Cabinet have had a double set of duties to perform-a double foe to fight. Besides waging war against the Secessionists, they have had to keep the Democratic party under; and this has required much skilful manoeuvring—many sacrifices, too, of public honour and constitutional principle. The Democrats have never had their hearts in the conflict. They have thwarted and embarrassed the Washington Ministry in carrying it forward. They have resisted taxation; they have defeated the Conscription; they have thrown every obstacle in the way of volunteering; and they have become more troublesome, to the extent almost of a treasonable resistance to the powers that be, since Mr. Lincoln adopted as a war-cry the principle of absolute emancipation. Their perverse conduct, indeed, contributed not a little to force the President's party into this attitude. It would be foreign to our argument to question the right or wrong, the constitutionality or other wise, of Mr. Lincoln's edict. What we desire to show is, that the division of the Northern interest into two hostile camps has rendered the efforts of the Federals lumbering and ineffectual, and produced such a dislocation of society in their States that, end the war as it may, a "great transition" will be found to have been passed through, and unhappily to a worse state of things than existed before.

Of course, Northern America will settle down again ultimately, and all these evils be repaired. The despotism of the Washington autocrat cannot last; and the country will strive to purge itself when peace returns from the malign influence of corrupt and unprincipled politicians. But that will take time; and, during the throes of the change, it is hard to say what strange vicissitudes the Northern community may not have to pass through. Even before the year has come to an end, we may see the present rulers cast aside by the coup d'etat of some bold son of the sword, who will cover his daring contempt for law and constitutional forms by pleading an urgent necessity. In its peril, the Republic-if such it can even now be called-may accept, and, possibly, with a fatal readiness, this description of service. Nor will there

be wanting public guides to persuade the people that the change is for their good. If the alternative shall seem to the Northern people to be the sacrifice of their own liberties or the abandonment of the war upon the South, their acquiescence already in many arbitrary proceedings of their Cabinet has shown that they will choose the former, trusting to the chances of events to enable them to resume control of their affairs, according to the old Republican theories, when the desired object has been attained.

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It is a dangerous experiment; but that they are ready, at any hour, to take the plunge is established by the tone of the New York press-the New York Herald having, for example, in a recent number, soberly intimated that the time has arrived when only a great soldier" can save the Union. The Cabinet of Washington, adds the journalist, have miserably failed; and the first thing necessary, if the South is to be subdued, is to cast them adrift, and put up in their stead a military Dictator- hampering him by no restrictions, and subjecting him to no inconvenient responsibility. Laws are suspended in time of war, is a favourite axioin of the writer; no man wrongfully arrested by domiciliary visitors, on the testimony of suborned agents, and flung into prison, has any right, therefore, to expect redress. "Lafayette" is a recognised instrument of rule. All that the Americans expect from Mr. Lincoln, or the military despot whom they are prepared to receive in his room, is-Success.

But the demoralization of the Federal public, which shows itself in this and other forms, is not of sudden development. The war has only hurried the national decay that had begun long before, though on the surface all seemed peaceful and prosperous. The Republican institutions of America had been breaking down for years under pressure of the abnormal growth of the "Empire," as Americans now, significantly, affect to call their States. Observing persons saw this, but were derided when they raised the voice of warning. Now, looking back by the light of more recent events, the progress of that decline can be traced, and a variety of remarkable occurrences

indicated as marking its stages. That subject, however, is one for the philosophical historian of America, when the time comes for the performance of his task; the present writer's design is much less pretentious, being to produce, simply, such pictures of life in the Northern States from the generation preceding the war, as American writers themselves enable us to offer. Among the books which contain matter of this kind, we certainly know none more interesting, or, on the whole, more instructive, than the "Forty Years of American Life," which Dr. Nichols has lately laid before English readers. It is written in a rapid, easy style; the useful and agreeable are blended in its pages with considerable skill. The author, in fact, is an experienced writer, having received a training at the press. His powers of observation are far above the average; and, in fine, we may accept him as a very fair limner of the features of Federal America.

