may change its form of government to any other, if it wills to do so, and if it can do so.

There are two other points on which these Northern statesmen and logicians also insist, and these two other points are at any rate better worth an argument than that which touches the question of revolution. It being settled that secession on the part of the Southerners is revolution, it is argued, firstly, that no occasion for revolution had been given by the North to the South; and, secondly, that the South has been dishonest in its revolutionary tactics. Men certainly should not raise a revolution for nothing; and it may certainly be declared that whatever men do, they should do honestly.

But in that matter of the cause and ground for revolution, it is so very easy for either party to put in a plea that shall be satisfactory to itself! Mr. and Mrs. Jones each had a separate story. Mr. Jones was sure that the right lay with him: but Mrs. Jones was no less sure. No doubt the North had done much for the South;-had earned money for it; had fed it ;-and had moreover in a great measure fostered all its bad habits. It had not only been generous to the South, but over-indulgent. But also it had continually irritated the South by meddling with that which the Southerners believed to be a question absolutely private to themselves. The matter was illustrated to me by a New Hampshire man who was conversant with black bears. At the hotels in the New Hampshire mountains it is customary to find black bears chained to poles. These bears are caught among the hills, and are thus imprisoned for the amusement of the hotel guests. "Them Southerners," said my friend," are jist as one as that 'ere bear. We feeds him and gives him a house and his belly is ollers full. But then, jist becase he's a black bear, we're ollers a poking him with sticks, and a' course the beast is kinder riled. He wants to be back to the mountains. He wouldn't have his belly filled, but he'd have his own way. It's jist so with them Southerners."

It is of no use proving to any man or to any nation that they have got all they should want, if they have not got all that they do want. If a servant desires to go, it is of no avail to show him that he has all he can desire in his present place. The Northerners say that they have given no offence to the Southerners, and that therefore the South is wrong to raise a revolution. The very fact that the North is the North, is an offence to the South. As long as Mr. and Mrs. Jones were one in heart and one in feeling, having the same hopes and the same joys, it was well that they should remain together. But when it is

proved that they cannot so live without tearing out each other's eyes, Sir Cresswell Cresswell, the revolutionary institution of domestic life, interferes and separates them. This is the age of such separations. I do not wonder that the North should use its logic to show that it has received cause of offence but given none. But I do think that such logic is thrown away. The matter is not one for argument. The South has thought that it can do better without the North than with it; and if it has the power to separate itself, it must be conceded that it has the right.

And then as to that question of honesty. Whatever men do they certainly should do honestly. Speaking broadly one may say that the rule applies to nations as strongly as to individuals, and should be observed in politics as accurately as in other matters. We must, however, confess that men who are scrupulous in their private dealings do too constantly drop those scruples when they handle public affairs, and especially when they handle them at stirring moments of great national changes. The name of Napoleon III. stands fair now before Europe, and yet he filched the French empire with a falsehood. The union of England and Ireland is a successful fact, but nevertheless it can hardly be said that it was honestly achieved. I heartily believe that the whole of Texas is improved in every sense by having been taken from Mexico and added to the Southern States, but I much doubt whether that annexation was accomplished with absolute honesty. We all reverence the name of Cavour, but Cavour did not consent to abandon Nice to France with clean hands. When men have political ends to gain they regard their opponents as adversaries, and then that old rule of war is brought to bear, Deceit or valour, -either may be used against a foe. Would it were not so! The rascally rule -rascally in reference to all political contests-is becoming less universal than it was. But it still exists with sufficient force to be urged as an excuse; and while it does exist it seems almost needless to show that a certain amount of fraud has been used by a certain party in a revolution. If the South be ultimately successful, the fraud of which it may have been guilty will be condoned by the world.

The Southern or democratic party of the United States had, as all men know, been in power for many years. Either Southern Presidents had been elected, or Northern Presidents with Southern politics. The South for many years had had the disposition of military matters, and the power of distributing military appliances of all descriptions. It is now alleged by the

North that a conspiracy had long been hatching in the South with the view of giving to the Southern States the power of secession whenever they might think fit to secede; and it is further alleged that President after President for years back has unduly sent the military treasure of the nation away from the North down to the South, in order that the South might be prepared when the day should come. That a President with Southern instincts should unduly favour the South, that he should strengthen the South, and feel that arms and ammunition were stored there with better effect than they could be stored in the North, is very probable. We all understand what is the bias of a man's mind, and how strong that bias may become when the man is not especially scrupulous. But I do not believe that any President previous to Buchanan sent military materials to the South with the self-acknowledged purpose of using them against the Union. That Buchanan did so, or knowingly allowed this to be done, I do believe, and I think that Buchanan was a traitor to the country whose servant he was and whose pay he received.

And now, having said so much in the way of introduction, I will begin my journey.

CHAPTER II.

