n of the State, the heart of the people, too, is sad and
awe-stricken. It might be this sorrow and trial were but presages of
greater trials and sorrow to come. What if the sorrow of war is to be
added to the other calamity? Such forebodings have formed the theme of
many a man's talk, and darkened many a fireside. Then came the rapid
orders for ships to arm and troops to depart. How many of us have had to
say farewell to friends whom duty called away with their regiments; on
whom we strove to look cheerfully, as we shook their hands, it might be
for the last time; and whom our thoughts depicted, treading the snows
of the immense Canadian frontier, where their intrepid little band
might have to face the assaults of other enemies than winter and rough
weather! I went to a play one night, and protest I hardly know what was
the entertainment which passed before my eyes. In the next stall was an
American gentleman, who knew me. "Good heavens, sir," I thought, "is it
decreed that you and I are to be authorized to murder each other next
week; that my people shall be bombarding your cities, destroying your
navies, making a hideous desolation of your coast; that our peaceful
frontier shall be subject to fire, rapine, and murder?" "They will never
give up the men," said the Englishman. "They will never give up the
men," said the American. And the Christmas piece which the actors were
playing proceeded like a piece in a dream. To make the grand comic
performance doubly comic, my neighbor presently informed me how one of
the best friends I had in America--the most hospitable, kindly, amiable
of men, from whom I had twice received the warmest welcome and the most
delightful hospitality--was a prisoner in Fort Warren, on charges by
which his life perhaps might be risked. I think that was the most dismal
Christmas fun which these eyes ever looked on.

Carry out that notion a little farther, and depict ten thousand, a
hundred thousand homes in England saddened by the thought of the coming
calamity, and oppressed by the pervading gloom. My next-door neighbor
perhaps has parted with her son. Now the ship in which he is, with a
thousand brave comrades, is ploughing through the stormy midnight ocean.
Presently (under the flag we know of) the thin red line in which her
boy forms a speck, is winding its way through the vast Canadian snows.
Another neighbor's boy is not gone, but is expecting orders to sail;
and some one else, besides the circ