Dr. Nichols is an exile. It appears that there is now in the Eng fish metropolis as distinct a body of American refugees as there were wont to be of French or Italians, and as there still are of Polish. These are persons, who, either from disgust with the state of things in America, or from having come under the suspicion of the powers that be, have reason to prefer a residence abroad. There were three courses open to Dr. Nichols when the war broke outeither go South, where his sympathies lay-seek martyrdom in the North where he resided-or set sail for England. He chose the last, and felt exceedingly happy when far out to sea. In London he was a perfect stranger; still this subject of the 'freest nation in creation" breaks out into a rhapsody as he struggles through the busy thoroughfares. "A "A grimy London street, but liberty,' he exclaims, a humble lodging, hard fare, and a dim outlook for the future, but no blood on my soul. A hundred thousand corpses of Northern volunteers did I not see them, poor starving wretches, with no work for themselves and no food for their families, marched off by thousands to be slaughtered or die by Southern fevers? I am not responsible for their deaths. Thou canst not say I

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VOL. LXIII.-NO. CCCLXXVI.

did it.'" Satisfied on this score, he sits down to sketch what he has witnessed during forty years of an active life among this extraordinary people. "I have described America," says Dr. Nichols, "and what seems to me most distinctive in its people and institutions, as I remember them looking back through a vista of nearly half a century of a busy and varied life, and as they appear to me viewed across the intervening ocean. Americans have usually written of their country with exultation. I have written in sorrow and humiliation; yet, not without the hope that, purified as in the fire, she may in the future be worthy of the promise of the past."

The author sets out with a description of the changes wrought in the process of sophistication which the rural population of the Northern States have undergone by the introduction of "fast" habits. Here is a lively picture of a farmer's house in New England forty years ago :—

home as I remember it forty years ago. "Let me give an idea of such a farmer's The farm was about a hundred acres of land, running back from the river in a series of three level terraces, and then up a steep, rocky hill. These alluvial terraces or levels, of perhaps an eighth of a mile in width, appeared to me to have been at some period the successive bottoms either of a much broader river, or, more probably, of a great lake, bounded by the chain of precipitous mountains that girt our valley, excepting where they were broken through at the north and south. This farm was fenced with the stumps of the great pine-trees that had once covered the meadows, and which had been cut down at an earlier period and sawn into boards, or made into shingles, or rafted down the rivers to become

'Fit masts for some tall admiral.' The fences were made by placing these stumps -extracted from the ground with great labour and the aid of machinery—on their sides with their gnarled roots stretching into the air, and forming a chevaux de frise which few animals would venture to jump over, but which with an occasional tear of the trousers, I managed to climb with great facility. There were no hedges. In the rocky uplands there were stone walls, elsewhere board fences and palings.

terrace, and here were the farm buildings "The stage road passed along the second --a story-and-a-half wooden house, with a steep shingled roof, having ten rooms, a wash-house, dairy, wood-house, where the year's firewood was stored, and hog-house.

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At a little distance was the barn-yard, with two large barns for hay, unthreshed grain,

and stables for horses and cattle, and a

corn-barn for storing Indian corn and the threshed and winnowed grain. Back of the buildings was an orchard of ten or

fifteen acres; and back of this, by a rich bank of blue clay, a brickyard.

"Our neighbour was an industrious man. He raised large crops of wheat, rye, maize, potatoes, and flax. He kept horses, cattle, sheep, and swine. The women carded, spun, and wove the wool and flax, making the blankets, fulled cloth, and linen of the family. They also made plenty of butter and cheese. The farmer and his stout boys cut their wood, shaved pine-shingles, converted the apples into cider, made bricks, washed and sheared the sheep, prepared the flax, and had plenty of work for every week in the year. They raised their food, made their clothing, and had a large surplus of everything to exchange for what they could not manufacture or produce-tea, coffee, tobacco-the last of which they could grow -and all the goods furnished by the stores. In those days the buzz of the spinning wheel and the clang of the loom were heard, and the odour of the dye-pot smelt, in every farmer's dwelling. Now, these instruments of domestic manufacture are stowed away in the garret, and the young ladies, dressed in the produce of the looms of Manchester, Lyons, or Lowell, 'spin street yarn,' exercise at the pianoforte, and are learned in the mysteries of crochet. I doubt if they are the better of it."

