d
egotistic or intrusive,--still more for anything erroneous or unfair in
my statements or point of view,--I must commit myself to the candid
construction of my reader, be he American or English, be he on the same
side of the question as myself, or on the opposite one.

W. M. ROSETTI.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: I remember meeting at dinner, just about this time, a near
relative of the American ambassador, Mr. Adams. I expressed myself as
anxious, but barely able, to believe that the Northerners would yet gain
the day, and asked whether he candidly supposed they would. His emphatic
"Certainly" surprised me at the time, and remained in my mind as an
almost sublime instance of a true citizen's inability to "despair of the
Republic." It soon turned out to be a deserved rebuke to any who
desponded, along with myself, and finally prophetic. No doubt there were
thousands of Americans who could, even in those dark days, with equal
conviction have pronounced that "Certainly," and whose very certainty
was the one thing needed and able to make the thing certain indeed.]

[Footnote B: As some time may have elapsed, and some change in the state
of facts occurred, before this article appears in print, I add that it
was completed early in October.]

[Footnote C: Probably many of my American readers are aware that Punch,
after doing its little best to make Lincoln ridiculous (which perhaps
history will pronounce no easy job) throughout his administration,
recanted as soon as he had been murdered, and made the _amende
honorable_ in terms as handsome as the case admitted of. It is one more
instance of the mania which some writers have for saying ill-natured and
unfair things, which they themselves must know to be not the real
opinion which they would profess under circumstances when their _amour
propre_ becomes enlisted on the same side as candor.]

[Footnote D: Of course I very often employ the term "English," as
meaning "the natives of all or any parts of the United Kingdom," without
making nice distinctions between English, Scotch, and Irish. Such is the
case here. As a matter of fact, however, I presume that America and the
Federal Government have found and find somewhat more sympathy in
Scotland and Ireland than in England: the Scotch, spite of their
"clannish" tendencies, have a certain democratic bias as well (chiefly,
perhaps, evidenced and fostered by their religious organization); and
the Irish, disaffected as they are to