7 ernment, while it will not with foolish obstinacy defend any vexatious or excessive exercise of power, will have the manliness and self-respect to refuse to trample_under foot great principles to which the English nation has exhibited a noble fidelity, and to which we believe it still steadfastly adheres. The American, with the modesty peculiar to | bearings of the question at issue would be his people, asked the Englishmen why "the premature till the facts of the case are ascerOld Country did not come to them to show tained; but we earnestly trust that our Govthem the way into Sebastopol ?" The reply was perhaps more conclusive than courteous. "For two reasons-first, because you have no army; and secondly, because you have no navy." We learn from the American newspapers that, since this affair has been in agitation, the Government of the United States has despatched all its available ships of war to the Gulf. With this reinforcement, the American squadron will number seven ships, mounting less than two hundred guns. Our ordinary fleet at present in the West Indies counts seventeen penants, with nearly four hundred guns. Even on the Times's principle, then, England can afford to behave with decency and self-respect. If the American Government is able to establish any real and substantial grievance against the English cruisers, let the matter be fairly dealt with, like any other question of international discussion. Nothing but such language as that on which we have animadverted could expose this country to the suspicion of cowardice in admitting a proved wrong, or offering a reparation shown to be justly due. But the premature self-humiliation which the Times counsels is founded, not on the weakness of our case, but on the strength of our opponent. We are urged to give the wall to a bully, whether the rule of the road is for us or against us. We will say nothing of the baseness of such a policy we content ourselves with remarking that, with such a people as the Americans, it is of all policies the most unsafe. There is no nation in whose character it is more ingrained to insult the timid and to presume upon the fears of the weak. We have no chance of dealing with such a people upon even terms, except by opposing a steady face to menace, and taking a firm stand upon legality and right. But this vantage ground is wantonly abandoned by the Times when it condescends to talk in a style which would not be creditable to a terrified shopkeeper, and which is utterly disgraceful to a journal that presumes to speak on behalf of a great people. The mischief done by such language to the real interests of the country is incalculable. How is the English Government to enter with dignity and self-reliance on a diplomatic controversy, if our press has already avowed, in a frenzy of fear, that it will surrender any thing and every thing, with or without just cause? This cowardly precipitation is the most dangerous spirit in which we can approach a dispute with the American Government. It is something worse than folly to dream that we can disarm a bully by seeking to deprecate his wrath. Discussion on the legal From The Saturday Review, 19 June. THE ATTITUDE OF FRANCE. WE have some reason to believe that the denial by the Moniteur of any increase in the French army and navy is capable of being partially reconciled with the undeniable increase of the French Army and Navy Estimates. More than one of the Kings of England, in the Middle Ages, when in financial distress, applied to his Parliament and vassals for a subsidy and aids on pretence of a war on the Continent: and having obtained the money, disbanded the army without crossing the water, and applied the greater part of the funds to his own purposes. Persons well acquainted with the habits of the French Government are of opinion that a similar expedient may have been adopted by the Ministers of the Empire, though with a less corrupt object. They think that of the 600,000 men of whom the French army now nominally consists, a part may exist only on paper, and that the money raised for levying and maintaining that part may have been carried to other departments of the Government in need of financial assistance. According to this theory, the EMPEROR has drawn really to pay his tailor's bill, though ostensibly for the purpose of buying a blunderbuss and slugs to shoot his neighbor. All that can be said is that a budget framed upon this plan may have its political advantages, but that it is rather agitating to the nerves of the neighbor. We cannot doubt, however, that the French army has been increased, and is at this moment larger than can be required for any domestic or defensive purpose, and it was only the other day that an order issued for re-arming the whole of its infantry regiments with improved weapons. Its aggressive powers have also, as a matter of fact, been materially increased by the completion of the system of railways converging upon Cherbourg, and