NEWPORT RHODE ISLAND.

WE-the we consisting of my wife and myself-left Liverpool for Boston on the 24th August, 1861, in the "Arabia," one of Cunard's North American mail packets. We had determined that my wife should return alone at the beginning of winter, when I intended to go to a part of the country in which, under the existing circumstances of the war, a lady might not feel herself altogether comfortable. I proposed staying in America over the winter, and returning in the spring; and this programme I have carried out with sufficient

exactness.

The "Arabia" touched at Halifax; and as the touch extended from 11 A.M. to 6 P.M. we had an opportunity of seeing a good deal of that colony;-not quite sufficient to justify me at this critical age in writing a chapter of travels in Nova Scotia, but enough perhaps to warrant a paragraph. It chanced that a cousin of mine was then in command of the troops there, so that we saw the fort with all the honours. A dinner on shore was, I think, a greater treat to us even than this. We also in

spected sundry specimens of the gold which is now being found for the first time in Nova Scotia, as to the glory and probable profits of which the Nova Scotians seemed to be fully alive. But still, I think, the dinner on shore took rank with us as the most memorable and meritorious of all that we did and saw at Halifax. At seven o'clock on the morning but one after that, we were landed at Boston.

At Boston I found friends ready to receive us with open arms, though they were friends we had never known before. I own that I felt myself burdened with much nervous anxiety at my first introduction to men and women in Boston. I knew what the feeling there was with reference to England, and I knew also how impossible it is for an Englishman to hold his tongue and submit to dispraise of England. As for going among a people whose whole minds were filled with affairs of the war, and saying nothing about the war,-I knew that no resolution to such an effect could be carried out. If one could not trust oneself to speak, one should have stayed at home in England. I will here state that I always did speak out openly what I thought and felt, and that though I encountered very strong-sometimes almost fierce-opposition, I never was subjected to any thing that was personally disagreeable to me.

In September we did not stay above a week in Boston, having been fairly driven out of it by the mosquitoes. I had been told that I should find nobody in Boston whom I cared to see, as everybody was habitually out of town during the heat of the latter summer and early autumn; but this was not so. The war and attendant turmoils of war had made the season of vacation shorter than usual, and most of those for whom I asked were back at their posts. I know no place at which an Englishman may drop down suddenly among a pleasanter circle of acquaintance, or find himself with a more clever set of men, than he can do at Boston. I confess that in this respect I think that but few towns are at present more fortunately circumstanced than the capital of the Bay State, as Massachusetts is called, and that very few towns make a better use of their advantages. Boston has a right to be proud of what it has done for the world of letters. It is proud; but I have not found that its pride was carried too far.

Boston is not in itself a fine city, but it is a very pleasant city. They say that the harbour is very grand and very beautiful. It certainly is not so fine as that of Portland in a nautical point of view, and as certainly it is not as beautiful. It is the entrance from the sea into Boston of which people say

so much; but I did not think it quite worthy of all I had heard. In such matters, however, much depends on the peculiar light in which scenery is seen. An evening light is generally the best for all landscapes; and I did not see the entrance to Boston harbour by an evening light. It was not the beauty of the harbour of which I thought the most; but of the tea that had been sunk there, and of all that came of that successful speculation. Few towns now standing have a right to be more proud of their antecedents than Boston.

But as I have said, it is not specially interesting to the eye -what new town, or even what simply adult town, can be so? There is an Athenæum, and a State Hall, and a fashionable street, Beacon Street, very like Piccadilly as it runs along the Green Park, and there is the Green Park opposite to this Piccadilly, called Boston Common. Beacon Street and Boston Common are very pleasant. Excellent houses there are, and large churches, and enormous hotels; but of such things as these a man can write nothing that is worth the reading. The traveller who desires to tell his experience of North America must write of people rather than of things.

As I have said, I found myself instantly involved in discussions on American politics, and the bearing of England upon those politics. "What do you think, you in England-what do you all believe will be the upshot of this war ?" That was the question always asked in those or other words. "Secession, certainly," I always said, but not speaking quite with that abruptness. "And you believe, then, that the South will beat the North ?" I explained that I, personally, had never so thought, and that I did not believe that to be the general idea. Men's opinions in England, however, were too divided to enable me to say that there was any prevailing conviction on the matter. My own impression was, and is, that the North will, in a military point of view, have the best of the contest,will beat the South; but that the Northerners will not prevent secession, let their success be what it may. Should the North prevail after a two years' conflict, the North will not admit the South to an equal participation of good things with themselves, even though each separate rebellious State should return suppliant, like a prodigal son, kneeling on the floor of Congress, each with a separate rope of humiliation round its neck. Such was my idea as expressed then, and I do not know that I have since had much cause to change it.

"We will never give it up," one gentleman said to me—and, indeed, many have said the same, till the whole territory is

66