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 favor 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 honors. A dinner on shore was, I think, a greater treat to us even than this. We also inspected 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 one's self 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 anything 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 musquitoes. 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 harbor 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 harbor by an evening light. It was not the beauty of the harbor of which I thought the most, but of the tea which 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 Atheneum, 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 traveler 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 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 meand, indeed, many have said the same "till the whole territory is again united from the Bay to the Gulf. It is impossible that we should allow of two nationalities within those limits." "And do you think it possible," I asked, "that you should receive back into your bosom this people which you now hate with so deep a hatred, and receive them again into your arms as brothers on equal terms? Is it in accordance with experience that a conquered people

should be so treated, and that, too, a people whose every habit of life is at variance with the habits of their presumed conquerors? When you have flogged them into a return of fraternal affection, are they to keep their slaves or are

they to abolish them?" "No," said my friend, "it may not

be practicable to put those rebellious States at once on an equality with ourselves. For a time they will probably be treated as the Territories are now treated." (The Territories are vast outlying districts belonging to the Union, but not as yet endowed with State governments or a participation in the United States Congress.) "For a time they must, perhaps, lose their full privileges; but the Union will be anxious to readmit them at the earliest possible period." "And as to the slaves?" I asked again. 'Let them emigrate to Liberia―back to their own country." I could not say that I thought much of the solution of the difficulty. It would, I suggested, overtask even the energy of America to send out an emigration of four million souls, to provide for their wants in a new and uncultivated country, and to provide, after that, for the terrible gap made in the labor market of the Southern States. "The Israelites went back from bondage," said my friend. But a way was opened for them by a miracle across the sea, and food was sent to them from heaven, and they had among them a Moses for a leader, and a Joshua to fight their battles. I could not but express my fear that the days of such immigrations were over. This plan of sending back the negroes to Africa did not reach me only from one or from two mouths, and it was suggested by men whose opinions respecting their country have weight at home and are entitled to weight abroad. I mention this merely to show how insurmountable would be the difficulty of preventing secession, let which side win that may.

"We will never abandon the right to the mouth of the Mississippi." That, in all such arguments, is a strong point with men of the Northern States-perhaps the point to which they all return with the greatest firmness. It is that on which Mr. Everett insists in the last paragraph of the oration which he made in New York on the 4th of July, 1861. "The Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers," he says, "with their hundred tributaries, give to the great central basin of our continent its character and destiny. The outlet of this system lies between the States of Tennessee and Missouri, of Mississippi and Arkansas, and through the