our own and appeal to that Anglophobia, or rather that mingled fear and hate of England, which appears through a veil indeed, but still appears in this document. What is to prevent England, with her immense navy, from blockading the principal ports of the United States? She is secure on the seas. The right of taking her merchant-vessels, is no longer a war right. She can destroy our commerce with more effect than when she felt the need of guarding and convoying her merchantmen, and was looking out for privateer clippers on every side.

But, on the other hand, the good effects of this new proposition are so obvious, that its favorable reception, where it has been made known by the letter of Mr. Marcy, is not to be wondered at. The commercial classes, in time of war, will pursue, without interruption, nearly all the branches of a legitimate trade. The war will be between governments, and if they have credit, the burden of taxation, for the time being, need not be increased. Thus mere commercial prosperity calls for such a rule with a loud voice. No doubt, on a low, selfish calculation of advantages, the gain to neutrals would be greater, if private citizens of the belligerent states were excluded from their ordinary channels of trade, and neutrals should occupy their places; but as it is the interest of the whole world, that the whole world should prosper, we presume that this consideration would have little weight.

Having made this proposition, the Secretary goes a step farther, and says that a due regard to the fair claims of neutrals seems to require some modification, if not an abandonment of the doctrine in relation to contraband trade. The laws of blockade, he thinks, will afford all the remedies against neutrals that the parties to the war can justly claim. A further interference with the ordinary pursuits of neutrals is contrary, he affirms, to the obvious dictates of justice. This view of the subject would restrict the annoying right of search to cases where there was a flagrant suspicion of an attempt to break a blockade. And to this wide extension of the privileges of neutrals, the United States are willing to give their sanction, whenever other powers receive it with favor.

To this proposition of the Secretary it is easy to reply in his own words already cited, that no wise nation will give up its "right to resort to any means sanctioned by international law, which under any circumstances may be advantageously used for defense or aggression." Moreover, what justice is there in the case? Is it so very plainly just that neutrals have a right to trade with either of the belligerents in what they please? If it be, the Secretary must propose to have blockades abolished

also, as well as have trade in contraband articles allowed. Why should not justice keep open to neutrals the most important places of trade, as well keep the trade open in all kinds of articles? Blockade and contraband must stand and fall together. It would be an amusing blockade, if the importation of articles for the blockaded place were only transferred to a port communicating with it by railroad, if a small charge for freight and none for risk were all the results of the presence of a hostile fleet. That there is positive ground for some doctrine of contraband is shown by its appearing thus far in all theory and all the practice of the law of nations. It is not as clear as the Secretary would have it, that the rights of neutrals alone must be considered in international law, that in strict justice they have a right to carry on their intercourse with the belligerent in the same way after the war as before. Just here lies the principal difficulty in the law of nations, that the rights and interests of neutrals and of belligerents clash; hence the changes of practice among nations, and hence the unsettled state of the science. If we could say with Mr. Marcy, that "humanity and justice require that the calamities incident to war should be strictly limited to the belligerents themselves, and to those who voluntarily take part with them," the science of which he is so eminent an expounder would be very easy of construction; no other rule would find place in it, except that neutrals might trade as they pleased uncontrolled by the parties at war. But is this the whole of justice? Has not also each party to the war a right to make its antagonist feel the evils of disallowing what it believes to be its just claims? Here, then, are conflicting rights, or rather the neutral has not an absolute and perpetual, but only a modified right of intercourse with even its own friend. The interests of a third party come into, to qualify and modify, what was justice before.

But while we do not believe that an essential change in the doctrine of contraband would be for the good of the world, we are ready to rejoice in all the evidences of progress which the peace of Paris and the propositions of our Government furnish. If, from a well founded jealousy of nations having large navies, our Government cannot consent to the abolition of privateering, we still rejoice that this questionable mode of warfare is to cease among the great states of Europe. And if perfect immunity for private property on the seas, when not contraband, should be allowed by the consent of all nations, we should hail it not so much as a sign that wars should be put on their proper footing hereafter, as that the nations expected peace to be the rule, and war the exception.

