become so blended with heathen rites as scarcely to be recognized by either native or foreigner as differing from Paganism itself. Thus will all the works of men and Churches perish which are not built on Christ as the chief cor ner-stone. ART. VIII.-THE AMERICAN CRISIS. America before Europe. Agénor de Gasparin. Principles and Interests. By Count MARY L. BOOTH. New York: Charles Scribner, 124 Grand street. 1862. La Reconnaisance du Sud, par A. GRANDGUILLET. Paris: C. Dentu, Palais Royal, 13 et 17 Galere d'Orleans. 1862. La Revolution Americaine de Voilie. Paris: C. Dentu, Palais Royal. 1862. Que L'Europe soit attentive aux Evenements Possibles en Amerique. Par R. F. FRESNEL. Paris: C. Dentu. 1862. Les Blancs et les Noirs en Amerique, et le Coton dans les Deux Mondes. Par l'Auteur de la Paix en Europe par l'Alliance Anglo-Française. Paris: C. Dentu, Libraire, Palais Royale, 13 Galere d'Orleans. 1862. North America. By ANTHONY TROLLOPE, author of "The West Indies and the Spanish Main," etc. New York: Harper & Brothers, Franklin square. 1862. THE American civil war has excited the anxious attention of the whole Christian world. Since the revolutions of 1848, nothing has stirred it so much. Well may it be so, for Americans are the blood relatives of nearly all the peoples of Europe, and America is the best market for many of their products, and, like Egypt of old, the granary whence her frequent deficiencies in corn are supplied. Her millions too are largely, though often scantily, clothed with American cotton. But, selfish as men are, and potent as are the arguments that appeal to clothing and food for the body, there is also in humanity a soul, and America has a mysterious moral influence among the peoples of the old Christian world. The English affect to sneer at the Americans as over-sensitive to foreign criticism. They may be, though fast outgrowing this trait of youth and modesty, but America is not so sensitive to European opinion as Europe is to American fact. A commercial revulsion in the United States jars the business of the world; civil war here produces cotton famines and even bread famines there: but England and France and Russia and Turkey, and the rest of Europe, engage in deadly conflict, and America feels no shock but that of sympathy. It cannot be concealed from the old world, that man in America is emancipated from many restraints and sufferings, which, but for the United States, would have been deemed an unavoidable element of society. It cannot be concealed that there are, and have been for nearly a century in America, whole states, embracing millions of human beings, among whom there is not known to be hunger or nakedness, or any lack of an elementary book education, except in such few instances as to indicate the imbecility, or more likely the intemperance of the sufferers. In extreme cases excess creates famine. That foreigners should refer to these things as worthy of notice seems astonishing to a native American, so accustomed has he become to his blessings. Observe for instance the following from Mr. Trollope: The I do not remember that I ever examined the rooms of an American without finding books or magazines in them. I do not speak here of the houses of my friends, as of course the same remark would apply as strongly in England, but of the houses of persons presumed to earn their bread by the labor of their hands. The opportunity for such examination does not come daily; but when it has been in my power I have made it, and have always found signs of education. Men and women of the classes to which I allude talk of reading and writing as of arts belonging to them as a matter of course, quite as much as the arts of eating and drinking. A porter or a farmer's servant in the States is not proud of reading or writing. It is to him quite a matter of course. coachmen on their boxes, and the boots as they sit in the halls of the hotels, have newspapers constantly in their hands. The young women have them also, and the children. The fact comes home to one at every turn, and at every hour, that the people are an educated people. The whole of this question between the north and south is as well understood by the servants as by their masters, is discussed as vehemently by the private soldiers as by the officers. The politics of the country and the nature of its constitution are familiar to every laborer. The very wording of the Declaration of Independence is in the memory of every lad of sixteen. Boys and girls of a younger age than that know why Slidell and Mason were arrested, and will tell you why they should have been given up, or why they should have been held in durance. The question of the war with England is debated by every native pavior of New York.-North America, p. 271. The natural exclamation of the American, on reading the above is, What is there worthy of notice about that? As we are told by novel writers and tory reviews that the highest classes of Europe have an inimitable refinement of manners that no commoner can ever reach, growing out of an utter unconsciousness of art, so we may claim with more truth, that the American people have a freedom from ostentation in their universal education, from a knowledge that it is their common inheritance, as it ought to be of all men. All this is becoming known by even the people of Europe. It is known that, without a hereditary aristocracy or sovereign, the people have evolved and enjoyed a government as just and discriminating, as strong a protection to life and property, as any in the world, without standing armies in the time of peace, without minute police regulations, without an ostentation of pomp or force. For this reason, in Europe, America has become a talismanic word. Tyrants hate it; the people are familiar with its sound. The former would rejoice in a cataclysm that should bury it forever, and restore the planet