Though the queen's advocate was ill, there were Sir William Atherton, the Attorney General, and Sir Roundell Palmer, the Solicitor-General, to refer to for law, and Lord Russell, at any rate, was in possession of the legal opinion of Mr. Collier, Counsel to the British Admiralty. Between Mr. Adams's first complaint to Lord Russell, and the too late order from the latter to seize “Number 290,” there was a lapse of five weeks-a sufficient time to allow "No. 290" to escape, to be supplied, while in the Irish Sea, with the muniments of war, and to start, as the Alabama, to commit piratical depredations upon United States merchant vessels. In a word, at the very least, Lord Russell, whose lapse of duty is the lapse of the British Government, was as culpably tardy and careless, as he was officiously hasty and over-vigilant, some time before, in the case of the Nashville, at Southampton. When Parliament meets, this question will be discussed, no doubt, and in the presence of Mr. Laird, who violated the law in building a Confederate war vessel, and of Mr. Collier, whose opinion, as a lawyer, declared that the vessel ought to be detained by the collector at Liverpool. We should like to hear Palmerston's defence of Russell's neglect of duty; it cannot be very hearty, for these two publicists are rivals, though colleagues, and hate each other with very polite earnestness. One point must not be lost sight of. Though the order to detain the Alabama reached Liverpool after she had ran out to sea, its being sent is an admission by the British Government that she was built and equipped in violation of the law. The Daily News, of the 24th December, discussing this topic, declares that it remains for the British Government" to repair, as far as possible, the injury, and to prevent its recurrence. In cases such as this what is to be done? The Confederate Government has violated the sovereignty of this country by getting a man-of-war built in a British port. This is an offence against our national dignity. What is the remedy? Does it not entitle us to demand an apology and compensation? And what compensation can be more fit than the disarmament of the vessel, and the payment of such damages as may be required to satisfy the claims for the Federal and neutral property which has been destroyed? If these demands are justified by the law of nations, it is our obvious duty to make them without delay." This is a conclusion at which Lord Russell may not readily arrive, but it is a sound, rational, and inevitable conclusion from the premises. From The (London) News, 6 Jan. that it will allow any foreign power to insult Is the government of this country so weak our sovereignty by using our ports as places in which to fit out cruisers against a nation with which we are at peace? Are the ministers or are the people of this country prepared to follow this rule of conduct to its legitimate conclusion? Suppose that some Mexican, Mr. Butcher, should manage to get a man-of-war built at Southampton, and should contrive to get her armed by sending a barque laden with guns to some of the Azores, thence to be transhipped to the Mexican Alabama; suppose that some Mexican Semmes should then hoist the Mexican flag, and bear down upon the first French transport conveying reinforcements to Gen. Forey at Vera Cruz, take the soldiers prisoners, sink, burn, or destroy the transportwhat would the Emperor of the French say to such a proceeding? Would he be satisfied with the reply that the French must remember that they are at war, and that the prize courts of Mexico are open to them? Would he not have reason to insist that England is bound to see that her ports are not used by either of the belligerents for of fensive purposes es ? The Emperor Napoleon would no doubt say to the British Government, Make your choice. Will you have neutrality or war? If you desire to remain neutral, you must maintain neutrality. Like every other nation you have enacted laws to prevent any one, whether a citizen or a foreigner, from using your ports to equip ships of war to cruise against either of two belligerents. It is your duty as a neutral, to execute that law. Execute that law, and I am willing to remain your friend. But if you are either too weak or not willing to execute it, I must consider you my enemy and declare war against you. It may be, he might add, that there is a difficulty in obtaining evidence to convict those who violate such laws as forbid the fitting out of ships. But that is immaterial. The duty of the British Government is obvious. Their duty is to remonstrate with the Mexican Government which has connived at their citizens' violating the municipal laws of England which have been passed in order to maintain neutrality; and to insist that any vessel which has been so illegally fitted out shall be disarmed. Remembering the power of the French Emperor and the pride of the French nation, there can be no doubt as to the course which would be pursued if any Mexican Alabama were to be built in any British port in order to prey upon French commerce or to capture French transports. POETRY.-Emerson's Boston Hymn, read 1 Jan., 338. Delaroche's Picture of Marie Antoinette, 383. Lines for Music, 372. Treason's Last Device, 382. The Reveille, 382. The Coachman of the "Skylark," 383. The Engine-Driver to his Engine, 383. The Lady and the Knight, 384. The Long-Ago, 384. SHORT ARTICLES.-Memoirs of M. Sanson, 344. Dearth of Paper, 354. The Great Tienn-Ching-Chow, 376. