chiefs wore white waistcoats, gave red cloaks and broken meat to old
women, and would have lopped off three hundred years from Old England's
life, by pushing her back to the early days of Henry VIII., when the
religious houses flourished, and when the gallows was a perennial plant,
bearing fruit that was _not_ for the healing of the nations. Some of the
cleverest of the younger members of the aristocracy belonged to the new
organization, and a great genius wrote some delightful novels to show
their purpose, and to illustrate their manner of how-not-to-do-it in
grappling with the grand social questions of the age. In "Coningsby"
they sing canticles and carry about the boar's head; in "Sibyl" they
sing hymns to the Holy Virgin and the song of labor, and steal
title-deeds, after setting houses on fire to distract attention from
their immediate object; and in "Tancred" they go on pilgrimage to the
Holy Sepulchre, by way of reviving their faith. All this is so well
done, that Young England will survive in literature, and be the source
of edification, long after there shall be no more left of the dust of
its chiefs than there is of the dust of Cheops or Caesar. For all these
youths are already vanished, leaving no more traces than you would find
of the flowers that bloomed in the days of their lives. Young Germany
went out immediately after the failure of the revolutionists of 1848-9.
Young France thought it had triumphed in the fall of the Orleans
monarchy, but had only taken the first long step toward making its own
fall complete; and now some of its early members are of the firmest
supporters of the new phase of imperialism, the only result of the
Revolution of February that has given signs of endurance. Young England
went out as soberly and steadily as it had lived. The select few who
composed it died like gentlemen, and were as polite as Lord Chesterfield
in the article of death. Some of them turned Whigs, and have held office
under Lord Palmerston; and others are Tories, and expect to hold office
under Lord Derby, when he shall form his third ministry. Young America,
the worst of these youths, and the latest born, was never above an
assassin in courage, or in energy equal to more than the plundering of a
hen-roost. The fruits of his exertions are to be seen in some of the
incidents of the Secession War, and they were not worth the gathering.

The world had settled down into the belief, that, after all, a man was
not mu