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with a treat of this kind that my friend intended to inaugurate the second and last day of my visit. An Uccelliera (fowling-box) I beg to explain, for the benefit of the uninitiated, is a small stone hut, the smaller the better, from the interior of which a person holding the cords attached to a double net outside, spreading in opposite directions, can at will, by a single twitch, bring the nets together, and thus envelope all the birds imprudent enough to have ventured within the circumjacent area. The amount of time, of patience, of labor, of inge-weaknesses to abhor inflicting unnecessary inconvennuity which are lavished to lure and decoy the feathered tribe into the fatal snare is something astonishing. The juiciest berries which may tempt a bird out of its road hang from the shrubs all round the narrow enclosure, the choicest seeds strew the ground; caged birds hidden among the foliage (some barbarously blinded that they may sing at all seasons) call from their prison to their free brethren, while others, tied to one end of a short pole, are, by its being suddenly raised, set fluttering most invitingly. These and an infinity of other devices lie in wait for the winged wayfarers. The sport may be objected to on more grounds than one, but certainly not on that of want of excitement. I have seen grave senators pale with emotion at the approach of a flock of wild-pigeons, cut capers at a happy catch, or be out of sorts all day at having missed a flight of linnets.

Feeling rather tired and heavy with my day's work, and having besides to get up betimes (the rendezvous at the Uccelliera was for five in the morning), I begged leave at about half past nine in the evening to retire to my room, and I was in the act of going thither when a professional summons came for the Doctor to attend a woman in labor at some distance. In the uncertainty of how long he might be detained, perhaps the whole night, it was arranged between us, that if by four in the morning he had not come to call me, as previously agreed on, I should go by myself to the place of rendezvous. He would join me as soon as possible, and at all events I should find there some of the gentlemen with whom I had spent the day in the vineyard. Was I sure, quite sure, of being able to find my way alone to the Uccelliera? As sure as I was that I could find my way to bed.

all was, that there should not be the slightest indi-
cation of incipient dawn in the east. I took out my
watch, and the mystery was explained. It was
only a quarter to three! I had taken myself in fa-
mously. In my hurry and drowsiness I had mistaken
the minute for the hour hand. What was I to do?
Should I return to the house, and run the risk of
rousing my hostess by knocking for admittance, or
should I walk and smoke during the time to elapse
before five! Now, it is one of my constitutional
ience on any of my friends, old or new, so I speed-
ily determined in favor of the peripatetic process,
and began leisurely to retrace the way I had come.
As I was nearing the lane abutting on the main
road, it began to rain pretty fast. I knew of a place
near at hand, for it had attracted my notice the day
before, where I could find shelter, and I made for it
at once. This was an arched recess in one of the
walls of the lane above mentioned, having just room
enough in it for a well breast-high with a stone seat
behind it. The well had been abandoned, and was
covered; it served now as a resting-place for peas-
ants and their loads. The walls, or muricciuoli,
which rose twice at least my height on each side, let
but little light penetrate into this species of hole;
enough though, after my eyes had had time to get
accustomed to the obscurity, to discern the round
shape of the well under my nose, and to have a faint
perception that there stood opposite to me something
more solid than air, which might well chance to be
another wall, or muricciuolo. Having by this time
finished my cigar, I crossed my arms, Napoleon-like,
over my breast, shut my eyes, and asked myself if I
could bona fide declare myself to be that identical
individual who, but one short week ago, was buying
Giusti's Poesie, at Truchy's, on the Boulevart des
Italiens; and while I was considering the question,
I felt touched by a magic wand, and conveyed to the
Boulevart aforesaid, where the first thing I saw was
a patrol of soldiers bearing down on me with meas-
ured tread.

