America more distant. The Northern States, whatever the result of the rebellion, must continue to be a first-rate naval power, and the South are not likely soon to eclipse them upon the sea. Both Federals and Confederates at the close of this war will find themselves financially disqualified for a contest with any great European navy. But the

North has internal resources that will enable her to recover rapidly from her prostration, while the South cannot easily surmount the desperate and apparently permanent blow which the war has inflicted upon the cultivation of the cotton plant. Maryland, Delaware, Western Virginia, and part of Missouri and Kentucky, in any case, must be lost to the slave-owner. The consequent weakness of the South, coupled with the material necessities which urge the planter continually to annex fresh territory, will probably in time impose a restless foreign policy on the Confederate Government; and, if the Slave States stretch southwards, the Federal Union may not improbably look for corresponding compensation in the direction of the Canadian lakes. Europe cannot count with too much assurance on the jealousy which a struggle for the privilege of secession may have bred between the two kindred and coterminous Republics. Southern politicians have always rivalled and surpassed the North in hostility and insolence towards the English people; and the sister communities may find it their best interest to combine for purposes of foreign policy and intimidation.

Meanwhile the cold and unfriendly attitude of this country is exasperating still further the old animosities and petulance of the North towards us. To add to the gloomy nature of the prospect, the Federals are determined to mark with suspicion and anger any steps we may take towards recognising their rebel enemies as an independent nation. Innumerable problems of international law may evidently arise in the course of a conflict, which we, from the magnitude of the interests involved, call war, but to which the Union refuses to give its

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penetrated with a belief that the life of the rebellion is sustained by hopes of recognition in England and in France. The Government at Washington have significantly warned the British Cabinet that they are not prepared to tolerate such a diplomatic injury. "It seems to me," says Mr. Seward, in his despatch of the 30th of November last, "that the British "Government has been inattentive to "the currents that seemed to be bring"ing the two countries into collision. I have never for a moment be"lieved that such a recognition could take "place without producing immediately a war between the United States "and all the recognising Powers." That the French Government should be bent upon such a measure is not unlikely. Trade in France finds itself terribly affected by the stoppage of all Confederate exports. It would seem, too, in the interests of the world that the nominal blockade, which is too ineffectual to do more than intimidate Southern commerce, should either be broken or, at least, confined within valid limits. Charleston Harbour has been wantonly and vindictively injured, even if, as Northern apologists assert, it has not been effectually destroyed; and an act of such blind atrocity is certainly an outrage upon the commonwealth of nations. Southern commissioners are actively engaged, both in this country and in Paris, in purchasing the moral support of England and of France, on such terms as they judge best suited to please the manufacturers and philanthropists whose mediation they require. While no consideration should prevent our loudly denouncing the objectless destruction of Southern ports, it is our duty to control rather than to obstruct the military and naval energy of the officers of the North. No tempting proffer of gradual negro emancipation-if any such be made by the Southern commissioners in accordance with the programme of M. Renouf-should tempt us to abandon a friendly and free Government in the hour of its distress. The eyes of the Continent are upon us this day to see if we act

selfishness. Whatever our past wrongs, let us repair one greater wrong done by us to America at her birth, nearly a century ago, and refuse, as far as we can, to assist at the dissolution of a great, a self-governed, and an AngloSaxon republic. When the Southern Confederacy has clearly shown that it is something more than the bubble of a year, it will have a right to those international courtesies which permanent Governments alone can claim. It is yet possible that the flame of revolution may expire in the Southern sky as suddenly as it has risen, and leave behind it no sign but the smouldering embers of an extinct conflagration. The suspension of specie payments in the North is an ominous symptom of financial exhaustion, but the Confederates have already passed this landmark on the road to ruin. If the North deserves victory, it will have spirit enough to do what the mother country has done before now, and cheerfully to support taxation proportioned to a grand emergency. During the next few months we may expect a series of military movements, the effect of which in all human likelihood will be the serious discouragement of the Confederates. No irreparable affront should be offered to the North by an English cabinet, until the course of events and the tardy justice due to the South require us to acknowledge-what generous Englishmen will never acknowledge but with pain-that the Union is finally dissolved.

The fortune that attends on genius, out of the mortifying occurrences of the last two months, has brought honour and advantage to the French Emperor. The affair of the Trent furnished Napoleon III. with an opportunity of making a diplomatic stroke and winning a diplomatic triumph. A short-sighted politician, in his eager anxiety to break the Southern blockade, might have hailed with satisfaction the prospect of an impending collision between England and the Union. But the French Emperor plays a longer and a more brilliant game. Since the American revolution, it

to defend the cause of neutral rights and the so-called liberty of the seas; for it is the interest of all Continental powers that the belligerent rights of England-who will always be the greatest maritime belligerent in the world-should be strictly defined. strictly defined. Within twelve hours of the news of the proceedings of the San Jacinto, the official Parisian press seized on the golden occasion, and England was encouraged by France to commit herself to a declaration of the rights of neutral navies. The proceedings of the Paris Congress of 1856 prove sufficiently that Great Britain, in return for the suppression of privateering, and the rule which compels a blockade to be effective, is not unwilling that immunities should be granted to neutral goods on board an enemy, and to enemy's goods on board a neutral. But Continental Europe is so firmly impressed with the idea that England is the tyrant of the ocean, that it rejoices at our solemnly estopping ourselves from future violations of international law. The Emperor of the French has been in this instance-what he loves to be the leader of the European Chorus, and the champion of the principles of progress. Nor is it merely that he has officiated as the spokesman of the Continent. It is in a difference between England and America that his authoritative and friendly sentence has made itself heard; and both England and the New World have heard with profound attention his trenchant and vigorous words. Slowly but surely he is creeping into the first place at the council-board of Europe. It is something that he has proved his loyalty to England, and at a critical moment conciliated our respect and good-will by a mark of his good faith. It is something, too, that he has hindered the navy of the North from dashing itself to pieces in an encounter with an unequal foe. But not the least useful of the advantages he has gained by his prompt action is that he has once more taught the powers of Europe to accustom themselves to listen for his voice.