of the yast quays for the embarkation of troops at that French Sebastopol, no matter by whom those works may have been projected or commenced. As little can it be doubted that the force of the French fleet has been raised to a height quite unnecessary for the purposes of self-defence, or for the protection of the French colonies or trade, considering that, of the only two great mari-nish the pretence for aggression which, amidst us. time Powers, England is the cordial ally of the universal desire for peace, it would be dif France, and Russia is something more. ficult in any other case to find. The fleet There is not the slightest evidence of any would then be used to keep the maritime aggressive intention on the part of the French Powers in check. But it would really matter Government at the present moment, beyond little at whom the blow was first struck-the the fact of its keeping up these vast instru- consequence must be universal war. Another ments of aggression. It is only the loaded outbreak of French military ambition would pistol perpetually held to our heads that be- be a fire in the European edifice which all the gets any apprehension of a design to shoot inhabitants of that edifice must at once, on But it is fair to the English journal which pain of ultimate destruction, combine their has given the alarm, and which has been forces to extinguish. The miseries and horblamed for giving it, to say that it is perfectly rors which such a conflict would bring on hucorrect in stating that the apprehension of manity are beyond the power of language to war cannot be greater in England than it is express; and we may hope, for the honor of among Continental statesmen. It is proba- our common nature, that the worst of the ble, indeed, that if any inscrutable motive- evil counsellors whom Louis Napoleon has panic, ambition, or evil counsels-should ever about him would shrink from advising his impel the ruler of France to pull the trigger master to incur such unutterable guilt. The of the deadly weapon which he holds in his bare fact that the power of making the civilhand, one of the nations of the Continent, ized world an Aceldama is in the hands, and not England, would be the mark. This coun- might be exercised by the anger, ambition, or try has indeed done as little as possible to de- panic of a single man, is an argument against serve attack. The moral support of her despotism which ought to pierce the dullest Monarchy and Government has been lavishly or most frivolous mind. We have made enebestowed on the Imperial adventurer, at the mies, by our partisan exaltation of the Empecost of alienating from her all the Bonapart- ror, of large portions of the French people. ist party in France. Her military alliance But if it rested with the French people to deenabled him, at his need, to surround a throne cide whether there should be war with us or of yesterday with a halo of that glory which in Europe, we might hang the sword over is most dazzling to French eyes. If she has the hearth, and let it rust in peace. declined to violate at his desire the asylum under whose shadow he once reposed, the abhorrence expressed by her citizens of all attempts against his person has perhaps been more unanimous and effectual than that expressed by his own people. His administration has been discussed in our press with the same freedom with which we have discussed the administration of other foreign sovereigns, and with which he himself, when resident in this country, discussed the administration of his predecessor on the French Throne. But in this discussion he has had his panegyrists as well as his critics; and it is his own fault if a syllable of it ever meets his own eyes or those of any person in his dominions. Moreover, as we have before observed, it may be said without blustering, that a war with England would neither afford easy triumphs nor easily maintain itself; and no war which did not fulfil these conditions would answer any assignable purpose of the French Government, or suit the present state of French finance. Austria, which the publication of Orsini's letter to the Emperor of the French appeared distinctly to threaten, offers a much more succulent and more accessible object of attack. Belgium, where strong apprehension evidently prevails, would be helpless if she was not guaranteed. Spain now lies most dangerously open to invasion by way of Pampeluna, and her internal disorders might fur As it is, it would be wrong to anticipate criminal aggression, and wrong not to be prepared against it. We are happily not called upon to emulate France in the size of her standing armies, or to cause the same disturbance to the tranquility of nations and the progress of civilization in the world. The attachment which all the citizens of a free State feel to their Government and to each other is capable of being embodied into a force cheap, unaggressive, and perfectly innocuous to other nations, but of overwhelming