in any superficial sense, as from the essential and deadly enmity of the principles that underlie it. His Lordship's bit of borrowed rhetoric would justify Smith O'Brien, Nana Sahib, and the Maori chieftains, while it would condemn nearly every war in which England has ever been engaged. Was it so very presumptuous in us to think that it would be decorous in English statesmen if they spared time enough to acquire some kind of knowledge, though of the most elementary kind, in regard to this country and the questions at issue here, before they pronounced so off-hand a judgment? Or is political information expected to come Dogberryfashion in England, like reading and writing, by nature?

And now all respectable England is wondering at our irritability, and sees a quite satisfactory explanation of it in our national vanity. Suave mari magno, it is pleasant, sitting in the easy chairs of Downing Street, to sprinkle pepper on the raw wounds of a kin red people struggling for life, and philosophical to find in self-conceit the cause of our instinctive resentment. Surely we were of all nations the least liable to any temptation of vanity at a time when the gravest anxiety and the keenest sorrow were never absent from our hearts. Nor is conceit the exclusive attribute of any one nation. The earliest of English travellers, Sir John Mandeville, took a less provincial view of the matter when he said, "For fro what partie of the erthe that men duellen, other aboven or beneathen, it semethe alweys to hem that duellen that thei gon more righte than any other folke." The English have always had their fair share of this amiable quality. We may say of them still, as the authour of the Lettres Cabalistiques said of them more than a century ago, "Ces derniers disent naturellement qu'il n'y a qu'eux qui soient estimables." And, as he also says,

J'aimerois presque autant tomber entre les mains d'un Inquisiteur que d'un Anglois qui me fait sentir sans cesse combien il s'estime plus que moi,

nu.

et qui ne daigne me parler que pour injurier ma Nation et pour m'ennuyer du récit des grandes qualités de la sienne." Of this Bull we may safely say with Horace, habet fænum in corWhat we felt to be especially insulting was the quiet assumption that the descendants of men who left the Old World for the sake of principle, and who had made the wilderness into a New World patterned after an Idea, could not possibly be susceptible of a generous or lofty sentiment, could have no feeling of nationality deeper than that of a tradesman for his shop. One would have thought, in listening to England, that we were presumptuous in fancying that we were a nation at all, or had any other principle of union than that of booths at a fair, where there is no higher notion of government than the constable, or better. image of God than that stamped upon the current coin.

It is time for Englishmen to consider whether there was nothing in the spirit of their press and of their leading public men calculated to rouse a just indignation, and to cause a permanent estrangement on the part of any nation capable of self-respect, and sensitively jealous, as ours then was, of foreign interference. Was there nothing in the indecent haste with which belligerent rights were conceded to the Rebels, nothing in the abrupt tone assumed in the Trent case, nothing in the fitting out of Confederate privateers, that might stir the blood of a people already overcharged with doubt, suspicion, and terrible responsibility? The laity in any country do not stop to consider points of law, but they have an instinctive appreciation of the animus that actuates the policy of a foreign nation; and in our own case they remembered that the British authorities in Canada did not wait till diplomacy could send home to England for her slow official tinder box to fire the " Caroline." Add to this, what every sensible American knew, that the moral support of England was equal to an army of two hundred thousand men te

the Repels, while it insured us another year or two of exhausting war. It was not so much the spite of her words (though the time might have been more tastefully chosen) as the actual power for evil in them that we felt as a deadly wrong. Perhaps the most immediate and efficient cause of mere irritation was the sudden and unaccountable change of manner on the other side of the water. Only six months before, the Prince of Wales had come over to call us cousins; and everywhere it was nothing but "our American brethren," that great offshoot of British institutions in the New World, so almost identical with them in laws, language, and literature, this last of the alliterative compliments being so bitterly true, that perhaps it will not be retracted even now. To this outburst of long-repressed affection we responded with genuine warmth, if with something of the awkwardness of a poor relation bewildered with the sudden tightening of the ties of consanguinity when it is rumored that he has come into a large estate. Then came the Rebellion, and, presto! a flaw in our titles was discovered, the plate we were promised at the family table is flung at our head, and we were again the scum of creation, intolerably vulgar, at once cowardly and overbearing, -no relations of theirs, after all, but a dreggy hybrid of the basest bloods of Europe. Panurge was not quicker to call Friar John his former friend I cannot help thinking of Walter Mapes's jingling paraphase of Petronius,

"Dummodo sim splendidis vestibus ornatus, Et multa familia sim circumvallatus, Prudens sum et sapiens et morigeratus, Et tuus nepos sum et tu meus cognatus," which I may freely render thus: So long as I was prosperous, I'd dinners by the dozen,

Was well-bred, witty, virtuous, and everybody's cousin ;

If luck should turn, as well she may, her fancy is so flexile,

Will virtue, cousinship, and all return with her from exile?

There was nothing in all this to exasperate a philosopher, much to make

him smile rather; but the earth's surface is not chiefly inhabited by philosophers, and I revive the recollection of it now in perfect good-humour, merely by way of suggesting to our ci-devant British cousins, that it would have been easier for them to hold their tongues than for us to keep our tempers under the circumstances.

