Remember, also, that, when a writer talks of himself, he is not necessarily speaking of his own definite John Smith-ship, that does the marketing and pays the taxes and is a useful member of society. Not at all. It is himself as one unit of the great sum of mankind. He means himself, not as an isolated individual, but as a part of humanity. His narration is pertinent, because it relates to the human family. He brings forward a part of the common property. He does not touch that which pertains exclusively to himself. His self is self-created. His imaginative may have as large a share in the person as his descriptive powers. You don't understand me precisely? Sorry for you.

You think me arrogant. You would think so a great deal more, if you knew me better. At heart I believe I incline very much to the opinion of a charming friend of mine, that, "after all, nobody in the world is of much account but Susy and me,"—only in my formula I leave out Susy. Don't, therefore, think solely of the arrogance that is revealed, but think also of the masses concealed, and in consideration of the greater repression pardon the great expression. It is not the persons who sin the least, but those who overcome the strongest temptations, who are the most virtuous. People endowed by Nature with a sweet humility do not deserve half the credit for their lovely character that those who are naturally selfish and arrogant often deserve for being no more disagreeable than they are. Yes, it must be confessed, you are right in attributing arrogance,—though, after this meek confession and repentance, if you do not forgive me freely and fully, for past and future, your secondary will be a great deal worse than my original sin;—but you never would accuse me of "an arrogance that disdains docility," if you had seen the mean-spirited way in which I sit down by the side of an editor and let him ram-page over my manuscript. Out fly my best thoughts, my finest figures, my sharpest epigrams,—without chloroform,—and I give no sign. I have heard that successful authors can always have everything their own way. I must be the greatest—or the smallest—failure of the age.

"It will be much better to omit this," says the High Inquisitor, turning the thumb-screw.

"No," I writhe. "Take everything else, but leave that."

"I am glad to see that you agree with me," he responds, with Mephistophelian courtesy; and away it goes, and I say nothing, thankful that enough is left to hobble in at all.

"Revealing somewhat of the arrogance of success," you comment, directed by your Evil Genius, upon that especial chapter which was written in a gully of the Valley of Humiliation, when I was gasping under an AEtna of rejected manuscripts,—when there was not a respectable newspaper in the country by which I had not been "declined with thanks,"—when, in the desperation of my determination, I had recourse to bribery, and sent an editor a dollar with the manuscript, to pay him for the fifteen minutes it would take to read it. (Mem. I never heard from editor, manuscript, or dollar.) No, it may be arrogance, but it is not the arrogance of success. Whatever it was, it was in the grain. And, to look at it in another light, I cannot have been "spoiled by the indulgent praise which my early efforts received," because, on the other hand, I have always been praised,—

"Like to the Pontic monarch of old days, I fed on poisons, till they had no power, But were a kind of nutriment."

The earliest event I remember is being presented with two cents by one of the "Committee" visiting the school. And if I could stand two cents in my tender infancy, don't you suppose I can stand your penny-a-lining now I am grown up? I may have been spoiled, or I may not have been worth much to begin with; but the mischief was all done before you ever heard of me. Confine yourself to facts: dismiss conjectures. State actions: shun motives. Give results: avoid causes, if you would insure confidence in your sagacity.

But all this will I forgive and forget, if you will not tell me to stop writing. That I cannot and will not do. You may iterate and reiterate, that the public will tire of me. I am sorry for the public, but it is strong and will be easily rested. Sorry? No, I am not; I am glad. I should like to pay back a part of the weariness which the public has inflicted on me in the shape of lectures, lessons, sermons, speeches, customs, fashions. Why should it have the monopoly of fatiguing? Minorities have their rights as well as majorities. The spout of a tea-kettle is not to be compared, in point of bulk, to the tea-kettle, but it puts in a claim for an equal depth of water, and Nature acknowledges the claim. I cannot think of reining in yet. I have but just begun. And everything is so interesting. Nothing is isolated. Nothing is insignificant. Everything you touch thrills. It does not seem to matter much what you look at: only look long enough, and a life, its life, starts out. You see that it has causes and consequences, dependencies, bearings, and all manner of social interests; and before you know it, you have become involved in those interests and are one of the family. For the time, you stake all on that issue, and fight to the death. As soon as that is decided, and you stop to take breath a moment, something else comes equally interesting and seeming equally important, and again your lance is in rest. When it comes to the quantities of morals, there isn't much difference between one thing and another. And you ask me to fold my hands and sit still! Not I. One of my youthful maxims was, "Do something, if it's mischief"; and I intend to follow it, especially the condition. I promise to do the best I can, but I shall do it. I will never write for the sake of writing, but I will say my say. I have not been rumbling underground all my life, to find a volcano at last, and then let it be choked up after a single eruption. There are rows of blocks standing around the walls of my workshop, waiting to be chiselled. They won't be Apollos,—but even Puck is a Robin Goodfellow, since,

"In one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn That ten day-laborers could not end."

And I shall not confine myself to my sphere. I hate my sphere. I like everything that is outside of it,—or, better still, my sphere rounds out infinitely into space. Nihil humani a me alienum puto. I was born into the whole world. I am monarch of all I survey. Wherever I see symptoms of a pie, thither shall my fingers travel. Wherever a windmill flaps, it shall go hard but I will have a tilt at it. I shall not wait till I know what I am talking about. If I did, I never should talk at all. It is a well-known principle in educational science, that the surest way to learn anything is to teach it. How fast would Geology get on, if its professors talked only of what they knew? Planting their feet firmly on facts, they feel about in all directions for theories. By carefully noting, publishing, comparing, discussing their uncertainties, they presently arrive at a certainty. Horace might advocate nine years' delay. He was building for himself a monument that should defy the rolling years. He was setting to work in cool blood to compass immortality, and a little time, more or less, made no difference. Apollo and Bacchus could afford to wait. Beautiful daughters of beautiful mothers will exist to the world's end, and their praises will always be in order. But when, unmindful of the next generation, which will have its books and its memories, though you are unread and forgotten, mindful only of this generation which groans and travails in pain, you look on suffering that you yearn to assuage, danger of which you long to warn, sadness which you would fain dispel, burdens which you would strive, though ever so little, to lighten, delay, even for things so desirable as complete knowledge and perfect polish, becomes not only absurd, but impossible. Better shoot into the cavern, even if you don't know in what precise part of it the dragon lies coiled. The flash of your powder may reveal his whereabouts to a surer marksman. A transient immortality is of no importance; it is of importance that hearts be purified, homes made happy, paths cleared, clouds dispelled. Is that ignoble? Very well. But the noblest way to benefit posterity is to serve the present age,—to serve it by doing one's best, indeed, but by doing it now, not waiting for some distant day when one can do it better. A writer deserves no pardon for careless or hurried writing. As much time as he has mental ability to spend on it, so much time he should devote to it. But then speed it on its way. Shut it up for a term of years, and you will perhaps have a manuscript that says begin where it used to say commence, but in the mean time all the people whom you wished to save have died of a broken heart,—or lived with one, which is still worse. Besides, even for improvement, it is better to publish your paper than to keep it in the drawer. There, all the amendments it can receive will come from the few feeble advances in knowledge which you may be so fortunate as to make. But print it and every one immediately gives you especial attention and the benefit of his judgment. If you should happen to serve in the right wing of Orthodoxy, you will have the inestimable boon of the freest criticism from the left wing. And it is the religious newspapers for not mincing matters. Between Jew and Gentile hostility is the normal condition of things; and is carried on peaceably enough; but when Jew meets Jew, then comes the tug of war! These people obey to the letter the Apostolic injunction, and confess your faults one to another with a relish that is marvellous to behold, and which must furnish to the unbelieving world a lively commentary on the old text, "Behold how these Christians love one another!" When their own list of your shortcomings is exhausted, ten to one they will take up the parable of somebody else; and if little Johnny Horner sitting in the corner of his sanctum has not room in his crowded columns for the whole pie in which his brother Horner has served you up, never fear but he will put in his thumb and pick out the plums to enliven his feast withal.

No. I shall keep on writing,—hit, if I can, miss, if I must, but shoot any way. There is a great deal of firing that kills no men and breaches no walls, but it worries the enemy. John Brown did not in the least know what he was doing. His definite attempt was a fatal failure; but the great and guilty conspiracy behind, of which he saw nothing, was smitten to the heart under his random blows; his sixteen white men and five negroes, flung blindly and recklessly against the ramparts of Slavery, were but the precursors of that great host, black and white, which has since gone down, organized and intelligent, to tread the wine-press of the wrath of God.