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL, SON, & CO., BOSTON. For Six Dollars a year, in advance, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded free of postage. Complete sets of the First Series, in thirty-six volumes, and of the Second Series, in twenty volumes, handsomely bound, picked ia neat boxes, and delivered in all the principal cities, free of expense of freight, are for sale at two dollars a volume. ANY VOLUME may be had separately, at two dollars, bound, or a dollar and a halfin numbers. ANY NUMBER may be had for 13 cents; and it is well worth while for subscribers or purchasers to complete any broken volumes they may have, and thus greatly enhance their value. BOSTON HYMN. The following is the hymn written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and read at the great Emancipation meeting in Boston, on 1 Jan. THE word of the Lord by night And filled their hearts with flame. God said,-I am tired of kings, Up to my ear the morning brings Think ye I made this ball A field of havoc and war, Where tyrants great and tyrants small Lo! I uncover the land Which I hid of old time in the West, As the sculptor uncovers his statue, When he has wrought his best. I show Columbia the rocks Which dip their foot in the seas And soar to the air-borne flocks Of clouds, and the boreal fleece. I will divide my goods, Call in the wretch and slave: I will have never a noble, Go, cut down trees in the forest, And build me a wooden house. Call the people together, The young men and the sires, The digger in the harvest-fields, Hireling, and him that hires. And here in a pine state-house They shall choose men to rule In every needful faculty, In church and state and school. Lo, now! if these poor men Can govern the land and sea, And make just laws below the sun, As planets faithful be. And ye shall succor men ; 'Tis nobleness to serve; Help them who cannot help again; I break your bonds and masterships, Free be his heart and hand henceforth I cause from every creature His proper good to flow: So much as he is and doeth, So much he shall bestow. But, laying his hands on another Pay ranson to the owner, And fill the bag to the brim. O North! give him beauty for rags, With Freedom's image and name. Up! and the dusky race That sat in darkness long- For, in daylight or in dark, Atlantic Monthly. DELAROCHE'S PICTURE OF MARIE ANTOINETTE. FAIR and fearless, sad and stately, discrowned Queen, so queenly yet, Awing half the bloody rabble for their fiercest triumph met. Royal arms down drooping quiet on the dingy prison dress, Royal forehead showing steadfast 'neath the sorrow-silvered tress. Wolfish eyes are glaring round her, hatred hisses insult coarse: She will neither faint nor falter, yielding to the torrent's force. Austria's, daughter, France's lady, pleads not to that common throng: She will trust to Time and Heaven to avenge her bitter wrong. On the cheek no flush of terror-on the lip no sobbing breath, In her calm, contemptuous patience, pacing queenly to her death. Something in her eye has power even that tossing sea to stem; None of all those clenching fingers dare to touch her garment's hem. Oh, the mighty spell of genius! after all these troubled years. At the touch of the enchanter the old drama From The Spectator. ting together our information from many UNIVERSITY INTELLECTUAL CHARAC- quarters (such as "Gibbon's Autobiogra TERISTICS. LORD BACON has told us that one of the most valuable additions to true historical literature would be supplied by a constant series of characters. These characters in Bacon's opinion belong to professions and institutions no less than to individuals; and in a continuous series of them, executed by competent hands, we might have valuable materials for such systems of sociology and ethology as Mr. Mill has shadowed out with a kind of prophetic obscurity-so far as they will ever be attainable by man. It is admitted, in a rough and general way, that there are such distinctive characteristics chiselled into the very substance of men's natures in after life by the social and inteltectual training of our several universities. This is felt especially by those persons whose station requires them to pass rapid and decisive judgments upon the characters of men, and in doing so to draw largely upon certain practical generalizations assumed as axioms. The great lawyer, the statesman, the dignified ecclesiastic, has pretty generally his own view of the kind of man likely to be formed by a particular university. An eminent prelate, now deceased, is said almost to have written over the portals of Fulham, "No Dublin man need apply." Among legal men a pretty general prejudice existed against Oxford up to a few years ago. At the present moment the veteran statesman, himself of Cambridge and Edinburgh, who knows public life so thoroughly, is supposed to consider an Oxford man, cæteris paribus, rather more likely to succeed in Parliament or diplomacy. phies," "Gray's Letters," and " Swift's Life,") we should be inclined to say that Oxford was the most ignorant and bigoted, Cambridge the most drunken and brutal, Dublin the best instructed, yet most savage, At Oxford they drank most port wine, at Cambridge most ale, at Dublin most spirits; at Oxford most bishop, at Cambridge most egg-flip, at Dublin most hot punch. At Oxford a vice-chancellor is said to have been unable to walk in the presence of royalty, when it honored the university with a sudden visit, and we hear of fellows of Magdalen eating and drinking in disgusting rivalry until their stomachs touched the high table! At Cambridge dinner began at twelve o'clock, and drinking at two, with no particular time of cessation. At Dublin the fun seems to have been livelier, and the fighting more ferocious. Even then a few eminent men were always absorbing the better elements latent in the universities. At Cambridge Waterland pursued his theological studies with intensity of purpose and singleness of aim; the poet Gray is the central figure in a group of elegant scholars; Kirke White, the pure and gentle, was reading himself into his grave at a period when Oxford philosophy was represented by two questions in the first part of Aldrich, and Oxford scholarship by such an examination as Lord Eldon has reported. At Oxford, Adam Smith and Southey seem to have been unhappy; but Bishops Horne, Lowth, and Heber, Lord Eldon, and Jones, have spoken well of the place of their