The English Cabinet made a blunder, unquestionably, in taking it so hastily for granted that the United States had fallen forever from their position as a first-rate power, and it was natural that they should vent a little of their vexation on the people whose inexplicable obstinacy in maintaining freedom and order, and in resisting degradation, was likely to convict them of their mistake. But if bearing a grudge be the sure mark of a small mind in the individual, can it be a proof of high spirit in a nation? If the result of the present estrangement between the two countries shall be to make us more independent of British twaddle (Indomito nec dira ferens stipendix Tauro), so much the better; but if it is to make us insensible to the value of British opinion, it matters where it gives us the judgment of an impartial and cultivated outsider, if we are to shut ourselves out from the advantages of English culture, the loss will be ours, and not theirs. Because

the door of the old homestead has been once slammed in our faces, shall we in a huff reject all future advances of conciliation, and cut ourselves foolishly off from any share in the humanizing influences of the place, with its ineffable riches of association, its heirlooms of immemorial culture, its historic monuments, ours no less than theirs, its noble gallery of ancestral portraits? We have only to succeed, and England will not only respect, but, for the first time, begin to understand us. And let us not, in our justifiable indignation at wanton insult, forget that England is not the England only of snobs who dread the democracy they do not comprehend, but the England of history, of heroes, statesmen, and poets, whose

names are dear, and their influence as salutary to us as to her.

Let us strengthen the hands of those in authority over us, and curb our own tongues, remembering that General Wait commonly proves in the end more than a match for General Headlong, and that the Good Book ascribes safety to a multitude, indeed, but not to a mob, of counsellours. Let us remember and perpend the words of Paulus Emilius to the people of Rome; that, "if they judged they could manage the war to more advantage by any o.her, he would willing yield up his charge; but if they confided in him, they were not to make themselves his colleagues in his office, or raise reports, or criticise his actions, but, without talking, supply him with means and assistance necessary to the carrying on of the war; for, if they proposed to command their own commander, they would render this expedition more ridiculous than the former." (Vide Plutarchum in Vitâ P. E.) Let us also not forget what the same excellent authour says concerning Perseus's fear of spending money, and not permit the covetousness of Brother Jonathan to be the good fortune of Jefferson Davis. For my own part, till I am ready to admit the Commander-in-Chief to my pulpit, I shall abstain from planning his battles. If courage be the sword, yet is patience the armour of a nation; and in our desire for peace, let us never be willing to surrender the Constitution bequeathed us by fathers at least as wise as ourselves (even with Jefferson Davis to help us), and, with those degenerate Romans, tuta et presentia quam vetera et periculosa malle.

And not only should we bridle our own tongues, but the pens of others, which are swift to convey useful intelligence to the enemy. This is no new inconvenience; for, under date, 3d June, 1745, General Pepperell wrote thus to Governor Shirley from Louisbourg: "What your Excellency observes of the army's being made acquainted with any plans proposed, until ready to be put in execution, has

always been disagreeable to me, and I have given many cautions relating to it. But when your Excellency considers that our Council of War cons sts of more than twenty members, I am persuaded you will think it impossible for me to hinder it, if any of them will persist in communicating to inferior officers and soldiers what ought to be kept secret. I am informed that the Boston newspapers are filed with paragraphs from private letters relating to the expedition. Will your Excellency permit me to say I think it may be of ill consequence? Would it not be convenient, if your Excellency should forbid the Printers' inserting such news?" Verily, if tempora mutantur, we may question the et nos mutamur in illis; and if tongues be leaky, it will need all hands at the pumps to save the Ship of State. Our history dotes and repeats itself. If Sassycus (rather than Alcibiades) find a parallel in Beauregard, so Weakwash, as he is called by the brave Lieutenant Lion Gardiner, need not seek far among our own Sachems for his antitype. With respect,

Your obt humble servt,

HOMER WILBUR, A. M.

But 't ain't so, ef the mind gits tuckered out.

Now, bein' born in Middlesex, you know,

There's certin spots where I like best to go:

The Concord road, for instance, (I, for one,

Most gin❜lly ollers call it John Bull's Run,)

The field o' Lexin'ton where England tried

The fastest colours thet she ever dyed, An'Concord Bridge, thet Davis, when he came,

Found was the bee-line track to heaven an' fame,

Ez all roads be by natur', ef your soul Don't sneak thru shun-pikes so's to save the toll.

They're 'most too fur away, take too much time

To visit of'en, ef it ain't in rhyme; But the 's a walk thet 's hendier, a sight,

An' suits me fust-rate of a winter's

night,

I mean the round whale's-back o' Prospect Hill.

I love to l'iter there while night grows still,

An' in the twinklin' villages about, Fust here, then there, the well-saved lights goes out,

An' nary sound but watch-dogs' false alarms,

Or muffled cock-crows from the drowsy farms,

Where some wise rooster (men act jest thet way)

Stands to 't thet moon-rise is the break o' day:

(So Mister Seward sticks a threemonths' pin

Where the war'd oughto eend, then tries agin;

My gran'ther's rule was safer 'n 't is

Voices I call 'em : 't was a kind o' sough

Like pine-trees thet the wind 's ageth'rin' through;

An', fact, I thought it was the wind a spell,

Then some misdoubted, could n't tairly tell,

Fust sure, then not, jest as you hold an eel,

I knowed, an' did n't,- fin'lly seemed to feel

"T was Concord Bridge a talkin' off to kill

With the Stone Spike thet's druv thru Bunker Hill;

Whether 't was so, or ef I on'y dreamed, I could n't say; I tell it ez it seemed.

See here: the British they found out a flaw

In Cap'n Wilkes's readin' o' the law: (They make all laws, you know, an' SO o' course,

It's nateral they should understan' their force :)

He'd oughto took the vessel into port, An' hed her sot on by a reg'lar court; She was a mail-ship, an' a steamer, tu, An' thet, they say, hez changed the pint o' view,

Coz the old practice, bein' meant for sails,

Ef tried upon a steamer, kind o' fails; You may take out despatches, but you mus' n't

Take nary man