power in defensive war. Lord Derby and his colleagues claim the credit of having been the first to put the militia on an efficient footing; and though the disbanding of a number of regiments at this moment is a questionable policy, it is to be hoped they will in this respect be true to their own traditions. The country gentlemen cannot be better, more honorably, or more influentially employed than in organizing and comr..anding such a force. They will find that, by doing so, they promote Conservatism much more efficaciously than by offering a hopeless resistance in Parliament to the abolition of the Property Qualification or the emancipation of the Jews. Not Mr. Bright himself, unless he is prepared to maintain that England ought to be left entirely unprotected, can object to the maintenance of a force which does not take a single man from the From The Press, 19 June. THE AMERICAN FLURRY. plough, which does not expose a single man cost of war. We may be in no danger, but to the moral evils of a soldier's life, which at all events let us have an efficient Channel does not tend in the remotest degree to keep Fleet as soon as possible. alive the spirit or the fear of war in the world. The extent of our trade and the number of our colonies compel us to keep up a very large navy, which, being evidently maintained for purposes virtually defensive, ought to give no umbrage to other nations. But the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the mode of manning the navy, which we are glad to see has at last been appointed, may perhaps consider whether the militia principle is not capable of being applied in some degree to the manning of the Channel Fleet. The erratic and capricious habits of sailors would no doubt throw great obstacles in the way of such a plan. But it might possibly be feasible, by good pay and martial law combined, to keep a certain number of them together for the practice of gunnery and evolutions during a portion of each year, allowing them to engage in the coasting trade (so as to be within call on an emergency) during the rest. Such crews would no doubt be as inferior to those of regular men-of-war as a militia regiment to a regiment of the Line; but they might serve to turn every man-ofwar in our harbors into a floating battery for the defence of our coasts. WE have not got authority to report, as the Neapolitan savant the other day was able to do, that the period of earthquakes is over for the present. In the dead calm of the American trade and the suspense of financial operations there are still many favorable conditions for an eruption taking place on an extensive, if not a sublime, political scale. The laws of such events are no longer accidental: they are now well ascertained; they recur with almost uniform certainty. Prudent Ministries take out a policy, and mutually insure each other's lives by means of them; political economists found theories upon them; a newspaper that desires to increase its circulation will exert a good deal of art in endeavouring to force them; and yet such is the popular ignorance as to the causes of periodical disturbance, that whenever such a disturbance occurs the world cannot divest itself of a vague feeling associated with something strange and subterranean and preternatural. Not the most remarkable phase of the present eruption, is the long, hot, fuliginThe removal of General Espinasse, and ous stream-no matter how long or how wide the appointment of a civilian in his place, is-which for some weeks past has been disrather a pledge of a more civilized government at home than of pacific intentions towards other countries. The readiness with which it has been interpreted as a pledge of peace only shows the sincere anxiety of this country to be on good terms with France. To the majority of Englishmen, the institutions which Louis Napoleon has established in France, and the acts by which he has established them, are as odious as their own institutions are cherished. But all Englishmen, from the highest Tory, to the most extreme Radical, are unanimous in desiring that our relations with the Government of France, whatever that Government may be, should be not only pacific but cordial. The Emperor has lived among Englishmen, and must know very well that they are capable of distinguishing between their political sympathies and their international duties, and of scrupulously fulfilling international duty where political sympathy does not exist. England is his faithful ally, if he is hers. But the perpetual menace of an immense armament ready to attack us at a moment's notice, is, in fact, hostility on his part. And should he persist in this menace, he must not wonder if the same conduct which adds enormously to his own financial difficulties also estranges allies who, in the midst of peace, are wantonly made to feel the alarms and bear the charged from the American Congress. Be- 66 An sailing under the American flag is in deroga- able