to the good old times before 1492; the latter cherish, as among the good times coming, either the thought of emigrating to a transatlantic home, or to see American institutions planted on their own shores. Therefore when the news goes sounding through the nations that the United States are violently broken into two parts, attacking each other with all the deadly hostility of such armies as have from earliest times been led by European despots to gratify the ambition of sovereigns or courts, or to preserve "the balance of power," the intelligence excites in one party gladness, in the other dismay. Those who are jealous of the people in their own country cannot conceal their exultation. They spring at once, with unseemly and most un-British haste, to accord to a horde of rebels the position of "a belligerent power." Their periodicals defend perjury and treason and slavery. Once American slavery was "the vilest that ever saw the sun," now it is excusable, inevitable, or, if wrong, the southern rebels would be glad themselves to be relieved from it. The rebellion proves the folly of democracy. What better could be ex pected of a nation without a hereditary aristocracy, without laws of primogeniture, without an established Church, and with universal education! This is what they have been prophesying for half a century! Is it not written down in long essays and courtly argumentation, that the American republic, being only an organized mob, must, like a mud-house, soon perish? The leading British periodicals of the last twenty-five years, down to the last twelve months, are permeated with furious philippics against slavery; and now that the defenders of slavery have resorted to arms to establish a nation where it cannot be disturbed, these periodicals commend the slaveholders; thus showing that it is not slavery, but the American government and people, that they hate. On the other hand, the people of foreign countries, so far as they become acquainted with the true merits of the great controversy, decidedly sympathise with the free and educated people of America. They are quick to arrive at the conclusion that the merits of the quarrel are the same as of the contests that have often arisen in their own countries-contests between the people and an oligarchy, the majority and those who wished to secure for themselves gain and pleasure wrung out of poorly requited labor. The governments of Europe desire the success of the rebels, because it will divide the American republic into small nations, like the nations in Europe, holding each other in check, often engaged in war, and by their mutual distractions and contests made at least commercially if not politically dependent upon them. The people of Europe, so far as they are enlightened and generous, desire that the United States should succeed in suppressing the rebellion, in order that the only large and truly prosperous popular government in the world may not be humbled and ruined. Their interests as a people are morally identical with our interests. To confirm these representations we might quote pungent paragraphs enough from European periodicals, pamphlets, and volumes, to fill this number of the Quarterly, and then have made only a fitting preface to the great library of volumes on the American question that Europe has already produced. The French pamphlets, whose titles are given at the head of this article, are selected as specimens of the productions of the writers of that country, which was the first to acknowledge the independence of the United States, and our noblest as well as first ally in war and peace. The French Revolution-a terrible thunderstorm, that sweetened the atmosphere and burnt up the corruption of ages-mother of the empire, the Orleanist kingdom, the republic, and the empire again-was born out of the American Revolution; and it is not therefore strange that the heart and mind of France are aroused by our national convulsion. The pamphlet, "La Reconnaisance du Sud," is intensely southern in its argument and style. One cannot resist the impression that it is bought by southern gold. Indeed, it seems like a speech of a rebel recast from the alembic of a Paris savan, with some peculiarly French ornaments and additions. It gives a specious rebel argument on the rightfulness of secession, and then proceeds to attack the European dislike of southern slavery by an assertion that slavery is American, and that the northern states are actually worse in this regard than the southern. He attempts to prove this by the customs of the North. "You may be rich," says M. Grandguillet, "in New York, have your millions even, and be connected by blood with the most aristocratic families of Europe; but if at the extreme end of your finger nails, in the rete mucosum, a keen eye can detect the slightest trace of dark blood-avaunt! You can neither ride in an omnibus, nor be a citizen, father, son, husband, or man." Page after page of such assertions are given to prove his position. Some of the "facts" are so marvelous that nothing but a French brain could have imagined them. We give one of the most pathetic, that no doubt has drawn tears from many a sympathizer with the southern planters, who breed human beings like cattle: "An unhappy creole woman in a northern city, in whom the dark complexion was nearly imperceptible, found herself far from home, and desired to enter an omnibus. She was near her confinement, and not in a very good condition to walk, and for this best of reasons anxious to reach her home. The tender-hearted driver, having some reference, perhaps, to the fee, and seeing that she was richly dressed, allowed her to enter the carriage. An 'evangelical Protestant clergyman' remonstrated. He would not ride with a 'nigger.' In spite of her tears she was ejected. The most unhappy consequences followed, including the death of the child. The |