mother country, complain that rebels-or, if ations, the local legislatures, and all other the phrase is preferred, traitors-are mis- visible authorities, have unanimously cast taken for genuine belligerents. The reflec- in their lot with the Confederacy in which tion that a civil war is, after all, a war, seems they were placed. The right or claim which to be too recondite for politicians intoxicated they are enforcing has been uniformly vinwith vanity and singularly deficient in that dicated by the Democrats of the North, and self-respect which is closely connected with yet it is pretended that the united South is tolerance and justice. The English Govern- but a nest of exceptional traitors. ment and nation have not attempted to paralleled levity with which public opinion justify the secession, nor has the future rec- has veered round still throws considerable ognition of the Southern Union been inti- doubt on the serious character of the war. mated as probable, although it may easily be All dispassionate spectators perceive that foreseen. The rebellion which requires all the complete success of the Northern Govthe power of the United States to resist cer- ernment is impossible, and many causes will tainly partakes of the nature of a civil war. tend to abate the excitement which has reThe possession by the revolutionary govern- cently blinded the people and their leaders. ment of a territory larger than France may not A war can only be conducted in definite perhaps justify the secession, or even augur places for assignable purposes, and a camits ultimate success, but it would be absurd paign must have a tangible object as well for England to treat a Federation of ten or as a motive or provocation. General Scott's eleven organized states as a knot of individ- movements are perfectly intelligible as long ual rebels. If the Northern Americans con- as he protects Washington and covers the tinue to change their opinions with their re- friendly district of Western Virginia. It is cent rapidity, it is by no means improbable also possible that he may wish to recover that within a twelvemonth Mr. Lincoln may the Federal navy-yard at Norfolk, or even recognize his rival at Montgomery, even if to punish the enemy by occupying for a time his Secretary of State does not invite Mr. the state capital at Richmond. In KenJefferson Davis to join in a war against Eng-tucky and Missouri there is a Unionist party land. The Democrats who have governed to support, and generally it may be assumed the United States for the last twenty years that those parts of the Border which are cannot be wholly extinct, either in their unsuited to slave labor will probably be reMr. Buchanan, claimed by the Union. On the other hand, persons or their opinions. who was their nominee and one of their lead- a march into the heart of the Gulf States ers, as official representative of the United would be as purposeless as it would probably States treated the leaders of the secession be ruinous. Mr. Jefferson Davis, knowing His his inferiority in men and money, will not with studied deference and courtesy. Republican successor, for some months after seek defeat by advancing to the North, and his election, abstained from pledging himself in his proper territory he is invincible, or to coercion, and Mr. Seward protested in the rather he is safe from attack. strongest language against all attempts to subjugate the South. Nothing has changed except the volatile mind of the excitable multitude; for the ludicrous transaction at Fort Sumter is a far less valid cause of war than the formal secession of the Southern States There are still stronger reasons against a war on a great scale, inasmuch as it can only be carried on with a great standing army. It is easier to bluster about half a million of men than to feed and pay 100,000. The people of the United States are little accus tomed to taxes, nor will it be easy to incur a large debt which would be repudiated as soon as it became necessary to provide for the interest. If the sacrifice were undergone, the Republic would have provided itself with a master, in the form of an alien body of veteran mercenaries. The rank and file of the regular army will be Irish, with, perhaps, an admixture of Germans; and, as Americans are well aware, no race is either braver or more indifferent to constitutional forms. If the South were conquered, the army could not be disbanded; for it would be necessary to retain the seceders by force within the Union which reclaimed them. The most sanguine Northern politician can scarcely believe that the slave-owners will be henceforth conciliated by concessions such as those which were scornfully rejected when they were eagerly put forth by the Republicans. The formal recognition of slavery, fugitive slave-laws, pledges of perpetual non-interference with the institution, might have been extorted in profusion from the terrors of the North if the secession had not been deliberately preferred to any form of compromise. From first to last, the friends of the Union have misunderstood their position and their prospects; nor is there the smallest reason to adopt with implicit faith the views which they unanimously repudiated until the whole country was absorbed by a sudden paroxysm of indignation. A CURIOUS COLLECTION.