My head was scarcely on my pillow when I fell asleep; and so sound was my slumber, that when I did awake, it was with a sense of having overslept myself. I lighted a match, and by its uncertain little flame I looked at my watch, - ten minutes past four. Since Curzio had not come to rouse me, no doubt he had had to remain all night with his patient; so I rose, hurried on my clothes, stole softly down the stairs, lighted solely by my cigar, and glided out of the house. It was darker than the hour seemed to warrant, and at first I could scarcely see two steps before me; but this was only for a few moments. In proportion as I went along, so did the outlines of the neighboring objects begin to shape themselves, though as yet dimly; the air was heavy and damp, not a star was visible. Nevertheless, the way to the Uccelliera was so easy-straight so far along the main road, and then to the right, through a lane dwindling to a path that I could not have

missed it if I would.

The fowling-box looked as if tênanted by Morpheus himself, so profoundly quiet was everything about it. To my surprise the door was shut, and yet it must necessarily have been close upon five o'clock. It was strange; but what was strangest of

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A sound of footsteps, not dreamed of this time, real footsteps of several persons reverberating through the narrow passage, fell upon my ear. They came from the heights, I mean from the side opposite to the town, and had somewhat of the regular tramp of soldiers, or funeral bearers. I strained my eyes, one, two, three, they passed me, but for the sound of their steps, like a spectral procession, slow, solemn, mute. The first, a little in advance of the others, carried what I surmised to be iron tools, from the jingling they made. Between the second and the third there was the length of something they bore upon their shoulders, and which accounted for the regular measure of their step, a something long and dark, save where it protruded beyond the back of the second bearer. This end, all wrapped in white, had a round, fantastic shape, than which nothing could be more suggestive of a shrouded head. The illusion was so complete, that I could not repress a shudder, which, after a moment's reflection, was followed by a smile.

My curiosity, anyhow, was strongly excited. Where could they be going? What was it they were carrying? After all, might it not really be a corpse, the victim of some accident, being carried home by friends or neighbors? As I was thus cogitating, the footsteps stopped, to begin again almost immediately, but as it seemed to me, in another direction, and with less distinctness. I cautiously

followed in their wake, and soon found myself at | when I recognized the voice of the chief actor in the the foot of one of those rugged flights of stone steps late drama! which at every turn give access to the olive plantations of the Riviera; there I came to a stand, and listened. My mysterious trio had evidently gone up that way, for the echo of their feet came now, a little deadened, from above me. I went up three of the stone steps; the tramp ceased all at once, ten seconds of dead stillness, then the thump of something heavy dropped on the earth.

"Hush!" said a voice, reprovingly, "to work, and the quicker the better. Hist! what's that? somebody on the watch?"

It was only I, who in ascending another step had unwarily dislodged a loose stone, which had rolled down noisily. This fourth step had brought my eyes on a level with the adjacent ground, a flat square, and as far as I could see, thickly planted with trees. Strain my eyes as I would, I could distinguish nothing but a vista of trunks.

"Only some ferret," suggested a second voice, after a pause, employed, I fancy, in listening, and during which I had scarcely dared to breathe.

“More likely a fox," opined a third voice; "there is plenty of that vermin hereabouts."

"From

I looked the man full in the face. He struck me as having a most patibulary countenance, and I entered the house. Curzio, candle in hand, was at the top of the stairs. "Is that you?" "Yes, it is me." "Where the deuse do you come from, dripping wet, and with that haggard face?" witnessing a deed of darkness," I replied. "Nonsense, what do you mean?" and he stared at me in alarm. "Come to my room, and you shall hear," said I. And as soon as we were closeted, I told him my tale, told it with an emotion and conviction that were infectious. Poor Curzio looked like a ghost himself, as he thrust both hands into his hair, protesting vehemently and incoherently that it could not be, that I was the dupe of some hallucination. "Would to God I were!" said I. 66 By the by, who is that man I met just now leaving the house? "That's Bastian, my bailiff, as trustworthy a fel

low

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"Your trustworthy fellow is a villain," cried I; "he was one of the three, and their chief."

This revelation had a queer and unexpected effect upon my friend. His fear-contracted features reLet us hope so," resumed the first voice; "Ilaxed, his rigid mouth distended, and he burst forth would rather not be caught at this sort of business."

