ters of England it would be rash to speak in
general terms, Stuart Mill and Cairns have supported your cause as
heartily as Cobden and Bright. I am not aware that any political or
economical writer of equal eminence has taken the other side. The
leading reviews and periodicals have exhibited, as might have been
expected, very various shades of opinion; but, with the exception of the
known organs of violent Toryism, they have certainly not breathed hatred
of this nation. In those which specially represent our rising intellect,
the intellect which will probably govern us ten years hence, I should
say the preponderance of the writing had been on the Federal side. In
the University of Oxford the sympathies of the High-Church clergy and of
the young Tory gentry are with the South; but there is a good deal of
Northern sentiment among the young fellows of our more liberal colleges,
and generally in the more active minds. At the University Debating Club,
when the question between the North and the South was debated, the vote,
though I believe in a thin house, was in favor of the North. Four
Professors are members of the Union and Emancipation Society. And if
intellect generally has been somewhat coldly critical, I am not sure
that it has departed from its true function. I am conscious myself that
I may be somewhat under the dominion of my feelings, that I may be even
something of a fanatic in this matter. There may be evil as well as good
in the cause which, as the good preponderates, claims and receives the
allegiance of my heart. In that case, intellect, in pointing out the
evil, only does its duty.

One English writer has certainly raised his voice against you with
characteristic vehemence and rudeness. As an historical painter and a
humorist Carlyle has scarcely an equal: a new intellectual region seemed
to open to me when I read his "French Revolution." But his philosophy,
in its essential principle, is false. He teaches that the mass of
mankind are fools,--that the hero alone is wise,--that the hero,
therefore, is the destined master of his fellow-men, and that their only
salvation lies in blind submission to his rule,--and this without
distinction of time or circumstance, in the most advanced as well as in
the most primitive ages of the world. The hero-despot can do no wrong.
He is a king, with scarcely even a God above him; and if the moral law
happens to come into collision with his actions, so much the worse for
the m