injury and hostility on the other. tion of the sovereignty of the United States, American war, we are ready to concede, if it and conferred upon the President the extra- were likely, would change the aspect of affairs ordinary power which it gave to Van Buren in the world. But it is not likely; and the in 1839, viz., the disposal of the available world does not want violently changing at naval force, and a vote of 5,000,000 dollars, present. Such a war might forward the infor the purpose of chastising British aggres- terests of politicians or Governments who sion, if again repeated in the waters of Florida have no character to gain and who have no or Cuba. Abolitionist as well as Pro-slavery credit to lose; it might answer the purpose Senators have merged their differences in of one or two European powers; it might common Anti-British repugnance, expressed reinstate in office certain gentlemen out of in the debate upon this vote; several vigorous office who have more than once been politisenators declaring themselves, after the man- cally unfortunate; it might serve the interest ner of their country, as favorable to physical of a few slave-owners or holders of slave force rather than to arguments of low moral property; it might extend the circulation of suasion; Mr. Hammond, of South Carolina, the New York Herald, or restore the popularbeing unwilling to be smuggled into a war," ity by increasing the sale of the Times. Any but being desirous "to throw with all due or all of these ends it might accomplish, solemnity the bloody spear; while Mr. without accomplishing any one public benefit Toombs, from Georgia, who has been ready or advancing the great interests of England for war during the last ten years, and is in- and America. Granting that America posdignant that the finest vessel in the United sesses in herself unbounded natural resources; States navy is engaged at present in "towing that she has abundance of grain, and cotton, a telegraph cable between two British depend- and sugar; that she can build a navy and encies,' ," has at. the two latest debates in the man it after it is built;-when she has colAmerican Senate deported himself like a lected what remains of the army she found so Transatlantic Cato, and made only one simple difficult to levy against the Mormons-an republican utterance-" that he wanted the element of intestine discord quieted, but not two British ships taken." However natural quelled-when she has distributed her eight and laudable such a patriotic design, and how- hundred soldiers over thirteen thousand miles, ever soothing to the wounded spirit of Re- recalled home her merchant ships-five milpublicanism such a capture might be, there is lion tons or thereabouts-from European or an important obstacle in the way of its ac- East Indian ports, has thrown off her Canacomplishment. It is, according to the statis- dian, Australian, and British trade, and tics which the Americans themselves show, stripped herself for a hand-to-hand fight in not at all easy. The British squadron in the behalf of such a prize as slavery, is it quite Gulf of Mexico is far the stronger force, certain that her three and a half millions of numbering three guns to every one of the slaves and her Indian population will look on Americans. Taking into account every vessel as calm and indifferent spectators? England, we can fit out, as the Tribune is shrewd while pursuing steadily the career of philanenough to perceive, for every additional gun thropy and civilization she has ever pursued, that America can send England can turn and so long as she is still England she cannot against her twenty. Even supposing that an renounce, is too calm to be ruffled or diverted American vessel were to get on the track of from her path by these vulgar fanfaronades or the Styx or the Buzzard, there is an equal pro-slavery bluster. She is so jealous of what probability that the Yankee chaser might is right that she cares not to forward even herself be chased; and American mental a good end by a little international wrong; arithmeticians, however ardently patriotic, however emulous of following in the steps of Jefferson, and Madison, and Polk, are too sensible not to see that retaliation and reprisal on the one side would only occasion irremedi and, fearless of misinterpretation or suspicion, she will waive what she might claim, leave to America all the reputation of her prostituted flag, and gain her old station on the shores of Africa. INFLUENCE OF SCENERY.-It has been ascertained by the experience of self-observant men that, in a mind partaking of that kind of sensibility which is akin to genius, some degree of correspondence takes place between the habitual state of the imagination and the character of that scene of external nature which is most constantly presented to the senses.-Fosteriana. THE BIG FIDDLE.