-A young amateur | Hurt: for they warmed the Zeal of some People archæologist named Forglais has spent twelve so much, that they fasted more devoutly, and years in forming a collection of objects found in prayed with more Fervency on the 30th of Janthe bed of the river by whose means Paris is al-uary, than they did on Good Friday: and that ways hoping to become a seaport; and in virtue of whose waters it has, from immemorial times, adopted a ship as its armorial bearings. Among the four thousand relics of all periods got together by M. Forglais are rings, ivories, medals, Gallic and other coins, a beautiful Roman lance, a curious sword, believed to be that of Capeluche, weapons and implements, and curiosities' of every kind. The emperor visited this singular collection before leaving lower Fontainebleau, and expressed his wish that it should not be scattered, but should form part of the omnium gatherum of the Hotel de Cheny, devoted to the preservation of all manner of antiquities. HIEROGLYPHICAL PICTURE OF CHARLES THE MARTYR.-I extract the following from a small work (pages 69) published at Newcastle upon Tyne, in 1757, entitled, Four Topographical Letters, written in July, 1755, etc., etc. The writer is speaking of his visit to Leicester : "The Great Church being open for Prayers, we went in, but found nothing remarkable there, except the Picture of Charles the Martyr, surrounded with Hieroglyphics (sic); such as trampJing on earthly Crowns and Sceptres, and reaching at a Crown of Glory, which an Angel is holding out; near him is a Palm Tree, with Dr. Dalby's Motto-Crescit sub pondere! A plain honest-looking Clergyman who was viewing it, told me, he thought such Pictures did great some People paid greater Devotion to the Day whereon King Charles was beheaded, than they did to that on which Christ was crucified; and, if they had Power, would compel all to be as devout as themselves, or knock them on the Head.. 'What is this [said he] but fasting for Strife and Debate, and smiting with the Fist of Wickedness?' I questioned my Companion whether he thought this Parson was a Whig or a Tory? For my own Part, I could not think he came there with proper Principles for Church Preferment." Pp. 5, 6. Is the picture still in existence? IMPROVEMENTS IN PARIS.-The injurious effects of the destruction of the trees on the hills in the south of France have determined the gov ernment to undertake their replanting with a species of bamboo found by the French expedition in Cochin-China, and from which great things are expected in the prevention both of draughts and inundations, and in the arrest of the denudation of their slopes, from which the soil is now rapidly being washed away. The question of supplying Paris with the pure water so urgently needed, in place of the horribly dirty water of the Seine and the unwholesome springs which now supply the city, is again being earnestly studied by the city architects, much of the unhealthiness of a permanent residence here being now admitted to be due to the impurity, as well as the extreme hardness, of the water of the Seine. PAGE. Psychological Journal, 195 Examiner, 206 All the Year Round, 208 Saturday Review, 213 Psychological Journal, 216 Saturday Review, 222 Chambers's Journal, 225 Welcome Guest, 228 Danville Quarterly Review, 233 Spectator, 247 Economist, 249 Rabelais, 194. My Christian Name, 194. The Old Couple, 256. Day SHORT ARTICLES.-M. Vogel, the African Traveller, 205. Zoological Gardens, 215. Indignation of Oireland, 221. [This reminds one of a land near at home.] Black and White Laborers, 124. Death of Charlotte Bronte's Father, 232. Squirto Gentil, 232. [Can we not have Turkish Baths in our large cities ?] Division of Labor, 246. Seventh Volume of "Documents and Correspondence," 255. NEW BOOKS. LLOYD'S MILITARY CAMPAIGN CHART. Arranged by Robert L. Viele and Charles Haskins, Military Engineers. With a Glossary of War Terms, a Table of Distances, and a Steel Portrait of Gen. Scott. H. H. Lloyd and Co., New York; B. B. Russell, Boston. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL, SON, & CO., BOSTON. For Six Dollars a year, in advance, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded free of postage. Complete sets of the First Series, in thirty-six volumes, and of the Second Series, in twenty volumes, handsomely bound, packed in neat boxes, and delivered in all the principal cities, free of expense of freight, are for sale at two dollars a volume. ANY VOLUME may be had separately, at two dollars, bound, or a dollar and a half in numbers. ANY NUMBER may be had for 13 cents; and it is well worth while for subscribers or purchasers to complete any broken volumes they may have, and thus greatly enhance their value. Whercon in jester's garb he mocked at error, And dreaming not morality took that form, Peace to his manes-let them wander where No moonsick lad may brand them in a sonnet; That good old garb of his is yet in wear, And teachers now and then are wise to don it; We know not, till they pass, and leave a dearth Must clear our visions from the motes that blind them. -Welcome Guest. MY CHRISTIAN NAME. Mr Christian name-my Christian name, None have the right to utter it; I never hear it now; 'Tis lost-I know not how; My worldly name the world speaks loud Thank God for well-earned fame! They laughed at their own faces in his mir-But silence sits at my cold hearth, ror; I have no household name. My Christian name-my Christian name, Dost thou yet whisper up in heaven, What else I held in shame, Of the quaint name I bore, One speaks it still-in written lines- But the wide seas between us drown I had a dream for years. One voice Oh, dumb dumb lips; oh, crushed, crushed heart! Oh, grief, past pride, past shame! Thee speak my Christian name! Shouldst trace my bleeding feet. God make And the first words I hear in Heaven DINAH MULOCK. |