and solemnity of his long experience, the same blessed doctrines now, after forty years, that he preached in his early prime; if the philanthropist of half a century since is the philanthropist still,-still kind, hopeful, and unwearied, though with the snows of age upon his head, and the hand that never told its fellow of what it did, now trembling as it does the deed of mercy :-then I think that even the most doubtful will believe that the principle and the religion of such men were a glorious reality! The sternest of all touchstones of the genuineness of our better feelings, is the fashion in which they stand the wear of years.

adjutors. There never will be, within the trials of the years before them. Oh! if the sacred walls, a silence and reverence more gray-haired clergyman, with less now indeed profound than when the withered kindly of physical strength and mere physical face looks as of old upon the congregation, warmth, yet preaches, with the added weight to whose fathers its owner first ministered, and which has grown up mainly under his instruction; and when the voice that falls familiarly on so many ears, tells again, quietly and earnestly, the old story which we all need so much to hear. And he may still look in at the parish school, and watch the growth of a generation that is to do the work of life when he is in his grave: and kindly smooth the children's heads; and tell them how One, once a little child, and never more than a young man, brought salvation alike to young and old. He may still sit by the bedside of the sick and dying, and speak to such with the sympathy and the solemnity of one who does not forget that the last great realities are drawing near to both. But there are vocations which are all very well for young or middle-aged people, but which do not quite suit the old. Such is that of the barrister. Wrangling and hairsplitting, browbeating and bewildering witnesses, making coarse jokes to excite the laughter of common jurymen, and addressing such with claptrap bellowings, are not the work for gray-headed men. If such remain at the bar, rather let them have the more refined work of the Equity Courts, where you address judges and not juries; and where you spare clap-trap and misrepresentation, if for no better reason, because you know that these will not stand you in the slightest stead. The work which best befits the aged, the work for which no mortal can ever become too venerable and dignified, or too weak and frail, is the work of Christian usefulness and philanthropy. And it is a beautiful sight to see, as I trust we all have seen, that work persevered in with the closing energies of life. It is a noble test of the soundness of the principle that prompted to its first undertaking. It is a hopeful and cheering sight to younger men, looking out with something of fear to the temptations and

But my shortening space warns me to stop; and I must cease, for the present, from these thoughts of Future Years. Cease, I mean, from writing about that mysterious tract before us; who can cease from thinking of it? You remember how the writer of that little poem which has been quoted asks Time to touch gently him and his. Of course he spoke as a poet, stating the case fancifully; but not forgetting that when we come to sober sense, we must prefer our requests to an Ear more ready to hear us, and a Hand more ready to help. It is not to Time that I shall apply to lead me through life into immortality! And I cannot think of years to come without going back to a greater poet, whom we need not estorm the less because his inspiration was loftier than that of the Muses, who has summed up so grandly in one comprehensive sentence all the possibilities which could befall him in the days and ages before him. "Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory!" Let us humbly trust that in that sketch, round and complete, of all that can ever come to us, my readers and I may be able to read the history of our Future Years! A. K. H. B.

From The Examiner, 13 April.

election of Mr. Lincoln: "The stupid, sensual, ignorant masses of the North, who are as foolish as they are depraved, could not read the signs of the times, did not dream of disunion, but rushed on heedlessly as a drove of hungry hogs at the call of their owners."

THE WRONG END OF A QUARREL. AN article in the New York Tribune upon an article in the New Orleans De Bow's Review, is in these days a choice example of the outcry of the pot against the kettle. We speak in this country so temperately of the quarrel between North and South, that we need help from the transatlantic papers if we would have fair understanding of the blindness of the passions that, in all good political forecast, must enter into calculation of the chances of the future. De Bow's Review is the most reputable organ of the Southern States. Its articles are confidently appealed to by writers, North and South, for statements and statistics that may fairly be taken to represent the case of the slave-nots, who settled the South, naturally hate,

holders. There is not much literature in the Southern States; libraries and readingrooms are at a discount in their half-civilized towns, but the mind of New Orleans has hitherto, we believe, considered itself fairly

The writer very properly points out that there is an antagonism of temper between the descendants of the Cavaliers and of the Puritans. If that which he himself shows us be the temper of the modern transatlantic Cavalier we can believe any thing we have heard about ruffianly duelling, and other signs of bad blood in the Southern gentlemen.

"The Cavaliers, Jacobites, and Hugue

contemn, and despise the Puritans, who settled the North. The former are master races, the latter a slave race, the descendants of the Saxon serfs. The former are Mediterranean races, descendants of the Romans; for Cavaliers and Jacobites are of Norman descent, and the Normans were of Roman descent, and so were the Huguenots. The Saxons and Angles, the ancestors of the Yankees, came from the cold and marshy regions of the North, where man is little more than a cold-blooded, amphibious bi

represented in the pages of De Bow. It
happens now that transatlantie writers of
the North and South are on the high ropes;
and what are we to say of either, unless it
be what Joseph Scaliger said of Scioppius,
that when he got into his altitudes he was
like a monkey getting up a pole. The higher
he went the more he displayed his tail, and ped."

confined observation to the wrong end of
himself.