I fear I am committing the rhetorical error of comparing small things with great; but, if Virgil could bring in the Cyclops and their thunderbolts to illustrate his bees, and Demetrius Phalereus justify it, you will hardly count it a capital offence in me,—and I don't much care if you do, if I can only convince you that I am not going to be silent because I don't know the Alpha and Omega of things. I don't pretend to be logical, or consistent, or coherent. Nature is not. A forest of oaks burns down or is cut down, and do oaks spring again? No. Pines. Logic, is baffled, but the land is bettered. A field of corn is planted, and Nature does not set herself to protect it, but sends a flock of crows to devour it; the farmers grumble, but the crows are saved alive. Freezing water contracts awhile, and then without any provocation turns right about face and expands; if your pitcher stands in the way, so much the worse for your pitcher, but the little fishes are grateful; and with all her whims and inconsequences, Nature gets on from year to year without once failing of seed-time and harvest, cold or heat. How is it with you and your logic, you men who have been to college and discovered what you are talking about? You who discuss politics and decide affairs, are you not continually accusing each other of sophistry, inconsistency, and shying away from the point? Take up any political or religious newspaper, and see, if any faith is to be put in testimony, how deficient in logic are all these logic-mongers,—how all the learned and logical are accused by other learned and logical of false assumptions, of invalid reasoning, of foregone conclusions, of pride and prejudice and passion. One would say that the result of your profound researches was only to make you more intensely illogical than you could otherwise be.

"As skilful divers to the bottom fall Swifter than they who cannot swim at all, So in the sea of sophisms, to my thinking. You have a strange alacrity in sinking."

(Ego et Dorset fecimus!)

Sure I am my humble ability in the way of unreason can never compass fallacies so stupendous as those which you attribute to each other; and if this is all the result of your logic, I will none of it, initialed to possess at least the advantage, that, when I write nonsense, I know it is nonsense, while you write it and think it sense. But your thinking so does not make it so, and you need not rule me out of court on the strength of it. I acknowledge, in the domain of letters, none but Squatter Sovereignty. In literature, unlike morals, might makes right. If I think you are cultivating the soil to its utmost capacity, I shall not meddle; but if it seems to me that you are letting it lie fallow while I can draw a furrow to some purpose, you need not warn me off with your old title-deeds; in my ploughshare shall drive. To a better farmer I will yield right gladly, but I will not be scared away by a sign-board.

Nor need you go very far out of your way to affirm that I have not the requisite experience for writing on such and such topics. As a principle your remark is absurd. Cannot a doctor prescribe for typhus fever, unless he has had typhus fever himself? On the contrary, is he not the better able to prescribe from always having had a sound mind in a sound body? As a fact, my experience in those things concerning which you allege its insufficiency has never been presented to you for judgment, and its discussion is therefore entirely irrelevant. If my statements are false, they are false; if my arguments are inconclusive, they are inconclusive: disprove the one and refute the other. But whether this state of things be owing to a want of experience, or inability to use experience aright, or any personal circumstance whatever, is a matter in regard to which all the laws of literary courtesy forbid you to concern yourself.

And pray, Gentle Critic, do not tell me that I must be content simply to amuse, or must—anything else. Must is a hard word; be not over-confident of its power. I feel a grandmotherly interest in the world and its ways; and much as I should like to amuse it, I shall never be content with that. You may not like to be instructed, my dear children, but instructed you shall be. You read long ago, in your story-book, that little Tommy Piper didn't want his face washed, though he was very willing to be amused with soap-bubbles; but his face needed washing and got it. I come to you with soap-bubbles indeed, but with scrubbing-brushes also. If you take to them kindly, it will soon be over; but if you scream and struggle, I shall not only scrub the harder, but be all the longer about it.

Sometimes your grave refutations are very amusing. It is astonishing to see how crank-proof sundry minds are. Everything seems to them on a dead level of categorical proposition. They walk up to every statue with their measuring-line of Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferioque Prioris, and measure them off with equal solemnity, telling you severely that this nose is far longer than the classic rule admits, and this arm has not the swelling proportions of life,—never seeing, that, though another statue was indeed designed for an Antinoues, this was never meant to be anything but a broomstick dressed in your grandfather's cloak, with a lantern in a pumpkin for a head. Oh, the dreariness of having to explain pleasantry! of appending to your banter Artemas Ward's parenthesis, "This is a goak"! of dealing with people who do not know the difference between a blow and a "love-pat," between Quaker guns and an Armstrong battery, between a granite paving-stone and the moonshine on a mud-puddle!

Dear Public, don't begin to be tired yet. I am not. There are many books still to come, if they can ever be brought to light. They were ready long ago, but no publisher could be found; and now that I have found a publisher, I cannot find the books. There is a treatise on the Curvature of the Square,—a Dissertation on Foreign Literature,—two or three novels,—a book on Human Life, that is going to turn the world upside down,—a book on Theology, dull enough to be sensible, that is going to turn it back again,—and a bandboxful of children's stories. Still, in spite of this formidable prospect, take the consolation that an end is sure to come. There is not a particle of reserved force or dormant power or anything of the kind for you to dread. All there is of me is awake. I have struck twelve, and at longest it will be but a little while before I shall run down,—

"And silence like a poultice come To heal the blows of sound."

And does not the exquisite sensation of departed pain almost atone for the discomfort of its presence? How heartily, for your sake, would I be the most profound and able writer in the world, and how gladly should all my profundity and ability be laid at your feet! And since

"the good but wished with God is done,"

can you not find it in your heart to "yearn o'er my little good and pardon my much ill"?

Public, you must, whether you can or not. It is a case of life and death. I am good for nothing but writing; and if you take that resource away,—you know what the book says about mischief and Satan and idle hands! and you certainly will take it away, if you do not speak peaceably unto me. All that I said before was only bravado,—just to keep a bold front to the foe. I can confide to you under the rose, that, though without are fightings, within are fears. Pope, was it, who used to look around upon the missives hurled at him, and say, "These are my amusement"? But they are not mine. I want you to like me and be good-natured. It is not that you must always agree with opinions, or not take exception to what is exceptionable; it is only that you shall not say things in a sour, cross, disagreeable way. Impale the bait on your arming-wire, but handle it as if you loved it. Talk thunderbolts, if necessary, but don't "make faces." The soft south-wind is very, charming; the northwest-wind, though sharp, is bracing and healthful; but your raw east-winds,—oh! chain them in the caverns of AEolia, the country of storms.

Bear with me a little longer in my folly; and, indeed, bear with me, you who are strong, for the sake of the weak. Many and many there may be to whom the meat of your metaphysics is indigestible and unpalatable, but who find strength and cheer in the sincere milk of such words as I can give. To you who have already set your feet on the high places, that may be but a bruised reed which is a staff to those who are still struggling up. Do you go on churning the cream of thought, and salting down its butter for future ages; I will spread it on thin for the weak digestions of this. Let scarfs, garters, gold amuse your riper stage, and beads and prayer-books be the toys of age, but wax not over-wroth, when you behold the child, by Nature's kindly law, pleased with a rattle!

And after all, Dear Public, it is partly your own fault that I venture to make still further draughts upon your patience. Though I have trimmed my sails to opposing rather than to favoring gales, it is not because the latter have been wanting. But a pin that pricks your finger attracts to itself far more attention for the time than the thousand influences that wrap you about only to soothe and delight. The reception that has been harsh and unfriendly bears no manner of proportion to that which has been genial and generous. So where you have given me an inch I take an ell, and commission this bright morning—shine to bear to you my thanks. For every kind word, whether it have come to me through the highways or the by-ways, from far or near, from known or unknown, I pray you receive my grateful acknowledgment. And do not fail to remember, that he, who, even though self-impelled, goes out from the shelter of his selfhood into the presence of the great congregation, incurs a Loss which no praise can make good, encounters a Fate against which no appreciation is a shield, invokes a Shadow in which the mens conscia recti is the only resource, and the knowledge of shadows dispelled the only consolation.

* * * * *

THE MINISTER PLENIPOTENTIARY.

