agreeing with him to abide by Johnson's authority;
a piece of swindling quite as detestable in its meanness as the using of
loaded dice. Neither can I see that the conduct of a majority of the
British people, in fomenting Abolition for many years, and then giving
her aid and countenance to our Southern rebels, on the flimsy, and, at
best, brazenly selfish plea of the Morrill Tariff, is less detestable or
less mean. We may regret to see a vice in individuals tolerated in high
places; but when the blackest inconsistency, and the most contemptible
avarice are elevated by a Christian nation into principles of conduct
toward another nation struggling to free the oppressed, we may well
doubt whether another period has not approached in England, over which
the future historiographer may not sigh as deeply as over that of
Charles the Second.

I attach no serious value to the efforts of the Marquis of Worcester,
save as illustrating the principle with which I prefaced this article:
that according to the mental peculiarities of the most vigorous of
races--the Indo-Germanic above others--there is a tendency in certain
active minds to generalize and draw practical conclusions, not
unfrequently centuries in advance of the wants of their age. The partial
and premature forcing of these principles into practice, is sometimes
quoted in after years as derogatory to the merit due to modern
inventors, and as illustrating to a degree never contemplated by him who
uttered it, the maxim that there's 'nothing new under the sun.'
_Nothing?_ Why, _everything_ is new under the sun when it first assumes
fit time and place. Were this not true, we might as well return to
'Nature's Centenary of Inventions,' as set forth by a pleasant pen in
_Household Words_:

'Before the first clumsy sail was hoisted by a savage hand, the
little Portuguese man-of-war, that frailest and most graceful
nautilus boat, had skimmed over the seas with all its feathery
sails set in the pleasant breeze; and before the great British
Admiralty marked its anchors with the Broad Arrow, mussels and
pinna had been accustomed to anchor themselves by flukes to the
full as effective as the iron one in the Government dockyards. The
duck used oars before we did; and rudders were known by every fish
with a tail, countless ages before human pilots handled tillers;
the floats on the fishermen's nets were pre-figured in the bladders