"Nor I," "Nor I,"-assented the other two voices in succession. Although they spoke in whispers, I did not lose a syllable of what they said; but why should they speak in whispers ?

into one of the most glorious laughs I ever heard from mortal lips. "My mulberries," he chuckled; "I see it all now, it is my mulberries."

It was my turn now to stare at him; and it took him some time to recover composure enough to give me the following explanation: "You must know that ever since the appearance of oidium I have had it in my mind to try whether mulberry-trees could or could not be grown with success on our slopes; but one thing or another obliged me to postpone the

Voice No. 1 made itself heard again. "This hole is not deep enough; dig deeper, softly." A spade was in motion instantly. The mention of a hole (fossa) had an ominous sound to my ears. A hole, and to bury what? One had evidently been pre-experiment. If we could add the produce of silkpared beforehand! What could this portend? Was I really on the track of some foul deed?

64

There, that will do," said voice No. 1, and the sound of the spade ceased. "Where is the body? Bring it here.'

worms to that of our olives, it would be a great help to us in our years of bad crop or no crop at all. I must not forget to say that public feeling hereabouts is most opposed to the cultivation of mulberry-trees: first, because it is a novelty, and consequently an The body (il morto!) my hair stood on end. abomination; secondly, on account of a certain local The.... thing for which he had asked was not tradition, the origin of which has baffled all my rebrought, but dragged to him. The lowering of it searches. Once on a time, according to this tradiinto the earth took long, and was attended by diffi- tion, the rearing of silk-worms was the chief indusculty. I could hear the hard breathing of the men try of these parts, and the women sufficing for the under the exertion; I could hear them moving work, nothing was left for the men but to starve or about, and going to and fro in search of tools, as I emigrate. To argue about the absurdity of this last supposed, to facilitate their task. At last it was consequence would be like pounding water in a moraccomplished, and nothing remained but to shovel tar, it is an article of faith with our folks. Well, in the earth. This was done quickly, but cautiously, a few days ago, I received from a friend of mine, a by three spades all working at once. Then there grower of mulberry-trees in Piedmont, a sample of was the sound of the stamping of feet on the freshly- saplings, six in number, I believe, and I gave Basturned ground. A fiendish sneer from spokesman tian orders to plant them. He at first made a very No. 1 crowned the horror of the scene. "We leave wry face, and then, after a good deal of circumlocuyou in your snug berth; stay there in peace and tell tion, asked me if I should have any objection to his no tales." Such was the witty sally with which prob- planting them by night. I inquired why at night ably the murderer parted from his victim. It was rather than by day, I had of course guessed the received with suppressed laughter by the two wretch-reason. You shall have his answer in his own words; es, his accomplices. it is instructive in many ways. "Why," says he, "if I put in these trees by day, and I am seen doing it, as I must be, I shall be a marked man for the rest of my life, which would be especially vexatious for me who have both wife and children; whereas if I do it by night, and nobody sees me, nobody can fix the odium of the deed upon me; and, suppose any one suspects me, my No is as good as their Yes." I granted his request, and thus it came to pass that the planting of my half-dozen young trees had to be accomplished as though it were a midnight crime." Seen by the new light thrown upon them by Cur

Thereupon they all left; two went up, the third down the hill at full gallop, and across the country in the direction of the town.