Mr. Henry Ward Beecher went to Great Britain already well known at home as the favorite preacher of a large parish, an ardent advocate of certain leading reforms, one of the most popular lecturers of the country, a bold, outspoken, fertile, ready, crowd-compelling orator, whose reported sermons and speeches were fuller of catholic humanity than of theological subtilties, and whose sympathies were of that lively sort which are apt to leap the sectarian fold and find good Christians in every denomination. He was welcomed by friendly persons on the other side of the Atlantic, partly for these merits, partly also as "the son of the celebrated Dr. Beecher" and "the brother of Mrs. Beecher Stowe."

After a few months' absence he returns to America, having finished a more remarkable embassy than any envoy who has represented us in Europe since Franklin pleaded the cause of the young Republic at the Court of Versailles. He kissed no royal hand, he talked with no courtly diplomatists, he was the guest of no titled legislator, he had no official existence. But through the heart of the people he reached nobles, ministers, courtiers, the throne itself. He whom the "Times" attacks, he whom "Punch" caricatures, is a power in the land. We may be very sure, that, if an American is the aim of their pensioned garroters and hired vitriol-throwers, he is an object of fear as well as of hatred, and that the assault proves his ability as well as his love of freedom and zeal for the nation to which he belongs.

Mr. Beecher's European story is a short one in time, but a long one in events. He went out a lamb, a tired clergyman in need of travel; and as such he did not strive nor cry, nor did any man hear his voice in the streets. But in the den of lions where his pathway led him he remembered hid own lion's nature, and uttered his voice to such effect that its echoes in the great vaulted caverns of London and Liverpool are still reaching us, as the sound of the woodman's axe is heard long after the stroke is seen, as the light of the star shines upon us many days after its departure from the source of radiance.

Mr. Beecher made a single speech in Great Britain, but it was delivered piecemeal in different places. Its exordium was uttered on the ninth of October at Manchester, and its peroration was pronounced on the twentieth of the same month in Exeter Hall. He has himself furnished us an analysis of the train of representations and arguments of which this protracted and many-jointed oration was made up. At Manchester he attempted to give a history of that series of political movements, extending through half a century, the logical and inevitable end of which was open conflict between the two opposing forces of Freedom and Slavery. At Glasgow his discourse seems to have been almost unpremeditated. A meeting of one or two Temperance advocates, who had come to greet him as a brother in their cause, took on, "quite accidentally," a political character, and Mr. Beecher gratified the assembly with an address which really looks as if it had been in great measure called forth by the pressure of the moment. It seems more like a conversation than a set harangue. First, he very good-humoredly defines his position on the Temperance question, and then naturally slides into some self-revelations, which we who know him accept as the simple expression of the man's character. This plain speaking made him at home among strangers more immediately, perhaps, than anything else he could have told them. "I am born without moral fear. I have expressed my views in any audience, and it never cost me a struggle. I never could help doing it."

The way a man handles his egoisms is a test of his mastery over an audience or a class of readers. What we want to know about the person who is to counsel or lead us is just what he is, and nobody can tell us so well as himself. Every real master of speaking or writing uses his personality as he would any other serviceable material; the very moment a speaker or writer begins to use it, not for his main purpose, but for vanity's sake, as all weak people are sure to do, hearers and readers feel the difference in a moment. Mr. Beecher is a strong, healthy man, in mind and body. His nerves have never been corrugated with alcohol; his thinking-marrow is not brown with tobacco-fumes, like a meerschaum, as are the brains of so many unfortunate Americans; he is the same lusty, warm-blooded, strong-fibred, brave-hearted, bright-souled, clear-eyed creature that he was when the college boys at Amherst acknowledged him as the chiefest among their football-kickers. He has the simple frankness of a man who feels himself to be perfectly sound in bodily, mental, and moral structure; and his self-revelation is a thousand times nobler than the assumed impersonality which is a common trick with cunning speakers who never forget their own interests. Thus it is, that, wherever Mr. Beecher goes, everybody feels, after he has addressed them once or twice, that they know him well, almost as if they had always known him; and there is not a man in the land who has such a multitude that look upon him as if he were their brother.

Having magnetized his Glasgow audience, he continued the subject already opened at Manchester by showing, in the midst of that great toiling population, the deadly influence exerted by Slavery in bringing labor into contempt, and its ruinous consequences to the free working-man everywhere. In Edinburgh he explained how the Nation grew up out of separate States, each jealous of its special sovereignty; how the struggle for the control of the united Nation, after leaving it for a long time in the hands of the South, to be used in favor of Slavery, at length gave it into those of the North, whose influence was to be for Freedom; and that for this reason the South, when it could no longer rule the Nation, rebelled against it. In Liverpool, the centre of vast commercial and manufacturing interests, he showed how those interests are injured by Slavery,—"that this attempt to cover the fairest portion of the earth with a slave-population that buys nothing, and a degraded white population that buys next to nothing, should array against it the sympathy of every true political economist and every thoughtful and far-seeing manufacturer, as tending to strike at the vital want of commerce,—not the want of cotton, but the want of customers."

In his great closing effort at Exeter Hall in London, Mr. Beecher began by disclaiming the honor of having been a pioneer in the anti-slavery movement, which he found in progress at his entry upon public life, when he "fell into the ranks, and fought as well as he knew how, in the ranks or in command." He unfolded before his audience the plan and connection of his previous addresses, showing how they were related to each other as parts of a consecutive series. He had endeavored, he told them, to enlist the judgment, the conscience, the interests of the British people against the attempt to spread Slavery over the continent, and the rebellion it has kindled. He had shown that Slavery was the only cause of the war, that sympathy with the South was only aiding the building up of a slave-empire, that the North was contending for its own existence and that of popular institutions.

Mr. Beecher then asked his audience to look at the question with him from the American point of view. He showed how the conflict began as a moral question; the sensitiveness of the South; the tenderness for them on the part of many Northern apologizers, with whom he himself had never stood. He pointed out how the question gradually emerged in politics; the encroachments of the South, until they reached the Judiciary itself; he repeated to them the admissions of Mr. Stephens as to the preponderating influence the South had all along held in the Government. An interruption obliged him to explain that adjustment of our State and National governments which Englishmen seem to find so hard to understand. Nothing shows his peculiar powers to more advantage than just such interruptions. Then he displays his felicitous facility of illustration, his familiar way of bringing a great question to the test of some parallel fact that everybody before him knows. An American state-question looks as mysterious to an English audience as an ear of Indian corn wrapt in its sheath to an English wheat-grower. Mr. Beecher husks it for them as only an American born and bred can do. He wants a few sharp questions to rouse his quick spirit. He could almost afford to carry with him his picadores to sting him with sarcasms, his chulos to flap their inflammatory epithets in his face, and his banderilleros to stab him with their fiery insults into a plaza de toros,—an audience of John Bulls.

Having cleared up this matter so that our comatose cousins understood the relations of the dough and the apple in our national dumpling,—to borrow one of their royal reminiscences,—having eulogized the fidelity of the North to the national compact, he referred to the action of "that most true, honest, just, and conscientious magistrate, Mr. Lincoln,"—at the mention of whose name the audience cheered as long and loud as if they had descended from the ancient Ephesians.

Mr. Beecher went on to show how the North could not help fighting when it was attacked, and to give the reasons that made it necessary to fight,—reasons which none but a consistent Friend or avowed non-resistant can pretend to dispute: His ordinary style in speaking is pointed, staccatoed, as is that of most successful extemporaneous speakers; he is "short-gaited"; the movement of his thoughts is that of the chopping sea, rather than the long, rolling, rhythmical wave-procession of phrase-balancing rhetoricians. But when the lance has pricked him deep enough, when the red flag has flashed in his face often enough, when the fireworks have hissed and sputtered around him long enough, when the cheers have warmed him so that all his life is roused, then his intellectual sparkle becomes a steady glow, and his nimble sentences change their form, and become long-drawn, stately periods.

"Standing by my cradle, standing by my hearth, standing by the altar of the church, standing by all the places that mark the name and memory of heroic men who poured their blood and lives for principle, I declare that in ten or twenty years of war we will sacrifice everything we have for principle. If the love of popular liberty is dead in Great Britain, you will not understand us; but if the love of liberty lives as it once lived, and has worthy successors of those renowned men that were our ancestors as much as yours, and whose example and principles we inherit to make fruitful as so much seed-corn in a new and fertile land, then you will understand our firm, invincible determination—deep as the sea, firm as the mountains, but calm as the heavens above us—to fight this war through at all hazards and at every cost."