This was the time, long before railways or telegraphic wires, of the American snow roads. In spring and summer the farmers could go no great distance, from the inconceivable badness of the highways, but in winter, when the frozen snow made tolerable roads, they joined together in a merry company, harnessed their teams, loaded their large double sleighs with frozen hogs, tallow, butter, cheese, fruits, honey, and home-made cloth, and with the dingle of a hundred bells set off on an expedition of one or two hundred miles to sell their products, and bring home tea and other foreign luxuries. Those were the days, too, when the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence was celebrated with an imposing and even a pious simplicity, contrasting remarkably with the noisy and boastful pomp of the ceremonial of later years. At this period, too, the American muse was prolific of song, and metrical and historical accounts of the struggle with Great Britain, were learned by every

child almost as soon as he could speak; and to these, probably, is traceable the fixed belief of the nation that they can readily "whip the Britishers," the burden of all those old ballads being the superiority of the American arms. One of the most curious was a long and diffuse account in verse of the capture of the British ship, Guerriere, by the American frigate, Constitution:

"It oft-times has been told,

How the British seamen bold Could flog the tars of France so neat and handy, O!

But they never found their match Till the Yankees did them catch; Oh, the Yankee boys for fighting are the dandy, O!"

Thus began the story; and it must be admitted that under present circumstances the last line may be read with a new significance. It was that carefully nurtured contempt for British prowess which made the conquest of Canada seem so easy a task always to the Americans, and led them to embrace within the grasp of their Monroe doctrine the entire continent, from the Polar icefields to the Gulf of Florida. Nay, they even stretched a covetous hand into South America, and the same Mr. Seward who is now striving to maintain his Government in the " pent-up Utica" of the Northern States, no later than 1860, standing in the capital of Minnesota, indulged his auditory with a dream of Yankee domination to be bounded on every side by the oceanhis only difficulty was where to place the capital of the magnificent Republic, and in casting about for a central and convenient spot, he was disposed to select the valley of Mexico! The three intervening years have dispelled many delusions, but the Americans cling still to the unsubstantial fancy of universal empire though the rude logic of facts may have converted their stump-orator to views more reasonable.

From the early habits of the New Englanders, Mr. Lowe might possibly get some hints tending to the introduction of economy into the management of the English-school system and clamourers for "out-door relief" may also have their attention usefully directed to the customs of those primitive people. In New Hamp

shire, to make the money raised by taxation for educational purposes go as far as possible, it was customary, a generation ago, to put the teacher up to auction, to be boarded with the lowest bidder. Every year at townmeeting the paupers, too, were sold by public roup, to those who would maintain them cheapest, taking into account the work they were capable of performing. The pauper was a slave, transferred from master to master, for a year at a time; but every year to a new farmer as long as he lived. The schoolmaster's "keep" was saved to the community sometimes, by an agreement to "board him round;" which meant that he was to receive food and lodging, for a week or two at a time, in the houses of all the inhabitants of the district. It is to the honour of the New Englanders, however, that the best room and bed were always kept for the pedagogue, out of sincere respect for his honourable calling. But the great blemish upon American education from the first, and equally in the village school and the high-class college, was its tendency to intensify the self-esteem of the people, and hide from them a just idea of the intelligence, freedom, and greatness of other nations.

The youthful generation so taught, became in its maturity smart, vain, and superficial. Still it possessed sufficient intelligence for the duties required from it in a new and rising country, where the competitions of life were not severe, and wealth accrued from comparatively small efforts, within a short space of the life of each individual. The rapidity of this national growth nourished the inordinate self-conceit ingrained in the populace. And as the principle of the American system of government, and the important questions of internal administration which determined the differences of parties, made every man a politician, debating clubs were soon established in every considerable place, and that glibness was acquired for which the American people have become unenviably proverbial. The estimate set upon merc volubility was so great that a race of lecturers and mere spouters was produced, whom the people hurried with a morbid avidity to hear. Political influence, and place, and emolu

ment, proved the reward of a claptrap success upon the platform. And thus public life lost its high ambitions. The tendency was to elevate the least sagacious, least patriotic, least honourable men to high position; and so in every department, and among all classes, there followed a lowering of the moral tone, and the consequent embitterment of questions connected with Slavery, which being made to serve the purpose of a faction cry, was kept in a state of perpetual rawness. No settlement of such matters was suffered to remain undisturbed by the agitators to whom they offered a means of gaining notoriety.