The Northern critic on the Southern politicians, while he quotes De Bow for censure, finds the men of the South guilty of national madness, victims to an insane fanaticism surpassing any thing ever before known in the civilized world; men uttering propositions of mingled atrocity and absurdity at which the rest of the civilized world is struck aghast with horror and astonishment. But, he says, "it is only when the natural results

of characters formed under the influence of

such a monstrous perversion of truth and right show themselves in treason, rebellion, and public robbery, that we are startled and disgusted."

Yet we must admit that this kind of political discussion is a mere sprinkling of rosewater compared with the writing from De Bow's review, which it is designed to introduce. The Southern reviewer who is the nearest representative of an English writer in the Edinburgh or Quarterly that can be furnished by the seceding States, says that the women and clergy of the South are the chief promoters of the disunion movement. The women who are "all conservative, moral, religious, and sensitively modest, abhor the North for its infidelity, gross immorality, licentiousness, anarchy, and agrarianism." In this way De Bow explains the

The notion of the Roman origin of the Northmen who came to England after settlement in France arose perhaps from an impression founded on the Roman nose of an aristocratic hero, of which there may have been mention in some old novel of the Minerva Press that the reviewer had found in a New Orleans circulating library. Out of the same reading comes no doubt the following boast:

the world. Pride of caste, and color, and "We are the most aristocratic people in privilege, makes every white man an aristocrat in feeling. Aristocracy is the only safeguard of liberty, the only power watchful and strong enough to exclude monarchical despotism."

In the North, on the contrary, each several State, given up to anarchy, infidelity, and free love, is to become the centre of its own petty military despotism.

Something has been heard in Europe of the violence with which every man is attacked who, while in the Southern States, can be suspected of a word tending to the abolition of slavery. The nightly patrols; the stringent laws for the capture of slaves who are found anywhere beyond bounds without a permit; the burning alive of defiant slaves that terror may be struck into the black population; even the dread of in

surrection that thrilled from the South about | a twelvemonth since, rise to our memory while the bold Southern writer says: "Slaves are the only body-guard to be relied on. Buonaparte knew it, and kept his Mohammedan slave sleeping at his door; all history proves it."

It is well for the Southern planter that the black slave is still sleeping at his door; teacher and preacher are forbidden to awaken him. Truly there would be need of little help to raise him to the level of his master, if the mind of his master be at all represented by such writing as we find here quoted from De Bow's Review. Another of the reviewers thinks it probable that New York City will adopt Mayor York's proposition and secede. "It is practical and feasible," he says, as it is classical." And the second writer, as he mounts, exhibits the wrong end of himself no less conspicuously than the first. "Gypsies," he says,―

66

From The Spectator, 13 April.

THE LAST PHASE IN AMERICA. THE tendency of the last intelligence from America is to re-assure commercial men, and disgust politicians. The probability that the dismemberment of the Union will be peacefully effected increases daily. The Lincoln Administration is as imbecile, or we might perhaps more justly say as powerless, as that of his predecessor. The President, after pledging himself solemnly to carry out the laws, occupies himself with the distribution of the spoils, and suffers the last remnants of national authority to rot away piecemeal. Fort Sumter is to be evacuated. Fort Pickens, it is announced, cannot be defended. No effort has been made to reappoint Federal officers in any of the seceding States. No preparations have been made or discussed to collect a force able to carry out the ultimate resolution of the Executive, or even to submit the whole subject to the free choice of the people. No attempt "Gypsies and free negroes have many is talked of to reinforce the Union party in amiable, noble, and generous traits; Yan- States in which it is palpably able to make kees, sourkrout Germans, and Canadians some head against its foes. In Texas, for none. Senator Wade says, and Seward, too, example, the governor, supported by a that the North will absorb Canada. They moiety of the people, declares for the Union, are half true; the vile, sensual, animal, but he is left unsupported to fight his battle brutal, infidel, superstitious democracy of with the seceders, while the troops in the Canada and the Yankee States, will coa- State who might have turned the scale in lesce; and Senator Johnson of Tennessee favor of the Federal Government are withwill join them. But when Canada and drawn. And now, after a month of irresoWestern New York, and New England, and lution, it is discovered that the laws the the whole beastly, puritanic sourkrout,' President intended to carry out do not perfree negro, infidel, superstitious, licentious, mit him to levy revenue in the harbors, and democratic population of the North become he must consequently either march an army, the masters of New York-what then? Out- which he has not at his command, into the side of the city, the State of New York is resisting States, or abandon the attempt to Yankee and puritanical; composed of as perform any one function of an Executive base, unprincipled, superstitious, licentious, Government. The latter alternative, it is and agrarian and anarchical population as any stated, is the one preferred by the more inon earth. Nay, we do not hesitate to say, fluential members of his Cabinet. The Secit is the vilest population on earth. If the retary of State, it would seem, quite prides city does not secede and erect a separate re- himself upon the energy with which he adpublic, this population, aided by the igno-vocates a "peaceful solution" of the diffirant, base, brutal, sensual German infidels of the North-west, the stupid democracy of Canada (for Canada will in some way coalesce with the North), and the arrogant and tyrannical people of New England, will become masters of the destinies of New York."