When have Englishmen listened to nobler words, fuller of the true soul of eloquence? Never, surely, since their nation entered the abdominous period of its existence, recognized in all its ideal portraits, for which food and sleep are the prime conditions of well-being. Yet the old instinct which has made the name of Englishman glorious in the past was there, in the audience before him, and there was "immense cheering," relieved by some slight colubrine demonstrations.

Mr. Beecher openly accused certain "important organs" of deliberately darkening the truth and falsifying the facts. The audience thereupon gave three groans for a paper called the "Times," once respectably edited, now deservedly held as cheap as an epigram of Mr. Carlyle's or a promise to pay dated at Richmond. He showed the monstrous absurdity of England's attacking us for fighting, and for fighting to uphold a principle. "On what shore has not the prow of your ships dashed? What land is there with a name and a people where your banner has not led your soldiers? And when the great resurrection-reveille shall sound, it will muster British soldiers from every clime and people under the whole heaven. Ah! but it is said this is war against your own blood. How long is it since you poured soldiers into Canada, and let all your yards work day and night to avenge the taking of two men out of the Trent?" How ignominious the pretended humanity of England looked in the light of these questions! And even while Mr. Beecher was speaking, a lurid glow was crimsoning the waters of the Pacific from the flames of a great burning city, set on fire by British ships to avenge a crime committed by some remote inhabitant of the same country,—an act of wholesale barbarity unapproached by any deed which can be laid to the charge of the American Union in the course of this long, exasperating conflict!

Mr. Beecher explained that the people who sympathized with the South were those whose voices reached America, while the friends of the North were little heard. The first had bows and arrows; the second have shafts, but no bows to launch them.

"How about the Russians?"

Everybody remembers how neatly Mr. Beecher caught this envenomed dart, and, turning it end for end, drove it through his antagonist's shield of triple bull's-hide. "Now you know what we felt when you were flirting with Mr. Mason at your Lord Mayor's banquet." A cleaner and straighter "counter" than that, if we may change the image to one his audience would appreciate better, is hardly to be found in the records of British pugilism.

The orator concluded by a rather sanguine statement of his change of opinion as to British sentiment, of the assurance he should carry back of the enthusiasm for the cause of the North, and by an exhortation to unity of action with those who share their civilization and religion, for the furtherance of the gospel and the happiness of mankind.

The audience cheered again, Professor Newman moved a warm vote of thanks, and the meeting dissolved, wiser and better, we hope, for the truths which had been so boldly declared before them.

What is the net result, so far as we can see, of Mr. Beecher's voluntary embassy? So far as he is concerned, it has been to lift him from the position of one of the most popular preachers and lecturers, to that of one of the most popular men in the country. Those who hate his philanthropy admire his courage. Those who disagree with him in theology recognize him as having a claim to the title of Apostle quite as good as that of John Eliot, whom Christian England sent to heathen America two centuries ago, and who, in spite of the singularly stupid questionings of the natives, and the violent opposition of the sachems and powwows, or priests, succeeded in reclaiming large numbers of the copper-colored aborigines.

The change of opinion wrought by Mr. Beecher in England is far less easy to estimate; indeed, we shall never have the means of determining what it may have been. The organs of opinion which have been against us will continue their assaults, and those which have been our friends will continue to defend us. The public men who have committed themselves will be consistent in the right or in the wrong, as they may have chosen at first. To know what Mr. Beecher has effected, we must not go to Exeter Hall and follow its enthusiastic audience as they are swayed hither and thither by his arguments and appeals; we must not count the crowd of admiring friends and sympathizers whom he, like all personages of note, draws around him: the fire-fly calls other fire-flies about him, but the great community of beetles goes blundering round in the dark as before. Mr. Cobden has given us the test in a letter quoted by Mr. Beecher in the course of his speech at the Brooklyn Academy. "You will carry back," he says, "an intimate acquaintance with a state of feeling in this country among what, for [want of] a better name, I call the ruling class. Their sympathy is undoubtedly strongly for the South, with the instinctive satisfaction at the prospect of the disruption of the great Republic. It is natural enough." "But," he says, "our masses have an instinctive feeling that their cause is bound up in the prosperity of the States,—the United States. It is true that they have not a particle of power in the direct form of a vote; but when millions in this country are led by the religious middle class, they can go and prevent the governing class from pursuing a policy hostile to their sympathies."

This power of the non-voting classes is an idea that gives us pause. It is one of those suggestions, like Lord Brougham's of the "unknown public," which, in a single phrase, and a sentence or two of explanation, tell a whole history. This is the class John Bunyan wrote for before the bishops had his Allegory in presentable calf and gold-leaf,—before England knew that her poor tinker had shaped a pictured urn for her full of such visions as no dreamer had seen since Dante. This is the class that believes in John Bright and Richard Cobden and all the defenders of true American principles. It absorbs intelligence as melting ice renders heat latent; there is no living power directly generated with which we can move pistons and wheels, but the first step in the production of steam-force is to make the ice fluid. No intellectual thermometer can reveal to us how much ignorance or prejudice has melted away in the fire of Mr. Beecher's passionate eloquence, but by-and-by this will tell as a working-force. The non-voter's conscience will reach the Privy Council, and the hand of the ignorant, but Christianized laborer trace its own purpose in the letters of the royal signature.

We are living in a period, not of events only, but of epochs. We are in the transition-stage from the miocene to the pliocene period of human existence. A new heaven is forming over our head behind the curtain of clouds which rises from our smoking battle-fields. A new earth is shaping itself under our feet amidst the tremors and convulsions that agitate the soil upon which we tread. But there is no such thing as a surprise in the order of Nature. The kingdom of God, even, cometh not with observation.

The visit of an overworked clergyman to Europe is not in appearance an event of momentous interest to the world. The fact that he delivered a few speeches before British audiences might seem to merit notice in a local paper or two, but is of very little consequence, one would say, to the British nation, compared to the fact that Her Majesty took an airing last Wednesday, or of much significance to Americans, by the side of the fact that his Excellency, Governor Seymour, had written a letter recommending the Union Fire Company always to play on the wood-shed when the house is in flames.

But, in point of fact, this unofficial visit of a private citizen—in connection with these addresses delivered to miscellaneous crowds by an envoy not extraordinary and a minister nullipotentiary, for all that his credentials showed—was an event of national importance. It was much more than this; it was the beginning of a new order of things in the relations of nations to each other. It is but a little while since any graceless woman who helped a crowned profligate to break the commandments could light a national quarrel with the taper that sealed her billets-doux to his equerries and grooms, and kindle it to a war with the fan that was supposed to hide her blushes. More and more, by virtue of advancing civilization and easy intercourse between distant lands, the average common sense and intelligence of the people begin to reach from nation to nation. Mr. Beecher's visit is the most notable expression of this movement of national life. It marks the nisus formativus which begins the organization of that unwritten and only half spoken public opinion recognized by Mr. Cobden as a great underlying force even in England. It needs a little republican pollen-dust to cause the evolution of its else barren germs. The fruit of Mr. Beecher's visit will ripen in due time, not only in direct results, but in opening the way to future moral embassies, going forth unheralded, unsanctioned by State documents, in the simple strength of Christian manhood, on their errands of truth and peace.

The Devil had got the start of the clergyman, as he very often does, after all. The wretches who have been for three years pouring their leperous distilment into the ears of Great Britain had preoccupied the ground, and were determined to silence the minister, if they could. For this purpose they looked to the heathen populace of the nominally Christian British cities. They covered the walls with blood-red placards, they stimulated the mob by inflammatory appeals, they filled the air with threats of riot and murder. It was in the midst of scenes like these that the single, solitary American opened his lips to speak in behalf of his country.