This abnormal development of the platform influence long proved fatal to every form of literature, except such as the newspaper and the slight religious treatise might be said to constitute. Instead of books, the Americans resorted to their great halls to hear lectures. The lecturing mania-which has now visited these countries-began to rage in the Northern States above ten years ago, and took the most extravagant forms. Successive flights of those lecturers crossed the country, getting as much as ten guineas a-night for their frothy and mischievous essays on woman's rights, phrenology, vegetarianism, spirit-tapping, bloomerism, and "freelove." The doctrines of Fourrier had their female advocates; and one of the most successful of the public apostles of the system of Robert Owen, was a certain Fanny Wright, whose discourses drew "astounding houses." The evident delight of the public in "evenings" of this description, ultimately even affected the operations of the ecclesiastical bodies; and sensation lectures in churches, on semireligious subjects, and subjects in no sense religious, contributed to the depravation of the public judgment and taste.

The pages devoted by Dr. Nichols to an account of the camp and revival meetings of American Methodism are picturesquely written. But he hardly does justice to the amount of unquestionably real piety that underlay the extravagance of these gatherings. The scene thus depicted must have been worth making a journey to see :

"At night, after an interval for supper, the camp is lighted up by lanterns upon

the trees and blazing fires of pine knots. The scene is now wild and beautiful. The lights shine in the tents and gleam in the forest; the rude but melodious Methodist hymns ring through the woods; the ground is glittering with the phosphoric gleam of certain roots which trampling feet have denuded of their bark; the moon shines in the blue vault above the tree tops, and the melancholy scream of the loon, a large waterfowl, comes across the lake on the sighing breeze of night. In this wild and solemn night-scene, the voice of the preacher has a double power, and the harvest of converts is increased. A procession is formed of men and women, who march round the camp singing an invitation to the unconverted. Then there are prayer meetings in the tents again, with the accumulated excitement of the whole day and evening. At ten o'clock the long, wild note of the horn is heard from the preacher's stand: the night watch is set. Each tent is divided into two compartments-one for men, the other for women; straw is littered down, and all lie down in close rows upon the ground to sleep, and silence reigns in the camp, broken only by the mournful note of the waterfowl and the neighing of horses, fastened, with their forage, under the trees. These meetings last a week or longer."

The tendency in America has always been to rush from extreme to extreme. After a season of alarming commercial immorality came what was known as the great Revival. After a period when drunken lawyers, drunken doctors, drunken members of Congress, and drunken ministers of religion" were common, teetotalism set in, and became a fanaticism. "Moral suasion" not doing its work fast enough, universal demand was made for a prohibitive law. But this measure no more cured the evil of drunkenness than did the Revival meetings general impiety. When the retailing of liquor had been prohibited, men bought by wholesale; the Express companies were loaded with orders for kegs of liquor brought from States where the prohibitive enactment was not in force. A thousand smuggling artifices were devised, and the law became a joke and a dead letter.

It will surprise some to hear that the "revival of religion" which took place some years ago in the United States was more needed by the state of society in the northern than in the southern portion of the territory now commonly called Federal America. The New England States are the re

gion where Rationalism prevails; in New York and the more Southern parts of the non-Confederate territory, Spiritualism took a greater hold. There is a Deism in the New England States which calls itself Unitarianism-the offspring, as in other countries, of too hard and abstract a system of pulpit teaching among orthodox divines. There are but two

Unitarian churches in New York, and perhaps fifty in Boston. Harvard College, one of the best endowed of American educational institutions, now belongs to the Unitarians, who are obtaining an increase of numbers from the identification with them of those who affect the Rationalism of Theodore Parker. The revival" produced no effect upon this class of persons; but despite their intellectual pretensions, their religious speculations--they can hardly be said to possess a creed—are misty and puerile. The growth of Deism in those somewhat milder forms in the more northern States is attributed by Dr. Nichols to the social pressure by which the population in New England were forced into an external conformity with religion in its severer form of extreme Puritanism. Whilst this pressure was submitted to, every man went to church; but as the ministers were, many of them, ill-informed, and others dogmatical and harsh to an offensive degree, the more active minds became unsettled; and as soon as the religious restraints of a primitive period were relaxed, persons of this description broke off almost into infidelity. But as, from their education, they could not rest content without the forms at least of a recognised faith, they founded churches of their own, retaining all the Puritan severity of ritual, but sacrificing all the essential principles of the religion of the Christian world. It was a compromise between what they fancied to be their convictions and the lingering influences of early teaching. Of much of the infidelity of the American Unitarians, the pharisaism rather than the austerity of the Puritans was the cause. All men admire consistency, and only begin to contemn a system when they lose respect for its professors. The later Puritans forfeited their character for honesty by their "compromises with the world" -as religious phrase would put it