We do not condemn a people for these frothy outpourings of its passions. But we, who stand apart, have to remember that in the midst of such wild talk, not wholly without its influence upon action, the men whose forefathers were our forefathers, are battling with a crisis in their history that may prove even more momentous than their separation from the parent state.

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culty, by surrendering every thing for which the Confederate States contend. To European ideas, a household might as well plume himself upon his skill in peacefully solving" the questions raised by a burglar by the surrender of his cash and spoons. Even Mr. Chase, a Republican of Republicans, is supposed to have given way, and the Southern leaders regard their prospects, in their own quaint slang with "considerable cheerfulness of mind." They may well be cheerful, for they have exhibited precisely the qualities Northern Americans appear to lack

decision, unity, and statesman-like foresight. While a nation of nineteen millions of brave men confesses its inability to raise

The South adopts a lower tariff, and the North finds that to construct a line of frontier customhouses would be to acknowledge the seceding States as foreign powers. Consequently, they must bear to see trade transferred to the Southern ports, without being able to tax it en route to their own cities, and so lose by one brilliant stroke of party statesmanship commerce and revenue together. The Americans are fond of deriding the slowness of the Old World, but European statesmen are apt to succeed. In America a great policy is enforced by a surprise, and then given up because its supporters had not considered so ordinary a condition of success as the position of their frontier. The Morrill Bill must either be abandoned or ruin the Northern treasury, demonstrating in either case that aristocracies are not the only rulers who prefer personal interests to the welfare of the state.

a force for its own defence, a nation of two | they discover that one essential element in and a half millions places an army in the success has been forgotten. field. While the old-established Republican Government gropes blindly about to find a policy, lets its treasury run dry from simple want of financial skill, and declares commercial war with Europe, a new Government, scarcely elected, frames a new and improved constitution, adopts a new system of finance, and tempts all European trade to enter its own ports. The local minority is restrained with the mixed judgment and unscrupulousness usually displayed by far better established powers. The people of South Carolina wish to revive the slave trade, but the President vetoes the bill which changes the offence from piracy to misdemeanor. Half the people of Louisiana are hostile to secession, but the Convention first decrees that the State shall secede, and then refuses to submit the proposition to the mass. The Germans everywhere are supporters of the Union, but they are enrolled as minute men, and employed to defy The events, however, which prove to polithe Free States, as easily as if they were ticians the feebleness of American institunot free-soilers in opinion. The action of tions, tend at the same time to the benefit the South is in fact the best demonstration of commerce. The peaceful separation of of the official imbecility of the North. What- the States may be ruinous to American presever the five States who secede can do, the tige, but it is favorable to the abundance twenty-seven States who remain could have and consequent cheapness of cotton. The done better. If Mr. Jefferson Davis could tax imposed by the South of a half-cent a extemporize an army so could Mr. Lincoln. pound will not diminish the supply half so The President of the South never chatters much as an invasion from the North, or an about legality, but states quietly that the effective blockade of the Southern ports. South intends to secede, and if necessary to The States separated are as valuable cuscarry out her intention by the sword. The tomers as the States when combined, while North has five times the population, and the tax on cotton falls as heavily on the twenty times the wealth of the South, while Northern manufacturer, who has a long land her yeomanry lay claim to fighting qualities carriage to pay, as on his English rival. at least equal to those of the planting chiv- The political imbecility which while passing alry. Yet she submits through want of or- the Morrill Tariff neutralizes its effect, is a ganization to an ignominious defeat from men direct gain to Great Britain, for every such with whose policy not one Northern man in bill keeps prices up, while the open frontier ten even professes sympathy. The internal annuls the duties which were to restrict supGovernment of the North is as weak as its ply. The stagnation of business, moreover, external policy. The treasury is empty, and has made money for the moment plentiful the Secretary offers a loan at six per cent. in New York, to the relief of the English At the same time the victorious party, pow- market, which has been oppressed for erless to retain the Union together, is strong months by a drain to the West. Whether enough to perpetrate a gigantic job which the movement will ultimately be favorable buys an interested support at the price of to commerce may reasonably be doubted. national solvency. Pennsylvania at the last A Republic devoted, as the Confederacy will election was believed to be divided in opin-be, to the extension of its dominions, is not ion. To ensure victory to the Republicans, their leaders offered the ironmasters protection, and were rewarded by a majority of ninety thousand votes. To keep the engagement, they passed a bill authorizing a tariff so heavy as to cripple the customs' revenue, and so complicated as to be unworkable. The moment the bill is passed

likely to keep up its production, or keeping it be able to avoid the taxation which is as injurious as a diminution of supply. For the present, however, the tendency of events, though unfavorable to the prestige of American statesmen, is decidedly beneficial to the prospects of the British commerce.