The danger is now over, and we find it hard to make real to our imagination the terrors of a mob such as swarms out of the dens of Liverpool and London. We know well enough in this country what Irish mobs are: the Old Country exports them to us in pieces, ready to put together on arriving, as we send houses to California. Ireland is the country of shillalahs and broken crowns, of Donnybrook fairs, where men with whiskey in their heads settle their feuds or work off their sprightliness with the arms of Nature, sometimes aided by the least dangerous of weapons. But England is the land of prize-fights, of scientific brutality, which has flourished under the patronage of her hereditary legislators and other "Corinthian" supporters. The pugilistic dynasty came in with the House of Brunswick, and has held divided empire with it ever since. The Briton who claims Chatham's language as his mother-tongue may appropriate the dialect of the ring as far more truly indigenous than the German-French of his every-day discourse. Of the three Burkes whose names are historical, the orator is known to but a few hundred thousands. The prize-fighter, with his interesting personal infirmity, is the common property of the millions, and would have headed the list in celebrity, but for that other of the name who added a new invention to the arts of industry and enriched the English language with a term which bids fair to outlive the reputation of his illustrious namesake. Around the professors and heroes of the art of personal violence are collected the practitioners of various callings less dignified by the manly qualities they demand. The Gangs of Three that waylay the solitary pedestrian,—the Choker in the middle, next the victim who is to be strangled and cleaned out,—the larger guilds of Hustlers who bonnet a man and beat his breath out of him and empty his pockets before he knows what is the matter with him,—the Burglars, with their "jimmies" in their pockets,—the fighting robbers, with their brass knuckles,—the whole set in a vast thief-constituency, thick as rats in sewers,—these were the disputants whom the emissaries of the Slave Power called upon to refute the arguments of the Brooklyn clergyman.

It was not pleasant to move in streets where such human rattlesnakes and cobras were coiling and lying in wait. Great cities are the poison-glands of civilization everywhere; but the secretions of those hideous crypts and blind passages that empty themselves into the thoroughfares of English towns are so deadly, that, but for her penal colonies, England, girt by water, as the scorpion with flame, would perish, self-stung, by her own venom. The legates of the great Anti-Civilization have colonized England, as England has colonized Botany Bay. They know the venal ruffianism of the fist and bludgeon, as well as that of the press. Fortunately, they are short of funds, or Mr. Beecher might have disappeared after the manner of Romulus, and never have come to light, except in the saintly fashion of relics,—such as white finger-rings and breastpins, like those which some devotees of the Southern mode of worship are said to have been fond of wearing.

From these dangers, which he faced like a man, we welcome him back to a country which is proud of his courage and ability and grateful for his services. The highest and lowest classes of England cannot be in sympathy with the free North. No dynasty can look the fact of successful, triumphant self-government in the face without seeing a shroud in its banner and hearing a knell in its shouts of victory. As to those lower classes who are too low to be reached by the life-giving breath of popular liberty, we cannot reach them yet. A Christian civilization has suffered them, in the very heart of its great cities, to sink almost to the level of Du Chaillu's West-African quadrumana. But the thoughtful, religious middle class of Great Britain, with their enlightened leaders and their conscientious followers among the laboring masses, have listened and will always listen to the voice of any true and adequate representative of that new form of human society now in full course of development in Republican North America. They have never listened to a nobler and more thoroughly national speaker than the minister, clothed with full powers from Nature and bearing the authentic credentials from his Divine Master, to whom, on his return from his successful embassy, we renew our grateful welcome.

* * * * *

THE BEGINNING OF THE END.

A GREETING FOR THE NEW YEAR.

We are at the close of the third year of the Secession War. It is customary to speak of the contest as having been inaugurated by the attack on Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861; but, in strictness, it was begun in December, 1860, when the Carolinians formally seceded from the Union, which was as much an act of war as that involved in firing upon the national flag that waved over the strongest of the Federal forts at Charleston. Even those who insist that there can be no war without the use of weapons must admit that the act of firing upon the Star of the West, which vessel was seeking to land men and stores at Sumter, was an overt act, and as significant of the purpose of the Secessionists as anything since done by them. That occurred in January, 1861; and because our Government did not choose to accept it as the beginning of those hostilities which had been resolved upon by the Southern ultras, it does not follow that men are bound to shut their eyes to the truth. But we all took the insults that were offered to the flag in President Buchanan's time as coolly as if that were the proper course of things, while the attack on Sumter had the same effect on us that the acknowledgment of the Pretender as King of Great Britain and Ireland by Louis XIV. had on the English. War was then promptly accepted, and has ever since been waged, with that various fortune which is known to all contests, and which will be so known while wars shall be known on earth,—in other words, while our planet shall be the abiding-place of men. We have had victories, and we have had defeats, which is the common lot; but, taken as a whole, we have but little reason to complain of results, if we compare our situation now with what it was at the close of 1862. Great things have been done in 1863, such as place the military result of the war beyond all doubt, and permitting us to hope for the early restoration of peace, provided the people shall furnish their Government with the human material necessary to inflict upon the enemy that grace stroke which shall put them out of their pain by putting an end to their existence; and that Government itself shall not be wanting in that energy, without which men and money are worse than useless in war,—for then they would be but wasted.

The year opened darkly for us; for not even the success of General Rosecrans on the well-contested field of Murfreesboro'—a success literally extorted from a brave and stubborn and skilful foe—could altogether compensate for the Union defeat at Fredericksburg, a defeat that gave additional force to the gloomy words of those grognards who had adopted the doctrine that it was impossible for the Army of the Potomac to accomplish anything worthy of its numbers, and of the position and purpose assigned to it in the war. Months rolled on, and little was done, the mere military losses and gains being not far from equally shared by the two parties; but that was positively a loss to the enemy, whose position it has been from the first, that they must have so large a proportion of the successes as should tend to encourage their people at home and their advocates abroad, and so compensate for their inferiority in numbers and in property. Nothing has tended more, all through the war, to show the vast difference in the parties to it, than the little effect which serious reverses have had on the Unionists in comparison with the effect of similar reverses on the Confederates. No blow that we have received—and many blows have been dealt upon us—has been followed by any loss of territory, any decrease of the means of warfare, or any diminution of our purpose to carry on the contest to the last piece of gold and the last greasy greenback. The enemy have taken of our men, our cannon, our stores, and our money, more than once, but not one of their victories produced any "fruit" beyond what was gleaned from the battle-field itself. Our victories, on the contrary, have been fruitful, as the position of our forces on the enemy's coast, and on much of their territory, and in many of their ports, most satisfactorily proves. As an English military critic said, the Rebels might gain battles, but all the solid advantages were with their opponents. A Union victory was so much achieved toward final and complete success; a Confederate victory only operated to postpone the subjugation of the Rebels for a few days, or perhaps weeks. We could afford to blunder, while they could not; and the prospect of the gallows made the brains of Davis and Lee uncommonly clear, and caused them to plan skilfully and to strike boldly, in order that they might get out and keep out of the road that leads to it,—the road to ruin.

The movement in April, under General Hooker, which led to the Battle of Chancellorsville, was a failure, and for some time the country was much depressed in consequence; but our failure, there and then, proved to be really a great gain. Had General Hooker succeeded in defeating General Lee in battle, the latter would, it is altogether probable, have succeeded in retreating to Richmond, behind the defences of which he would have held our forces at bay, and the Peninsular campaign of 1862 might have been repeated; for we had not men enough to render the capture of Richmond certain through the effect of regular and steady operations. The death of Stonewall Jackson, one of the incidents of the April advance, was a severe loss to the enemy, and promises to be as fatal to their cause as was that of Dundee to the hopes of the House of Stuart. General Lee's success was really fatal to him. It compelled him to make a movement in his turn, in June, and at Gettysburg we had ample compensation for Chancellorsville; and the capture of Morgan and his men, in Ohio, following hard upon Lee's retreat from Pennsylvania, put an end to all attempts at invasion on the part of the Rebels, while we continued to hold all that we had acquired of their territory, and soon added more of it to our previous acquisitions. At the same time that General Meade was disposing of the main Rebel army, General Grant was taking Vicksburg, and General Banks was triumphing at Port Hudson. Generals Pemberton and Gardner had defended those Southern strongholds with a skill and a gallantry that do them great credit, considering them merely as military operations; but the superior generalship of General Grant at and near Vicksburg compelled them to surrender, and to place in Union hands posts the possession of which was necessary to maintain the integrity of the Confederacy. General Grant's least merit was the taking of Vicksburg. The operations through the success of which he was enabled to shut up a large force of brave men in Vicksburg, and to cut them off from all hope of being relieved, were of the highest order of military excellence, and justly entitle him to be called a great soldier, and no man can be only a great soldier, for that intellectual rank implies in its possessor qualities that fit him for any department of his country's service. General Grant was admirably seconded and supported by his lieutenants and their subordinates and men, or he must have failed before such courageous and stubborn foes. He was also supported by the naval force commanded by Admiral Porter, whose heroic exploits and scientific services added new lustre to a name that already stood most high in our naval history. He commanded men worthy of himself and the service, and whose deeds must be ever remembered. General Banks and his associates were not less successful in their undertaking, and had been as well seconded as General Grant. The Mississippi was placed at our control, and the enemy were deprived of those supplies, both domestic and foreign, which they had drawn in so large quantities from the trans-Mississippi territory. Through Texas, which had contrived to keep up a great commerce, the supplies of foreign materiel had been very large; and from the same rich and extensive State came thousands of beeves, sheep, and hogs, that were consumed by Southern soldiers in Virginia and the Carolinas. Generals Grant and Banks put an end to this mode of supplying the Rebels with food and other articles; and at a later period the success of General Banks near the Rio Grande was hardly less useful in putting an end to much of the Texan foreign trade, whereby the Rebels beyond the Mississippi must find their powers to do mischief very materially lessened.

