Every mail brings fresh proof of English antipathy to the Federal Union. It is now only a question of time when we are to be attacked by the great Abolition nation. John Bull is hammering away at his iron-clads and doing his best in every direction to aid the aristocratic and despotic principle, so dear to his soul--nay, which _is_ his very soul and self. In China he is helping the Imperialists, whose awful and heart-rending atrocities go beyond all belief--in the West, the slaveholder meets with his warmest sympathy. How well--how human--how Christian he looks _now_ with his sheepskin thrown aside--this selfish, brutal savage, howling for cotton and trade and gold as though all truth, honor, and nobility were as dirt before them.
For all this, England will have its reward. In the history of nations, 1862 shall be marked as the year of British falsehood, infamy, and guilt. _Upharsin!_
DEAR CONTINENTAL: Curious fellows those Pre-Raphaelites!
Do you remember Holman Hunt's picture of the Light of the World? I remember that one evening at the Century, among a cheerful group of Leutze, Durand, Gifford, Mignot, and others, you once called it a pre-Raphaelight of the World!
Well, 'twas far away in Switzerland, _tilly hi ho--tilly i o!_ all in the mountains high, several years ago, and I was touring and sketching somewhere along in the Oberland. I found at last a retired village without English. No--not without them altogether--there was one little man with a _barba rossa_, and he was pre-Raphaeliting round for a subject.
He found it at last in a small rock about nine inches by twelve--full of sentiment, tone, color, piety, feeling, reality, child-like faith and trustingness.
Day after day he painted. When it rained he worked under an umbrella; when it sun-shone on him he toiled in the heat.
I pitied him. 'Smith,' said I, 'what do you do that for? Why don't you pick your stone up and take it home with you? Put it in your trunk and carry it back to London. It isn't a landscape, you know.'
'By Jove!' quoth he, 'I never thought of that. So I will, d'ye know. 'Ow very hodd! Vell! you Yankees are werry hinwentive, I must hadmit.'
And he did; and the portrait of the rock went into the 'Annual Exhibish,' and was thought to be the deepest-toned thing 'out.'