show that you could do something very great
if you would. There would be no credit in a man born deaf and dumb
having observed a discreet silence. To give England, therefore, the
prestige for this high quality, it was necessary that she should seem
to bestir herself. The British lion must have got up, rolled his eyes
fearfully, and even lashed his tail, before he resolved on the masterly
inactivity of lying down again.

In Knickerbocker's 'History of New York' we have a very graphic
description of the ship in which the first Dutch explorers sailed for
the shores of North America. "The vessel was called the _Goede Vrouw_
(Good Woman), a compliment to the wife of the President of the West
India Company, who was allowed by every one, except her husband, to be
a sweet-tempered lady--when not in liquor. It was, in truth, a gallant
vessel of the most approved Dutch construction--made by the ablest
ship-carpenters of Amsterdam, who, as is well known, always model their
ships after the fair forms of their countrywomen. Accordingly, it had
one hundred feet in the keel, one hundred feet in the beam, and one
hundred feet from the bottom of the stern-post to the taffrel. Like the
beauteous model, who was declared to be the greatest belle of
Amsterdam, it was full in the bows, with a pair of enormous cat-heads, a
copper-bottom, and withal a prodigious poop."

It is, however, with her sailing qualities we are more interested than
with her build. "Thus she made as much lee-way as head-way--could
get along nearly as fast with the wind ahead as at poop, and was
particularly great in a calm." Would not one say, in reading this
description, that the humorist was giving prophetically a picture of the
England of the present day, making as much lee-way as head-way, none the
better, wherever the winds came from, and only great in a calm? The very
last touch he gives is exquisite. "Thus gallantly furnished, she floated
out of harbour sideways, like a majestic goose." Can anything be more
perfect; can anything more neatly typify the course the vessel of the
State is taking, "floating out sideways, like a majestic goose!" amidst
the jeers and mockeries of beholding Europe.

Our whole policy consists in putting forward some hypothetical case, in
which, if certain other states were to do something which would cause
another country to do something else, then England would be found in
that case---- God forgive me!

I was going to quote some of t