In the mean time, Charleston, whence rebellion had spread over the South, had been assailed by a large force, military and naval, commanded by General Gillmore and Rear-Admiral Dahlgren. General Gillmore had become famous as the captor of Fort Pulaski, under circumstances that had seemed to render success impossible; and hence it was expected that he would quickly take Charleston. It is not believed that that very able and modest officer ever said a word to give rise to the popular expectation. He knew the gravity of the task he had undertaken, and we believe, that, if all the facts connected therewith could be published, it would be found that he has accomplished all that he ever promised to do or expected to do. He has done much, and done it admirably; and not the least of the effects of his deeds is this,—that the report of his guns reached to Europe, and caused the intelligent military men of that dominating quarter of the world to doubt whether their respective countries were militarily prepared to support intervention, even if to intervention there existed no moral or political objections. He has demolished Sumter, and that fortress which was the scene of our first failure has ceased to exist. He has completed the blockade of Charleston, which was almost daily violated before he brought his batteries into play. We have the high authority of no less a personage than Mr. Jefferson Davis himself,—a gentleman who never "speaks out" when anything is to be made by reticence,—that Wilmington is now the only port left to the Confederacy; and this is the highest possible compliment that could be paid to the excellence of General Gillmore's operations, and to the value of his services. Since he arrived near Charleston, that port has been as hermetically sealed as Cronstadt in December; whereas, until he began his scientific and most useful labors, Charleston was one of the most flourishing seaports in the whole circle of commerce. As to the taking of Charleston, our opinion is, and has been from the first, that the history of the War of the American Revolution demonstrates that the Carolina city can be had only as the result of extensive land-operations, carried on by a power which has command of the sea. Sir Henry Clinton failed before the place in 1776, his attack being naval in its character; and he succeeded in taking it in 1780, when he had control of the main-land, and made his approaches regularly. Even after he had obtained command of the harbor, and Fort Moultrie had been first passed and then taken, and no American maritime force remained to oppose his fleet, he had to depend upon the action of his army for success. We fear that the event will prove that we can succeed at Charleston only by following Sir Henry's wise course. "The things which have been are the things which shall be."

Late in the summer, General Rosecrans resumed operations, and marched upon Chattanooga, while General Burnside moved into East Tennessee, and obtained possession of Knoxville. General Burnside's march was one of the most difficult ever made in war, and tasked the powers of his men to the utmost; but all difficulties were surmounted, and the loyal people of the country which he entered and regained were gladdened by seeing the national flag flying once more over their heads. Both these movements were at first brilliantly successful; but the enemy were impressed with the importance of the points taken or threatened by our forces, and they concentrated great masses of troops, in the hope of being able to defeat our armies, regain the territory lost, and transfer the seat of war far to the north. The Battle of Chickamauga was fought, and a portion of General Rosecrans's army was defeated, while another portion, under General Thomas, stubbornly maintained its ground, and inflicted great damage on the enemy. The effect of General Thomas's heroic resistance was, that the enemy's grand purpose was baffled. Their loss was so severe, and their men had been so roughly handled, that they could not advance farther, and the time thus gained was promptly turned to account, by General Rosecrans in the first instance, and by Government. The Union army was soon reorganized by its energetic leader, and placed in condition to make effectual resistance to the enemy, should they endeavor to advance. The Government's action was rapid and useful. General Grant was placed in immediate command of the army, which was largely reinforced, and preparations were quickly made for the resumption of offensive operations. In the mean time, General Bragg had sent General Longstreet to attack General Burnside; and as Longstreet has been looked upon, since the death of Jackson, as the best of the Rebel fighting generals, great hopes were entertained of his success. Apparently taking advantage of the absence of so large a body of Rebel troops under so good a leader, General Grant resumed the offensive on the twenty-third of November, and during three days' hard fighting inflicted upon General Bragg a series of defeats, in which Generals Thomas, Hooker, and Sherman were the active Union commanders. The Unionists were completely victorious at all points, taking several strong positions, forty-six pieces of cannon, five thousand muskets, valuable stores, and seven thousand prisoners, besides killing and wounding great numbers. All these successes were gained at a cost of only forty-five hundred men. The skill of General Grant and his lieutenants, and the valor of their troops, were signally displayed in these operations, the first assured intelligence of which reached the North in time to add to the pleasures of the National Thanksgiving, as the first news of Gettysburg had come to us on the Fourth of July.

The November victories put an end to all fear that the enemy might be able to carry out their original project, while it seemed to be certain that the scene of active operations would be transferred from East Tennessee to Northern Georgia. General Burnside still held Knoxville, and it was supposed that General Longstreet would find it difficult to escape destruction. General Bragg had retreated to Dalton, which is about a hundred miles from Atlanta, and is reported to have summoned General Longstreet to rejoin him. The Army of the Potomac, which had borne itself very gallantly in some of the autumnal operations consequent on Lee's advance, had followed the army commanded by this General when it retreated, inflicting on it considerable loss, and crossing the Rapid Ann.[C]

Victories have been gained by the Unionists in other quarters,—in Missouri, in Arkansas, in Louisiana, and in Mississippi,—whereby the enemy's numbers have been diminished, and territory brought under the Union flag that until recently was held by the Rebels, and from which they drew means of subsistence now no longer available to them.

The effects of all the successes which have been mentioned are various. We have deprived the enemy of extensive portions of territory, in most of their States. Tennessee is rescued; Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri are placed beyond all danger of being taken by the Rebels; in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas we hold places of much political and military importance; Mississippi is practically ours; Alabama yields little to our foe; Georgia is invaded, instead of remaining the basis of a grand attack on Tennessee and Kentucky; the Carolinas, greatly favored by geographical circumstances, are barely able to hold out against attacks that are not made in force, and portions of their territory are ours; Virginia is exhausted, and there the enemy cannot long remain, even should they meet with no reverses in the field; and, finally, as General Grant's successes at Vicksburg halved the Confederacy, so have his Chattanooga successes quartered it. The Rebels are no longer one people, but are divided into a number of communities, which cannot act together, even if we could suppose their populations to be animated by one spirit, which certainly they are not. Of the inhabitants of the original Confederacy probably two-fifths are no longer under the control of the Richmond Government; and of the remainder a very large proportion are said to be massed in Georgia, a State that has hitherto suffered little from the war, but which now seems about to become the scene of vast and important operations, which cannot be carried on without causing sweeping devastation. The public journals state that there are two million slaves in Georgia, most of whom have been taken or sent thither by their owners, inhabitants of other States. This must tend greatly to increase the difficulties of the enemy, whose stores of food and clothing are not large in any of the Atlantic or Gulf States.