-A shrewd clergyman was once tormented by his people to let them introduce the "big fiddle," or bass-viol, into the church. He told them the human voice was the divinest of all instruments of music; but they introduced their viol, and the old man rose, and said:"The brethrenwill, if they please, sing and fiddle the thirty-ninth Psalm." From The Englishwoman's Journal. ROSA BONHEUR is an indefatigable worker. She rises at six o'clock and paints until dusk, when she lays aside her blouse, puts on a bonnet and shawl of most unfashionable appearance, and takes a turn through the neighboring streets alone, or accompanied by a favorite dog. Absorbed in her own thoughts, and unconscious of every thing around her, the first conception of a picture is frequently struck out by her in these rapid, solitary walks in the twilight. than the ruder magnificence of the Pyrenees and the north. Among mountains, the great artist is completely in her element; out of doors from morning till night, lodging in the humblest and remotest of roadside hotels, or in the huts of wood-cutters, charcoal-burners, and chamois-hunters, and living contentedly on whatever fare can be obtained. Two years ago, being furnished by families of distinction in the Béarnais and the Basque provinces with introductions to the rare inhabitants of Living solely for her art, she has gladly re- the region, the party pushed their adventurous signed the cares of her outward existence to wanderings to the little station of Peyronère, an old and devoted friend, a Madame Micas, the last inhabited point within the French a widow lady, who with her daughter an frontier, and thence up the romantic defiles of artist, whose exquisite groups of birds are the Vallée d'Urdos, across the summit of the well known in England, and who has been Pyrenees. Thanks to the letters they carried, for many years Rosa's most intimate compan- the travellers were hospitably received at each ion-resides with her, relieving her of every halting-place, and furnished with a trusty material responsibility, and leaving her free guide for the next march. In this way to devote herself exclusively to her favorite they crossed the mountains, and gained the pursuit. Every summer the two lady artists lonely posada of Canfan, the first on the repair to some mountain-district to sketch. Spanish side of the ridge, where, for six Arrived at the regions inhabited only by the weeks, they saw no living souls but the bourChamois, the ladies exchange their feminine riquairos (muleteers) with their strings of habiliments for masculine attire, and spend a mules, who would halt for the night at the couple of months in exploring the wildest re- little inn, setting out at the earliest ray of cesses of the hills, courting the acquaintance morning for their descent on the opposite of their shy and swift-footed truants, and side of the mountains. harvesting "effects," of storm, rain, and va- The people of the posada lived entirely on por, as assiduously as those of sunshine. curdled sheep's milk; the sole article of food Though Rosa is fully alive to the beauties of the party could obtain on their arrival. At wood and meadow as we know from the one time, by an early fall of snow, they were loveliness she has transferred from them to shut out of all communication with the valley. her canvas-mountain scenery is her especial Their threatened starvation was averted by delight. Hitherto her explorations had been the exertions of Mlle. Micas, who managed confined to the French chains, and the Pyre- to procure a quantity of frogs, the hind legs nees, but in the autumn of fifty-six she visited of which she enveloped in leaves, and toasted Scotland and made numerous sketches, in the on sticks over a fire on the hearth. On these neighborhood of Glenfallock, Glencoe, and frogs they lived for two days, when the hostBallaculish; and struck by the beauty of the ess was induced to attempt the making of Highland cattle selected some choice speci- butter from the milk of her sheep, and even mens of these, which she had sent down to to allow the conversion of one of these aniWexham Rectory, near Windsor, where she mals into mutton for their benefit. Their resided, and spent two months in making larder thus supplied, and black bread being numerous studies, from which she has already brought for them by the bourriquairos, from produced two pictures,-"The Denizens of some village a very long way off, the party gave the Mountains," and "Morning in the High- themselves up to the pleasure of their wild lands." The Alps she has not yet visited, life, and the business of sketching. The arthough constantly intending to do so. Her rival of the muleteers, with their embroidered preference being for the stern, the abrupt, shirts, their pointed hats, velvet jackets, and and the majestic, instead of the soft, the leathern breeches and sandals, was always smiling, and the fair; Italy, with all its glo- a welcome event. Rosa paid for wine for ies, has hitherto attracted her less powerfully them, and they, in return, performed their |