I stood transfixed as though spellbound for some minutes, and then I too set off as fast as I could back to my friend's house, harassed by a feeling impossible to describe. My hand was on the knocker, when the door opened, and a peasant issued forth. I asked him if the Doctor was at home. He said yes, adding something complimentary about my being so early a riser. Judge of the shock I got

It might be thought from what is said, that this section of the community, which has done everything else so well, which has astonished the world by its energy, enterprise, and self-reliance, which is continually striking out new paths of industry and subduing the forces of nature, cannot, from some mysterious reason, get their children properly edu

zio's explanation, the features of the case lost their | hour, and we must confess to a feeling of shame at phantasmagoric halo, and resumed their natural the nonsense which is being uttered on the subject. appearance. The shrouded head was but the roots of the saplings tied together with a cloth to preserve the native earth adhering to them; the body (il morto) was but a commonly used Italian figure of speech to denote anything the object of some mystery (the saplings in our case), the same as saying a "dead secret"; Bastian's fiendish sneer was only an innocent joke far from inappropriate to the circum-cated." Still more strong were the words of the stance; his patibulary countenance a freak of my heated fancy, etc., etc. And so nothing remained, save a little laugh at its discoverer, of the Deed of Darkness.

MY COUNTRYMEN.

ABOUT a year ago the Saturday Review published an article which gave me, as its articles often do give me, much food for reflection. The article was about the unjust estimate which, says the Saturday Review, I form of my countrymen, and about the indecency of talking of "British Philistines." It appears that I assume the truth of the transcendental system of philosophy, and then lecture my wiser countrymen because they will not join me in recognizing as eternal truths a set of platitudes which may be proved to be false. "Now there is in England a school of philosophy which thoroughly understands, and, on theoretical grounds, deliberately rejects, the philosophical theory which Mr. Arnold accuses the English nation of neglecting; and the practical efforts of the English people, especially their practical efforts in the way of criticism, are for the most part strictly in accordance with the principles of that philosophy."

Daily News (I love to range all the evidence in black and white before me, though it tends to my own discomfiture) about the blunder some of us were making: "All the world knows that the great middle class of this country supplies the mind, the will, and the power for all the great and good things that have to be done, and it is not likely that that class should surrender its powers and privileges in the one case of the training of its own children. How the idea of such a scheme can have occurred to anybody, how it can have been imagined that parents and schoolmasters in the most independent and active and enlightened class of English society, how it can have been supposed that the class which has done all the great things that have been done in all departments, will beg the government to send inspectors through its schools, when it can itself command whatever advantages exist, might seem unintelligible but for two or three considerations." These considerations do not much matter just now; but it is clear how perfectly Mr. Bazley's stand was a stand such as it becomes a representative man like Mr. Bazley to make, and how well the Daily Telegraph might say of the speech, "It was at once grand, genial, national, and distinct"; and the Morning Star of the speaker: "He talked to his constituents as Manchester people like to be talked to,-in the language of clear, manly I do not quite know what to say about the tran- intelligence, which penetrates through sophisms, igscendental system of philosophy, for I am a mere dab-nores commonplaces, and gives to conventional illubler in these great matters, and to grasp and hold a system of philosophy is a feat much beyond my strength; but I certainly did talk about British Philistines, and to call people Philistines when they are doing just what the wisest men in the country have settled to be quite right, does seem unreasonable, not to say indecent. Being really the most teachable man alive, I could not help making, after I had read the article in the Saturday Review, a serious return, as the French say, upon myself; and I resolved never to call my countrymen Philistines again till I had thought more about it, and could be quite sure I was not committing an indecency.

sions their true value. His speech was thoroughly instinct with that earnest good sense which charac terizes Manchester, and which, indeed, may be fairly set down as the general characteristic of England and Englishmen everywhere."