Much stress has been placed on "the starvation-theory," and it is probable that there is much suffering in the Confederacy; but this does not proceed so much from the positive absence of food as from other causes. The first of these causes is undoubtedly the loss of all faith in the Southern currency. That currency has not yet fallen so low as the Continental currency fell, when it required a bushel of it to pay for a peck of potatoes, but it is at a terrible discount, and the day is fast coming when it will be regarded as of no more value than so many pieces of brown paper; and its depreciation, and the prospect of its soon becoming utterly worthless, are among the chief consequences of the triumphs of our arms. Men see that there will be no power to make payment, and they will not part with their property for rags so rotten. They may wish success to the Confederate cause, but "they must live," and live they cannot on paper that is nothing but paper. The journal that is understood to speak for Mr. Davis recommends a forced loan, the last resort of men the last days of whose power are near at hand. Another cause of the scarcity of food in the South is to be found in the condition of Southern communications. If all the food in the Confederacy could be equally distributed, now and hereafter, we doubt not that every person living there would get enough to eat, and even have something to spare,—civilians as well as soldiers, blacks as well as whites; but no such distribution is possible, because there are but indifferent means for the conveyance of food from places where it is abundant to places where famine's ascendency is becoming established. The Southern railways have been terribly worked for three years, and are now worn out, with no hope of their rails and rolling-stock being renewed. Our troops have rendered hundreds of miles of those ways useless, and they have possession of other lines. Southern harbors and rivers are held or commanded by Northern ships or armies. The Mississippi, which was once so useful to the Rebels, has, now that we control it, become a "big ditch," separating their armies from their principal source of supply. It is that "last ditch" in which they are to die. That wide extent of Southern territory, which has so often been mentioned at home and abroad as presenting the leading reason why we never could conquer the Rebels, now works against them, and in our favor. Food may be abundant to wastefulness in some States, while in others people may be dying for the want of it. The Secessionists are now situated as most peoples used to be, before good roads became common. The South is becoming reduced to that state which was known to some parts of England before that country had made for itself the best roads of Christendom, and when there would be starvation in one parish, while perhaps in the next the fruits of the earth were rotting on its surface, because there were no means of getting them to market. With a currency so debased that no man will willingly take it, while all men readily take Union greenbacks,—with railways either worn out or held by foes,—with but one harbor this side of the Mississippi that is not closely shut up, and that harbor in course of becoming closed completely,—with their rivers furnishing means for attack, instead of lines of defence,—with their territory and numbers daily decreasing,—with defeat overtaking their armies on almost every field,—with the expressed determination of the North to prosecute the war, be the consequences what they may,—with the constant increase of Union numbers,—and with the steady refusal of foreign powers to recognize the Confederacy, or to afford it any countenance or open assistance,—the Rebels must be infatuated, and determined to provoke destruction, if they do not soon make overtures for peace.

It is all very well for the "chivalrous classes" at the South, whoever they may happen to be, to talk about "dying in the last ditch," and of imitating the action of Pelayo and his friends; but common folk like to die in their beds, and to receive the inevitable visitant with decorum, to an exhibition of which ditches are decidedly unfavorable. As to Pelayo, he lived in an age in which there were neither railways nor rifled cannon, neither steamships nor Parrott guns, neither Monitors nor greenbacks,—else he and his would either have been routed out of the Asturian Mountains, or have been compelled to remain there forever. The conditions of modern life and society are highly unfavorable to those heroic modes of resistance and existence in which alone gentlemen of Pelayo's pursuits can hope to flourish. We Saracens of the North would ask nothing better than to have Pelayo Davis lead all his valiant ragamuffins into the strongest range of mountains that could be found in all Secessia, there to establish the new Kingdom of Gijon. We should deserve the worst that could befall us, if we failed to vindicate the common American idea, that this country is no place for lovers of crowns and kingdoms.

As to the guerrillas, we know that they are an exasperating set of fellows, but they must soon disappear before the advance of the Union armies. A guerrillade on an extensive scale and of long continuance is possible only while it is supported by the presence of large and successful regular armies. Had Wellington been driven out of the Peninsula, the Spanish guerrillas would have given little trouble to the intrusive French king at Madrid. Defeat Lee, and Mosby will vanish. After all, the Southern guerrillas are not much worse than other Southrons were at no very remote period. It is within the memory of even middle-aged persons, that the southwestern portion of our country was in as lawless a state as ever were the borders of England and Scotland, and with no Belted Will to hang up ruffians to swing in the wind. As those ruffians were mostly removed by time, and the scenes of their labors became the seats of prosperous and well-ordered communities, so will the guerrillas of to-day be made to give way by that inexorable reformer and avenger. Order will once more prevail in the Southwest, and cotton, tobacco, and rice again yield their increase to regular industry,—an industry that shall be all the more productive, because exercised by free men.

The political incidents of 1863 are as encouraging as the incidents of war. The discontent that existed toward the close of 1862—a discontent by no means groundless—led to the apparent defeat of the war-party in many States, and to the decrease of its strength in others. But it was an illogical conclusion that the people were dissatisfied with the war, when they only meant to express their dissatisfaction with the manner in which it was conducted. Their votes in 1863 truly expressed their feeling. In every State but New Jersey the war-party was successful, its majority in Ohio being 100,000, in New York 30,000, in Pennsylvania 15,000, in Massachusetts, 40,000, in Iowa 32,000, in Maine 22,000, in California 20,000. And so on throughout the country. The popular voice is still for war, but for war boldly, and therefore wisely, waged.

The improvement that has taken place in our foreign relations is even greater than that which has come over our domestic affairs; and for the first time since the opening of the civil war, it is possible for Americans to say that there is every reason for believing that they are to be left to settle their own affairs according to their own ideas as to the fitness of things. This change, like all important changes in human affairs, is due to a variety of causes. In part it is owing to what we considered to be among our greatest misfortunes, and in part to those successes which changed the condition of affairs. Our failure at Fredericksburg, at the close of 1862, strengthened the general European impression that the Rebels were to succeed; and as their defeat at Murfreesboro was not followed by an advance of our forces, that impression was not weakened by General Bragg's failure, though that was more signal than was the failure of General Burnside. If the Rebels were to succeed, why should European governments do anything in aid of their cause, at the hazard of war with us? Our defeat at Chancellorsville, last May, tended still further to strengthen foreign belief that the Secessionists were to be the winning party, and that they were competent to do all their own work; but if it had not soon been followed by signal reverses to the Rebel arms, it is certain that the Confederacy would have been acknowledged by most European nations, on the plausible ground that its existence had been established on the battle-field, and that we could not object to the admission of a self-evident fact by foreign sovereigns and statesmen, who were bound to look after the welfare of their own subjects and countrymen, whose interests were greatly concerned with the trade of our Southern country. Fortunately for all parties but the Rebels, those reverses came suddenly and with such emphasis as to create serious doubts in the European mind as to the superiority of the South as a fighting community. In an evil hour for his cause, General Lee abandoned that wise defensive system to which he had so long and so successfully adhered, and made a movement into the Free States. What was the immediate cause of his change of proceeding will probably never be accurately known to the existing generation. On the face of things no good political reason appears for that change being made; and on military grounds it was sure to lead to disaster, unless the North had become the most craven of countries. So bad was Lee's advance into the North, militarily speaking, that it would have been the part of good policy to allow him to march without resistance to a point at least a hundred miles beyond that field on which he was to find his fate. A Gettysburg that should have been fought that distance from the base of Southern operations could have had no other result than the destruction of the main Southern army; and that occurring at about the same time that Port Hudson and Vicksburg surrendered, the war could have been ended by a series of thunder-strokes. Not a man of Lee's army could have escaped. But the pride of the country prevented the adoption of a course that promised the most splendid of successes, and compelled our Government and our commander to forego the noblest opportunity that had presented itself to effect the enemy's annihilation. Gettysburg was made immortal, and Lee escaped, not without tremendous losses, yet with the larger part of his army, and with much booty, that perhaps compensated his own loss in materiel. He was beaten, on a field of his own choosing, and with numbers in his favor; and his previous victories, the almost uniform success that had attended his earlier movements, made his Pennsylvania reverses all the more grave in the estimation of foreigners. Immediately after news was sent abroad of his defeat and retreat, tidings came to us, and soon were spread over the world, that the Rebels had experienced the most terrible disasters in the Southwest, whereby the so-called Confederacy had been cut in two. These facts gave pause to those intentions of acknowledgment which had undoubtedly been entertained in European courts and cabinets; and nothing afterward occurred, down to the day of Chickamauga, which was calculated to effect a change in the minds of the rulers of the Old World. But when intelligence of Chickamauga reached Europe, England had taken a position so determinedly hostile to intervention in any of its many forms and stages that even a much greater disaster than that could have produced no evil to our cause abroad. For it is to be remembered that the whole business of intervention has lain from the beginning in the bosom of England, and that, if she had chosen to act against us in force, she could have done so with the strongest hope of success, if merely our humiliation, or even our destruction, had been her object, and without any immediate danger threatening herself as the consequence of her hostile action. The French Government, not France, or any considerable portion of the French people, has been ready to interfere in behalf of the Rebels for more than two years, and would have entered upon the process of intervention long since, if it had not been held back by the obstinate refusal of England to unite with her in that pro-slavery crusade which, it is with regret we say it, the French Emperor has so much at heart; and without the aid and assistance of England, the ruler of France could not and durst not move an inch against us. Not the least, nor least strange, of the changes of this mutable world is to be seen in the circumstance that France should be restrained from undoing the work of the Bourbons and of Napoleon I. by England's firm opposition to the wishes and purposes of Napoleon III. The Bourbon policy, as well in Spain as in France, brought about the early overthrow of England's rule over the territory of the old United States; and the first Napoleon sold Louisiana to us for a song, because he was convinced, that, by so doing, he should aid to build up a formidable naval rival of England. The man who seeks to undo all this, to destroy what Bourbon and Bonaparte sacrificed so much to effect, is the heir of Bonaparte, and the expounder and illustrator of Napoleon's ideas; and the power that places herself resolutely across his path, and will not join in his plot to erase us from the list of nations is—England! In a romance such a state of things would be pronounced too absurd for invention; but in this every-day world it is nothing but a commonplace incident, extraordinary as it may seem at the first thought that is bestowed upon it.