THE time was when every man whose business lay in intellectual matters was bound to be his own encyclopædia. Having picked up, one way or another, the amount of knowledge which he required, he walked about, carrying this stock with him, increasing it as means offered, and serving as a source of information to which others could refer that chanced to be in his neighbourhood. Nor, in those days, did the knowledge of a man so situated necessarily fall far short of all the knowledge that was to be obtained. The world was yet young; and, as all that we call learning or erudition really resolves itself into history -into a recollection of what has happened among men, or men have thought and found out-the burden of legends that had been rolled down from the beginning of things in any one land was not too great for one man's memory. Homer, if there was such a person, was not only the poet of the Greek world, but also a walking compendium, from one Greek "storefarm" to another, of all the history and science then existing on both sides of the Ægean. Herodotus carried in his single head a recollection, most diligently got together, of all that it seemed worth while for a Greek to know respecting the present and the past of mankind as ranged round and away from the vast margin of the Mediterranean. What with the strong memories of those old worthies, what with the small helps of tablets, note-books, and scrolls, which the later of them may have had about

Later

them, it does not appear that, in any article of erudition, they could be taxed with ignorance, or with knowledge under the highest contemporary mark. still, the alleged necessity of something like universal learning, each one for himself, among those whom nations would recognise as their intellectual chiefs, was not palpably opposed to the fact. When Plato philosophized, it was not the mere flight of a splendid speculative faculty in empty space, but the action of a mind that had grasped and digested all accessible knowledge respecting the whole world of matter and men round which it flew and whose sublimer relations it sought to establish. In Aristotle, even more conspicuously, we behold, with wonder unabated to this day, universality and minuteness of acquisition, combined, as a matter of course, with the spirit of philosophic system.

Nor did the tradition which required universality of knowledge in those who would tower highest in a community, as its men of intellect, die out with the Greeks. Different ages and countries have had different notions as to the kind of intellectual functionary most to be held in honour. Over large tracts of time, as with us perhaps now, the poet has had the undisputed pre-eminence, and been voted, nem. con., the tip-top of created beings; but there have been times when-possibly because a poet of the right order seemed a blessing past praying for-men have been content to

selfishness. Whatever our past wrongs, let us repair one greater wrong done by us to America at her birth, nearly a century ago, and refuse, as far as we can, to assist at the dissolution of a great, a self-governed, and an AngloSaxon republic. When the Southern Confederacy has clearly shown that it is something more than the bubble of a year, it will have a right to those international courtesies which permanent Governments alone can claim. It is yet possible that the flame of revolution may expire in the Southern sky as suddenly as it has risen, and leave behind it no sign but the smouldering embers of an extinct conflagration. The suspension of specie payments in the North is an ominous symptom of financial exhaustion, but the Confederates have already passed this landmark on the road to ruin. If the North deserves victory, it will have spirit enough to do what the mother country has done before now, and cheerfully to support taxation proportioned to a grand emergency. During the next few months we may expect a series of military movements, the effect of which in all human likelihood will be the serious discouragement of the Confederates. No irreparable affront should be offered to the North by an English cabinet, until the course of events and the tardy justice due to the South require us to acknowledge-what generous Englishmen will never acknowledge but with pain-that the Union is finally dissolved.

The fortune that attends on genius, out of the mortifying occurrences of the last two months, has brought honour and advantage to the French Emperor. The affair of the Trent furnished Napoleon III. with an opportunity of making a diplomatic stroke and winning a diplomatic triumph. A short-sighted politician, in his eager anxiety to break the Southern blockade, might have hailed with satisfaction the prospect of an impending collision between England and the Union. But the French Emperor plays a longer and a more brilliant game. Since the American revolution, it

to defend the cause of neutral rights and the so-called liberty of the seas; for it is the interest of all Continental powers that the belligerent rights of England-who will always be the greatest maritime belligerent in the world-should be strictly defined. Within twelve hours of the news of the proceedings of the San Jacinto, the official Parisian press seized on the golden occasion, and England was encouraged by France to commit herself to a declaration of the rights of neutral navies. The proceedings of the Paris Congress of 1856 prove sufficiently that Great Britain, in return for the suppression of privateering, and the rule which compels a blockade to be effective, is not unwilling that immunities should be granted to neutral goods on board an enemy, and to enemy's goods on board a neutral. But Continental Europe is so firmly impressed with the idea that England is the tyrant of the ocean, that it rejoices at our solemnly estopping ourselves from future violations of international law. The Emperor of the French has been in this instance-what he loves to be-the leader of the European Chorus, and the champion of the principles of progress. Nor is it merely that he has officiated as the spokesman of the Continent. It is in a difference between England and America that his authoritative and friendly sentence has made itself heard; and both England and the New World have heard with profound attention his trenchant and vigorous words. Slowly but surely he is creeping into the first place at the council-board of Europe. It is something that he has proved his loyalty to England, and at a critical moment conciliated our respect and good-will by a mark of his good faith. It is something, too, that he has hindered the navy of the North from dashing itself to pieces in an encounter with an unequal foe. But not the least useful of the advantages he has gained by his prompt action is that he has once more taught the powers of Europe to accustom themselves to listen for his voice.