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Of course if Philistinism is characteristic of the British nation just now, it must in a special way be characteristic of the representative part of the British nation, the part by which the British nation is what it is, and does all its best things, — the middle class. And the newspapers, who have so many more means than I of knowing the truth, and who have that trenchant, authoritative style for communicatI was very much fortified in this good resolutioning it which makes so great an impression, say that by something else which happened about the same the British middle class is characterized, not by time. Every one knows that the heart of the Eng- Philistinism, but by enlightenment; by a passion lish nation is its middle class; there had been a good for penetrating through sophisms, ignoring commondeal of talk, a year ago, about the education of this places, and giving to conventional illusions their true class, and I among others had imagined it was not value. Evidently it is nonsense, as the Daily News good, and that the middle class suffered by its not be- says, to think that this great middle class which suping better. But Mr. Bazley, the member for Man-plies the mind, the will, and the power for all the great chester, who is a kind of representative of this class, and good things that have to be done, should want made a speech last year at Manchester, the mid- its schools, the nurseries of its admirable intellidle-class metropolis, which shook me a good deal. gence, meddled with. It may easily be imagined "During the last few months," said Mr. Bazley, that all this, coming on the top of the Saturday Re"there had been a cry that middle-class education view's rebuke of me for indecency, was enough to ought to receive more attention. He confessed him- set me meditating; and after a long and painful self very much surprised by the clamor that was self-examination, I saw that I had been making a raised. He did not think that class need excite the great mistake. sympathy either of the legislature or the public.” Much to the same effect spoke Mr. Miall, another middle-class leader, in the Nonconformist: "Middleclass education seems to be the favorite topic of the

I had been breaking one of my own cardinal rules: the rule to keep aloof from practice, and to confine myself to the slow and obscure work of trying to understand things, to see them as they

are. So I was suffering deservedly in being taunted with hawking about my nostrums of state schools for a class much too wise to want them, and of an Academy for people who have an inimitable style already. To be sure I had said that schools ought to be things of local, not state, institution and management, and that we ought not to have an Academy; but that makes no difference. I had been meddling with practice, proposing this and that, saying how it might be if we had established this or that. I saw what danger I had been running in thus intruding into a sphere where I have no business, and I resolved to offend in this way no more. Henceforward let Mr. Kinglake belabor the French as he will, let him describe as many tight, merciless lips as he likes; henceforward let Educational Homes stretch themselves out in The Times to the crack of doom, let Lord Fortescue bewitch the middle class with ever new blandishments, let any number of Mansion House meetings propound any number of patchwork schemes to avoid facing the real difficulty; I am dumb. I let reforming and instituting alone; I meddle with my neighbor's practice no more. He that is unjust, let him be unjust still, and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still, and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still, and he that is holy, let him be holy still.

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they could hear how cavalierly a foreigner treats this country of their making and managing. It is not so much that we dislike England," a Prussian official, with the graceful tact of his nation, said to me the other day, "as that we think little of her." The Cologne Gazette, perhaps the chief newspaper of Germany, published in the summer a series of letters, much esteemed, I believe, by military men, on the armies of the leading Continental powers. The writer was a German officer, but not a Prussian. Speaking of the false military system followed by the Emperor Nicholas, whose great aim was to turn his soldiers into perfectly drilled machines, and contrasting this with the free play left to the individual soldier in the French system: "In consequence of their purely mechanical training," says this writer, "the Russians, in spite of their splendid courage, were in the Crimean war constantly beaten by the French, nay, decidedly beaten even by the English and the Turks."

"Let us

Hardly a German newspaper can discuss territorial changes in Europe, but it will add, after its remarks on the probable policy of France in this or that event: "England will probably make a fuss, but what England thinks is of no importance." I believe the German newspapers must keep a phrase of that kind stereotyped, they use it so often. France This I say as a sincere penitent; but I do not see is our very good friend just now, but at bottom our that there is any harm in my still trying to know" clear intelligence penetrating through sophisms,” and understand things, if I keep humbly to that, and and so on, is not held in much more esteem there do not meddle with greater matters, which are out than in Germany. One of the gravest and most of my reach. So having once got into my head this moderate of French newspapers - a newspaper, too, notion of British Philistinism and of the want of our very good friend, like France herself, into the clear and large intelligence in our middle class, I do bargain-broke out lately, when some jealousy of not consider myself bound at once to put away and the proposed Cholera Commission in the East was crush such a notion, as people are told to do with shown on this side the water, in terms which, though their religious doubts; nor, when the Saturday Re- less rough than the "great fool" of the Saturday view tells me that no nation in the world is so logical Review, were still far from flattering. as the English nation, and the Morning Star, that speak to these English the only language they can our grand national characteristic is a clear intelli- comprehend. England lives for her trade; cholera gence which penetrates through sophisms, ignores interrupts trade; therefore it is for England's intercommonplaces, and gives to conventional illusions est to join in precautions against cholera." their true value, do I feel myself compelled to re- Compliments of this sort are displeasing to rememceive these propositions with absolute submission as ber, displeasing to repeat; but their abundance articles of faith, transcending reason; indeed, this strikes the attention; and then the happy unconwould be transcendentalism, which the Saturday Re-sciousness of those at whom they are aimed, their view condemns. Canvass them, then, as mere matters of speculation, I may; and having lately had occasion to travel on the Continent for many months, during which I was thrown in company with a great variety of people, I remembered what Burns says of the profitableness of trying to see ourselves as others see us, and I kept on the watch for anything to confirm or contradict my old notion, in which, without absolutely giving it up, I had begun certainly to be much shaken and staggered.