From The Economist, 13 April. THE TRUE ISSUE BETWEEN NORTH AND

SOUTH.

WE are waiting with deep anxiety the next news from America, which will probably decide the question as to peaceable severance or hopeless civil war. It is idle to speculate now, and the best-informed people both here and there seem in complete uncertainty as to the result. For ourselves -menacing as was the aspect of affairs at the date of the last accounts-we adhere to the opinion we formed at the outset; viz., that there will be no reunion and no fighting; and we hold this view because we believe that no really practical ground for compromise exists, and that the Americans are too sensible to shed each others' blood without a clear reason and an adequate object. The only ostensible and sufficient justification for an attempt at coercion would lie in the knowledge that reunion was desired by a large and respectable minority in the South, who were intimidated, silenced, and overborne by mere numbers. But of any such fact there seems no indication.

race.

States and Territories where it does not now exist, then such a ground might be well worth an obstinate struggle and even a long civil war, if there were any reasonable prospect of ultimate success; because if slavery were strictly and forever confined within its present limits there is every hope that it must ultimately die out. An object like this, if attainable, would be worth fighting for, and might perhaps justify even civil war:-but what ground is there for assuming that any such distinct and noble aim is in the heart of Mr. Lincoln's government when they speak of coercion? Mr. Lincoln, indeed, contends for the right of Congress to make laws for all unannexed, unsettled, and unadmitted territories :-he has never, so far as we are aware, taken up the high ground of saying that slavery shall not be introduced into any new districts. This is the ground of the Abolitionists; but it is not the ground of the Republican party as a whole; still less is it the ground of the mass of the people in the Northern and Western States. On the contrary, nearly every compromise yet proposed-and all the proposed compromises have come from the North or from the Border States-has stipulated that slavery shall. only be prohibited north of a certain line (north of which slavery cannot profitably exist, and consequently need not

Meanwhile, do not let us deceive ourselves by permitting the controversy between the old Federation and the seceding States to be placed, even in our own minds, upon false issues. As the matter at present stands, both parties seem wedded to a griev-be prohibited);-but that south of this line, ous economic error and to a sad social in- its introduction shall be left to the decision justice and moral wrong. The North is of the inhabitants themselves. Some of the bent upon a Protective Commercial policy, suggested compromises, indeed, have conwhich will injure themselves and wrong the tained a proviso that no new territory shall Western States; and the South is bent upon be acquired without the consent of the maperpetuating and extending slavery, which jority of all the States, both Slave and Free. will be fatal to their future prosperity, and But we can scarcely regard this as likely to is a shameful iniquity against the African be at all effective in really limiting the area We do not mean for one moment to of slavery, when we consider, first, the enorput the two follies and the two wrongs on a mous space already acquired and peculiarly level as regards either their social gravity or adapted for negro cultivation; and, sectheir moral heinousness, especially as the ondly, that even the North and Northone must soon be abandoned, while the Western States have never yet, as a whole, other may be persisted in for generations. shown the slightest reluctance to the extenBut, in the lines they have respectively sion of the dominion of the Republic in any taken, each of the two confederations, while direction or by any means. Do not, thereconciliating one of our predilections, have fore, let us give our sympathies to those done grievous violence to another. The Northerners who would appear to be preNorthern States are Freesoilers and Pro- paring to maintain the old Union by force, tectionists: the Southern States are Slave- on the erroneous impression that they are holders and Free-traders. We can, there- about to fight on the grand, intelligible, and fore, contemplate their relative position with worthy ground of confining slavery forever some degree of calm impartiality. Do not, within its present area. If it were so, and then, let us mistake their several aims and there were a fair prospect of success, we principles, and give our sympathies under could almost wish them God speed, though mistaken pleas. If, indeed, the Northern a terrible civil war was the only means to Federation were prepared heartily, reso- their cherished end. But, alas! it is not lutely, and unanimously-as no doubt a few so. Abhorrence of negro-slavery, as we of their citizens are-to take their stand on feel it here, and determination at all hazthe solemn principle of prohibiting and pre-ards to clear their nation's fame and future venting the extension of Slavery to any from so foul a blot, are sentiments confined