That England governs France in this matter of intervention in our quarrel is clear enough, as also are the reasons why Paris will not move to the aid of the Rebels unless London shall keep even step with her. France asked England to unite with her in an offer of mediation, which would have been an armed mediation, had England fallen into the Gallic trap, but which amounted to nothing when it proceeded from France alone. England withdrew from the Mexican business as soon as she saw that France was bent upon a course that might lead to trouble with the United States, and left her to create a throne in that country. As soon as England put the broad arrow upon the rams of that eminent pastoral character, Laird of Birkenhead, France withdrew the permission which she had formally bestowed upon MM. Arman and Vorney to build four powerful steamships for the Rebels at Nantes and Bordeaux. France would acknowledge the Confederacy to-day, and send a minister to Richmond, and consuls to Mobile and Galveston and Wilmington, if England would but agree to be to her against us what Spain was to her for us in the days of our Revolution. But England will not join with her ancient enemy to effect the ruin of a country of the existence of which she should be proud, seeing that it is her own creation.

Why, then, is it that there is so much ill-feeling in America toward England, while none is felt toward France,—England being, as it were, our shield against that French sword which is raised over our head, upon which its holder would bring it down with imperial force? Principally the difference is due to that peculiarity in the human character which leads men to think much of insults and but little of injuries. We doubt if any strong enmity was ever created in the minds of men or nations through the infliction of injuries, though injuring parties have an undoubted right to hate their victims; and we are sure that an insult was never yet forgiven by any nation, or by any individual, whose resentment was of any account. Now, England has poured insults upon us, or rather Englishmen have done so, until we have become as sore as bears who have been assailed by bees. English statesmen and politicians have told us that we were wrong in fighting for the restoration of the Union, violating our own principles, and literally committing the grossest, of crimes,—taking care to add, that our sins would provide their own punishment, for we could not put down the Rebels. Even moderate-minded men in England have not hesitated to condemn our course, while admitting that our conduct was natural, on the ground that we had no hope of success, and that useless wars are simply horrible. Our English enemies have been fierce and vindictive blackguards,—as witness Roebuck, Lyndsay, and Lord R. Cecil,—while most of our friends there have deemed it the best policy to make use of very moderate language, when speaking of our cause, or of the conduct of our public men. Englishmen of distinction, some of whom have long been held in high esteem here, have not hesitated to express a desire for our overthrow, because we were becoming too strong, though our free population is not materially different, as regards numbers, from that of the British Islands, and is as nothing when compared with the number of Queen Victoria's subjects. They were not ashamed to be so thoroughly un-English as to admit the existence of fear in their minds of a people living three thousand miles from their country: a circumstance to be noted; for your Englishman is apt to err on the side of contempt for others, and as a rule he fears nobody. Others have so wantonly misrepresented the character of our cause,—Mr. Carlyle is a notable member of this class,—that it is impossible not to be offended, when listening to their astounding falsehoods. But it is the British press that has done most to array Americans against England. That press is very ably conducted, and the most noted of its members have displayed a degree of hostility toward us that could not have been predicted without the prophet being suspected of madness, or of diabolical inspiration. All its articles attacking us are reproduced here, and are read by everybody, and the effect thereof can be imagined. Toward us British journalists are playing the same part that was played by their predecessors toward France sixty years since, and which converted what was meant to be a permanent peace into the mere truce of Amiens. Insolent and egotistical as a class, though there are highly honorable exceptions, those journalists have done more to make their country the object of dislike than has been accomplished by all other Englishmen. Their deeds show that the pen is mightier than the sword, and that its conquests are permanent. It has been said that France has been as unfriendly to us as England, and that, therefore, we ought to feel for her the same dislike as that of which England is the object. But, admitting the assertion to be true, we know little of what the French have said or written concerning us. The difference of language prevents us from taking much offence at Gallic criticism. Not one American in a hundred reads French; and of those who do read it, not one in a thousand, journalists apart, ever sees a French quarterly, monthly, weekly, or daily publication. Occasionally, an article from a French journal is translated for some one of our newspapers, but it is oftener of a friendly character than otherwise. The best French publications support the Union cause, at their head standing the "Debats," which is not the inferior of the "Times" in respect to ability, and is far its superior in all other respects. Besides, judging from such articles from the French presses devoted to Secession interests as have come under our observation, they are neither so able nor so venomous as those which appear in British Secession journals and magazines. Most of them might be translated for the purpose of showing that the French have no wish for our destruction, while the language of the British articles indicates the existence of an intense personal hostility, and an eager desire to see the United States partitioned like Poland. We should be something much above, or as much below, the standard of humanity, if we were not moved deeply by such evidences of fierce hatred, expressed in the fiercest of language.

In assuming a strictly impartial position, England follows a sense of interest, which is proper and praiseworthy. She cannot, supposing her to be wise, be desirous of our destruction; for, that accomplished, she would be more open than ever to a French attack. Let Napoleon III. accomplish those European purposes to which his mind is now directed, and he would be impelled to quarrel with England by a variety of considerations, should this Republic be broken up into half a dozen feeble and quarrelsome confederacies. But with the United States in existence, and powerful enough to command respect, he would not dare to seek the overthrow of the British Empire. We could not permit him to head a crusade for England's annihilation, no matter what might be our feeling toward the mother-land. A just regard for our own interests would impel us to side with her, should she be placed in serious danger. Such was, substantially, President Jefferson's opinion, sixty years ago, when the first Napoleon was so bent upon the conquest of England; and we think that his views are applicable to the existing circumstances of the world. Where should we have been now, if England had quarrelled with and been conquered by Napoleon III.? We must distinguish between the English nation and Englishmen,—between the English Government, which has, perhaps, borne itself as favorably toward us as it could, and that English aristocracy which has, as a rule, exhibited so strong a desire to have us extinguished, even while it has repeatedly refused to take steps preparatory to war; and the two countries should be persuaded to understand that neither can perish without the life of the other being placed in great danger. The best answer to be made to the wordy attacks of Englishmen is to be found in success. That answer would be complete; and if it cannot be made, what will it signify to us what shall be said of us by foreigners? The bitterest attacks can never disturb the dead.

One cause of the change of England's course toward us is to be found in our own change of moral position. The President's Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on the first of January, 1863; and from that time the anti-slavery people of England have been on our side; and their influence is great, and bears upon the supporters of the Palmerston Ministry with peculiar force. Had our Government persisted in the pro-slavery policy which it favored down to the autumn of 1862, it is not at all unlikely that the English intervention party would have been strong enough to compel their country to go with France in her mediation scheme,—and the step from mediation to intervention would have been but a short one; but the committal of the North to anti-slavery views, and the union of their cause with that of emancipation, threw the English Abolitionists, men who largely represent England's moral worth, on our side. The Proclamation, therefore, even if it could be proved that it had not led to the liberation of one slave, has been of immense service to us, and the President deserves the thanks of every loyal American for having issued it. He threw a shell into the foreign Secession camp, the explosion of which was fatal to that "cordial understanding" that was to have operated for our annihilation.