I must say that the foreign opinion about us is not at all like that of the Saturday Review and the Morning Star. I know how madly the foreigners envy us, and that this must warp their judgment; I know, too, that this test of foreign opinion can never be decisive; I only take it for what it is worth, and as a contribution to our study of the matter in ques

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state of imperturbable self-satisfaction, strikes the attention too, and makes an inquisitive mind quite eager to see its way clearly in this apparent game of cross purposes. For never, surely, was there such a game of cross purposes played. It came to its height when Lord Palmerston died the other day. Lord Palmerston was England; "the best type of our age and country," The Times well called him; he was "a great representative man, emphatically the English Minister"; the interpreter of the wishes of that great middle class of this country which supplies the mind, the will, and the power requisite for all the great and good things that have to be done, and therefore "acknowledged by a whole people as their best impersonation."

Monsieur Thiers says of Pitt, that though he used and abused the strength of England, she was the second country in the world at the time of his death, and the first eight years afterwards. That was after Waterloo and the triumphs of Wellington. And that era of primacy and triumphs Lord Palmerston, say the English newspapers, has carried on to this hour. "What Wellington was as a soldier, that was Palmerston as a statesman." When I read these Ja, selbst von den Engländern und Türkern entschieden ge

schlagen.

eigners reproach us in the matters named, rash engagement, intemperate threatening, undignified retreat, ill-timed cordiality, are not the faults of an aristocracy, by nature in such concerns prudent, reticent, dignified, sensitive on the point of honor; they are rather the faults of a rich middle class,testy, absolute, ill-acquainted with foreign matters, a little ignoble, very dull to perceive when it is making itself ridiculous.

words in some foreign city or other, I could not help | in numberless ways, the Americans expected symrubbing my eyes and asking myself if I was dream-pathy, while from the aristocracy they expected ing. Why, taking Lord Palmerston's career from none. And, in general, the faults with which for 1830 (when he first became Foreign Secretary) to his death, there cannot be a shadow of doubt, for any one with eyes and ears in his head, that he found England the first power in the world's estimation, and that he leaves her the third, after France and the United States. I am no politician; I mean no disparagement at all to Lord Palmerston, to whose talents and qualities I hope I can do justice; and indeed it is not Lord Palmerston's policy, or any Minister's policy, that is in question here: it is the policy of all of us, it is the policy of England; for in a government such as ours is at present, it is only, as we are so often reminded, by interpreting public opinion, by being "the best type of his age and country," that a Minister governs; and Lord Palmerston's greatness lay precisely in our all "acknowledging him as our best impersonation."

Well, then, to this our logic, our practical efforts in the way of criticism, our clear, manly intelligence penetrating through sophisms and ignoring commonplaces, and above all, our redoubtable phalanx possessing these advantages in the highest degree, our great middle class, which makes Parliament, and which supplies the mind, the will, and the power requisite for all the great and good things that have to be done, have brought us to the third place in the world's estimation, instead of the first. He who disbelieves it, let him go round to every embassy in Europe and ask if it is not true.

