and sent words of faith and cheer across the sea. In his lectures, and extravagant but piquant and suggestive "Paris dans l'Amérique," Laboulaye has signally promoted that better understanding and more just appreciation of the struggle, and the motives and end thereof, which now begin to prevail abroad. De Gasparin's "Uprising of a Great People " fell on American hearts, at the darkest hour of the strife, like the clarion note of a reënforcement of the heroes of humanity. Cochin, Henri Martin, and others less eminent but equally honest and humane, have echoed the earnest protest and appeal; which contrasts singularly with the indifference, disingenuousness, and perversity of so many distinguished writers and journals in England. Herein we perceive the same diversity of feeling which marks the earliest commentators of the respective nations on America, and the subsequent feelings manifested toward our prosperous republic. Mrs. Kemble, in a recent article on the "Stage," observes that the theatrical instinct of the Americans creates with them an affinity for the French, in which the English, hating exhibitions of emotion and self-display, do not share. With all due deference to her opinion, it seems to us her reasoning is quite too limited. The affinity of which she speaks, partial as it is, is based on the more sympathetic temperament of these two races compared with the English. The social character, the more versatile experience of American life, assimilate it in a degree, and externally, with that of France, and the climate of America develops nervous sensibility; while the exigencies of life foster an adaptive facility, which brings the Anglo-American into more intelligent relations with the Gallic nature than is possible for a people so egotistic and stolid as the English to realize. But this partial sympathy does not altogether account for the French understanding America better that is owing to a more liberal, a less prejudiced, a more chivalric spirit; to quicker sympathies, to more scientific proclivities, to greater candor and humanity among her thinkers. They are far enough removed in life and character to catch the true moral perspective; and they

have few, if any, wounds of self-love to impede their sense of justice in regard to a country wherewith their own history is often congenially and honorably associated.

Yet anomalous and sad will it seem, in the retrospect, that to a nation alien in blood and language, we are indebted for the earliest and most kindly greeting in our hour of stern and sacrificial duty and of national sorrow, instead of receiving it (with rare exceptions) from a people from whom we inherit laws, language, and literature, and to whom we are united by so many ties of lineage, culture, and material interests.

Humane, just, and authoritative, indeed, is the language of those eminent Frenchmen, Agenor de Gasparin, Augustin Cochin, Edouard Laboulaye, and Henri Martin, addressed to a committee of loyal Americans, in response to their grateful recognition of such distinguished advocacy of our national cause; and we cannot better close this notice of French writers on America, than with their noble words:

66 Courage! You have before you one of the most noble works, the most sublime which can be accomplished here below-a work in the success of which we are as interested as yourselves—a work the success of which will be the honor and the consolation of our time.

"This generation will have seen nothing more grand than the abolition of slavery (in destroying it with you, you destroy it everywhere), and the energetic uprising of a people which in the midst of its growing prosperity was visibly sinking under the weight of the tyranny of the South, the complicity of the North, odious laws and compromises.

"Now, at the cost of immense sacrifices, you have stood up against the evil; you have chosen rather to pour out your blood and your dollars than to descend further the slope of degradation, where rich, united, powerful, you were sure to lose that which is far nobler than wealth, or union, or power.

"Well, Europe begins to understand, willingly or unwillingly, what you have done. In France, in England, everywhere your cause gains ground, and be it said for the honor of the nineteenth century, the obstacle which our ill will and our evil passions could not overcome, the obstacle which the intrigues of the South could not surmount, is an idea, a principle. Hatred of slavery has been your champion in the Old World. A poor champion seemingly. Laughed at,

scorned, it seems weak and lonely. But what matters it; ere the account be closed, principles will stand for something, and conscience, in all human affairs, will have the last word.

"This, gentlemen, is what we would say to you in the name of all who with us, and better than ourselves, defend your cause in Europe. Your words have cheered us; may ours in turn cheer you! You have yet to cross many a dark valley. More than once the impossibility of success will be demonstrated to you; more than once, in the face of some military check or political difficulty, the cry will be raised that all is lost. What matters it to you? Strengthen your cause daily by daily making it more just, and fear not; there is a God above.

"We love to contemplate in hope the noble future which seems to stretch itself before you. The day you emerge at last from the anguish of civil war-and you will surely come out freed from the odious institution which corrupted your public manners and degraded your domestic as well as your foreign policy-that day your whole country, South as well as North, and the South perhaps more fully than the North, will enter upon a wholly new prosperity. European emigration will hasten toward your ports, and will learn the road to those whom until now it has feared to approach. Cultivation, now abandoned, will renew its yield. Liberty-for these are her miracles -will revivify by her touch the soil which slavery had rendered barren.

"Then there will be born unto you a greatness nobler and more stable than the old, for in this greatness there will be no sacrifice of justice."

CHAPTER V.

BRITISH TRAVELLERS AND WRITERS.

BERKELEY;

; MCSPARRAN; MRS. GRANT; BURNABY; ROGERS; BURKE ; DOUGLASS; HENRY; EDDIS; ANBURY; SMYTHE.

"THERE* are more imposing monuments in the venerable precincts of Oxford, recalling the genius which hallows our ancestral literature, but at the tomb of Berkeley we linger with affectionate reverence, as we associate the gifts of his mind and the graces of his spirit with his disinterested and memorable visit to our country.

In 1725, Berkeley published his proposals in explanation of this long-cherished purpose; at the same time he offered to resign his livings, and to consecrate the remainder of his days to this Christian undertaking. So magnetic were his appeal and example, that three of his brother fellows at Oxford decided to unite with him in the expedition. Many eminent and wealthy persons were induced to contribute their influence and money to the cause. But he did not trust wholly to such means. Having ascertained the worth of a portion of the St. Christopher's lands, ceded by France to Great Britain by the treaty of Utrecht, and about to be disposed of for public advantage, he undertook to realize from them larger proceeds than had been anticipated, and sug

*From the author's "Essays, Biographical and Critical."

gested that a certain amount of these funds should be devoted to his college. Availing himself of the friendly intervention of a Venetian gentleman whom he had known in Italy, he submitted the plan to George I., who directed Sir Robert Walpole to carry it through Parliament. He obtained a charter for erecting a college, by name St. Paul's, in Bermuda, with a president and nine fellows, to maintain and educate Indian scholars, at the rate of ten pounds a year, George Berkeley to be the first president, and his companions from Trinity College the fellows.' His commission was voted May 11th, 1726. To the promised amount of twenty thousand pounds, to be derived from the land sale, many sums were added from individual donation. The letters of Berkeley to his friends, at this period, are filled with the discussion of his scheme; it absorbed his time, taxed his ingenuity, filled his heart, and drew forth the warm sympathy and earnest cooperation of his many admirers, though regret at the prospect of losing his society constantly finds expression. Swift, in a note to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, says: "I do humbly entreat your excellency either to use such persuasions as will keep one of the first men of the kingdom for learning and genius at home, or assist him by your credit to compass his romantic design.' 'I have obtained reports,' says one of his own letters, from the Bishop of London, the board of trade and plantations, and the attorney and solicitor-general;' 'yesterday the charter passed the privy seal;''the lord chancellor is not a busier man than myself;' and elsewhere, 'I have had more opposition from the governors and traders to America than from any one else; but, God be praised, there is an end of all their narrow and mercantile views and endeavors, as well as of the jealousies and suspicions of others, some of whom were very great men, who apprehended this college may produce an independency in America, or at least lessen her dependency on England.'

Freneau's ballad of the Indian Boy,' who ran back to the woods from the halls of learning, was written subsequently, or it might have discouraged Berkeley in his idea of