er had the mutual interchange of literary gifts from the one people
to the other been so active as during the years preceding the outbreak
of the Great Conspiracy. So close was the communication of thought and
feeling, that it seemed as if there were hardly need of a submarine
cable to stretch its nervous strands between two national brains that
were locked in Siamese union by the swift telegraph of thought. We
reprinted each other's books, we made new reputations for each other's
authors, we wrote in each other's magazines, and introduced each other's
young writers to our own several publics. Thought echoed to thought,
voice answered to voice across the Atlantic.

But for one fatal stain upon our institutions,--a stain of which we were
constantly reminded, as the one thing that shamed all our
pretensions,--it seemed as if the peaceful and prosperous development of
the great nation sprung from the loins of England were accepted as a
gain to universal civilization. In the fulness of time the heir of Great
Britain's world-shadowing empire came among us to receive the wide and
cordial welcome which we could afford to give without compromising our
republicanism, and he to receive without lessening his dignity. It was
the seal upon the _entente cordiale_ which seemed to have at last
established itself between the thinkers as well as the authorities of
the two countries.

A few months afterwards came the great explosion which threatened the
eternal rending asunder of the Union. That the British people had but an
imperfect understanding of the quarrel, we are ready to believe. That
they were easily misled as to some of the motives and intentions of the
North is plain enough. But this one fact remains: Every one of them
knew, by public, official statements, that what _the South_ meant to do
was to build a new social and political order on Slavery,--recognized,
proclaimed, boasted of, theoretically justified, and practically
incorporated with its very principle of existence. They might have their
doubts about the character of the North, but they could have none about
the principles or intentions of the South. That ought to have settled
the question for civilized Europe. It would have done so, but that
jealousy of the great self-governing state swallowed up every other
consideration.

We will not be unjust nor ungrateful. We have as true friends, as brave
and generous advocates of our sacred cause, in Great Britain as our
fath