education. We are inclined to suppose that Dublin, during this period of darkness, must have been far in advance of her sisters. The fellows and scholars of that university always numbered a succession of eminent men in Church and State. The generous spirit of competition was never extinct, without which a university must soon become a pestilential moral swamp. The names of Berkely and Burke are the most conspicuous; but they by no means stand alone upon the roll of Trinity College. An attempt to bring together some obvious enough characteristics, moral and intellectual, of the greater universities-Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin-may not be without interest and utility. The task might not have been very difficult in the last century. Two representations have been given of university life at that period, one by Bishop Lowth, of excessive brightness; The beginning of the present century was another by Dr. Vicesimus Knox, of repulsive distinguished by a marked revival of the blackness. Perhaps both were true from academic spirit, especially at Oxford. Dr. different point of views; but we fear that the Cyril Jackson first, afterwards a number of master of Tunbridge School drew more from enlightened men, arranged the class-list systhe life than the professor of poetry. Put-tem. In so doing, with true English tact, they brought about "no solution of conti- | power to no common elevation; but which, nuity." They accepted the standard of intellectual training which had been traditional in Oxford since the Reformation, and which was accepted without question by all the superior minds in the place. Logic, the Aristotelian ethics, ancient history and politics, a knowledge, rather elegant and intelligent than critical, of the Greek and Latin poets, become the actual, as it had long been the ideal, standard of Oxford teaching. in pure love of Christ, stooped to the school and the penitentiary, waiting through all misrepresentation and unpopularityfrowned upon by authority, and hissed alike by the vulgar and the free, for the impartial judgment of the day which is not man's. We have been carried at once beyond our strength and beyond our intentions. We must rapidly pass from causes to effectsfrom general principles to particular results. It will readily be seen that this system acThe Oxford man of a few years ago was, counts for much in the subsequent history as we all know, mediæval, romantic, someof Oxford. Such a course as this, narrow times Romanizing. If in orders, he restored indeed, but admirable in its very narrow- and ritualized until he brought his parish ness, must create a habit of free thought. A man might have mastered it with exquisite thoroughness, and yet be grossly ignorant in the modern sense of the word. Yet he must have been strong in all his ignorance, ignorant perhaps of facts, but with a mind full of thought and principles. It will be remembered that this recognized current of academical education met with another current a sort of ropy film appears, and forms into of traditional thought-the Anglican Church spirit. The air that blows over Magdalen Tower, as Sir Walter Scott says, has never been favorable to the growth of Puritanism. The Church movement at Oxford has been attributed to we know not what underhand Jesuitism. We rather believe that Newmanism was the birthday of philosophy at Oxford. It is not ours to tread further upon this delicate ground. It is for stronger and subtler pens, in years that are still future, to trace the records of that new Port Royal in an opposite direction to its prototype, of which Dr. Pusey was the Jansen and Saint Cyran, Manning the Arnauld, and Newman -we were nearly saying--the Pascal. By the will of a king the plowshare was passed over the old Port Royal; by the will of a people, or rather, of God, the plowshare seems destined to pass, in a different sense, over the system which our sturdy Protestantism has been taught to identify with Rome. But history, always just, if always cold, will tell, in the one case, as in the other, of lofty spirits given to God with no grudging devotion; of minds which, from severe self-inspection, learned the secret of an ethical subtlety and refinement unmatched in modern times; of ambition, which might, in some instances, have carried no common about his ears. He was so ultra-conservative that Toryism stank in his nostrils, so ultraorthodox that Mant and D'Oyly, King George the Third and the Protestant religion, were as much hated as the heretics of whom he read in Hooker and St. Augustine, and more despised. There is a wine of the sherry family, on which, when kept in an open cask, buttons of vegetation, which, after twentyfour hours, disappear, but leave behind them a delicate and peculiar flavor. Something like this has been the intellectual influence of Newmanism on many of the best Oxford minds. It has passed away, but it has left a certain fine and indescribable flavor behind it. The restorer of churches would no longer go to the stake for a surplice or a lectern. He still loves the chastened splendor and the decent solemnity of the English cathedral. The constant reader, it may be the occasional writer in the British Critic, the Christian Remembrancer, and the English Churchman has learned that Protestantism is something more than a caput mortuum of negation-that it has certain imperishable elements of spiritual life. The young lawyer or senator, to whom Spain or the Roman States looked something like the ideal of a Catholic theocracy, and Scotland something like the valley of the shadow of death, has since, perhaps, spoken his burning words for Italian freedom, and listened with pleasure to the cloquence of a Presbyterian divine. The Guardian of to-day is much like the best of the papers which, ten years ago, it would have denounced as latitudinarian. Stiil stranger change! The quondam idolator of Laud and Charles the First has become a Liberal-almost a Radical. A good |