I know the answer one gets at home when one says that England is not very highly considered just now on the Continent. There is first of all the envy to account for it, that of course; and then our clear intelligence is making a radical change in our way of dealing with the Continent; the old, bad, aristocratical policy of incessantly intermeddling with the affairs of the Continent, this it is getting rid of; it is leaving the miserable foreigners to themselves, to their wars, despotisms, bureaucracy, and hatred of free, prosperous England. A few inconveniences may arise before the transition from our old policy to our new is fairly accomplished, and we quite leave off the habit of meddling where our own interests are not at stake. We may be exposed to a little mortification in the passage, but our clear intelligence will discern any occasion where our interests are really at stake. Then we shall come forward and prove ourselves as strong as ever; and the foreigners, in spite of their envy, know it. But The foreigners, indeed, are in no doubt as to the what strikes me so much in all which these foreignreal authors of the policy of modern England; they ers say is, that it is just this clear intelligence of know that ours is no longer a policy of Pitts and ours that they appear at the present moment to aristocracies, disposing of every movement of the hold cheap. Englishmen are often heard complainhoodwinked nation to whom they dictate it; they ing of the little gratitude foreign nations show them know that our policy is now dictated by the strong for their sympathy, their good-will. The reason is, middle part of England, England happy, as Mr. that the foreigners think that an Englishman's goodLowe, quoting Aristotle, says, in having her middle will to a foreign cause, or dislike to it, is never part strong and her extremes weak; and that, grounded in a perception of its real merits and bearthough we are administered by one of our weak ex-ings, but in some chance circumstance. They say tremes, the aristocracy, these managers administer us, as a weak extreme naturally must, with a nervous attention to the wishes of the strong middle part, whose agents they are.

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the Englishman never, in these cases, really comprehends the situation, and so they can never feel him to be in living sympathy with them.

I have got into much trouble for calling my countrymen Philistines, and all through these remarks I am determined never to use that word; but I wonder if there can be anything offensive in calling one's countryman a young man from the country. I hope not; and if not, I should say, for the benefit of those who have seen Mr. John Parry's amusing entertainment, that England and Englishmen, holding forth on some great crisis in a foreign country,Poland, say, or Italy, are apt to have on foreigners very much the effect of the young man from the country who talks to the nursemaid after she has upset the perambulator. There is a terrible crisis, and the discourse of the young man from the country, excellent in itself, is felt not to touch the crisis vitally. Nevertheless, on he goes; the perambulator lies a wreck, the child screams, the nursemaid wrings her hands, the old gentleman storms, the policeman gesticulates, the crowd thickens; still, that astonishing young man talks on, serenely unconscious that he is not at the centre of the situation.

It was not the aristocracy which made the Crimean war; it was the strong middle part, the constituencies. It was the strong middle part which showered abuse and threats on Germany for mishandling Denmark; and when Germany gruffly answered, Come and stop us, slapped its pockets, and vowed that it had never had the slightest notion of pushing matters so far as this. It was the strong middle part which, by the voice of its favorite newspapers, kept threatening Germany, after she had snapped her fingers at us, with a future chastisement from France, just as a smarting school-boy threatens his bully with a drubbing to come from some big boy in the background. It was the strong middle part, speaking through the same newspapers, which was full of coldness, slights, and sermons for the American Federals during their late struggle; and as soon as they had succeeded, discovered that it had always wished them well, and that nothing was so much to be desired as that the United States, and we, should be the fastest friends possible. Some Happening to be much thrown with certain forpeople will say that the aristocracy was an equal eigners, who criticised England in this sort of way, offender in this respect: very likely; but the be- I used often to think what a short and ready way havior of the strong middle part makes more impres- one of our hard-hitting English newspapers would sion than the behavior of a weak extreme: and the take with these scorners, if they fell into its hands. more so, because from the middle class, their fellows | But being myself a mere seeker for truth, with noth

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