We had intended when we began our remarks to touch upon some other topics of international law, which have an especial importance at the present time, but our limits require us to stop at this point. We hope to pursue the subject on some future

MR. EMERSON is an inveterate humorist.

He writes as if he were half quizzing and half in earnest. We suspect that if asked whether he means precisely what he seems to say, he would smile at the simplicity of the questioner. Or if he were hard pushed by an unsophisticated Scotchman, who could not or would not comprehend such subtle waggery as his, he would be forced to answer, that he had never been quite able to settle the point to his own satisfaction.

And yet he is a man of rare genius. He combines at once the widest range, and the most microscopic delicacy of intellectual vision. He sweeps the field of view with the kingly glance of an eagle, and fixes a piercing gaze on each single and separate object. He gathers up the widest analogies by the armfull, and evokes at will the most striking illustrations from nature and history. A subtle flavor and delicacy pervades his thoughts and language like that of the rarest and most finely cultured grapes, while his common sense and judgment about common men and common things, furnish a substance that is all the more satisfactory for being so finely flavored. He is at home in the loftiest aspirations of philosophy, and the most ethereal soarings of poetry; and yet he treads with a firm footstep the common pathways of common life, but always with the elastic and springy gait of genius. He has had time to read, and he has read the best books; not to fulfill the task-work of official duty, or to gather the tawdry and ill-fitting garments of literary pedantry, but to build up and refresh his own spirit. Hhas

seen the best men of certain cliques at a near view, and in intimate fellowship; and viewed the best men of other classes at a greater distance, but near enough for his own uses. Above all, he has commanded repose of spirit, so far as a genial and humane philosophy can give the peace which is requisite for the sure and harmonious working of the intellect. In expressing his own principles on the most sacred and important subjects, and in disposing of those of others, he is a man of rare coolness -of provoking nonchalance, of immeasurable audacity. Yet he is so naif, so innocent in his manner, that we scarcely know whether to class him with those innocent souls that have not yet attained to the knowledge of good or evil, or with those subtle spirits that know so much of both as to be indifferent to either. We ask whether he most resembles the guileless Margaret, or the sneering Mephistopheles of his favorite Goethe. When the earnest and conscientious Henry Ware expressed his concern at the principles which were avowed in his discourse at Cambridge, his reply, that he was surprised that his friends should give themselves any concern at anything which he might write or teach, describes the position which he has always assumed in respect to those principles in theology and philosophy which are generally received as true, and revered as sacred.

"English Traits " is a new theme for Emerson to work upon. His favorite topics hitherto have been selected from the fields of literary criticism. He has dealt with pleasant theories rather than with stubborn facts; with pliable speculations more than with unpliant truth. English character, the most concrete and hard-tempered form of civilized humanity, is a new kind of material on which to try his genius in analysis. The attempt to explain why "England is England," is an attempt to account for the most real as well as the grandest phenomenon of modern history. A vague or false philosophy must expose its insufficiency in striving to find a satisfactory theory. We inquire with great interest how well Mr. Emerson has succeeded.

We observe in general that this volume is in our judgment by far the best he has written. We will not stay to discuss the question whether the sage of Concord has himself changed somewhat since he published his . B. K. discourse, "Nature," &c., or whether his theme has given steadiness and precision to the acting of his intellect, and soberness and clearness to his practical views. We are inclined to think that both are true. soul so full of vitality as his could not but grow with vigor, and in growing out-grow some of the immaturities of its germinant and succulent state. A soul so manly could not but crave a

A

stronger and manlier diet, than that supplied by the glittering fancies and ambitious emptiness of his earlier speculations; and failing to reach a definite and positive faith, might fall with a keen relish upon one of the most real and concrete products which man and the earth can furnish. We believe, also, that the subject-matter with which he has had to do, has exerted a powerful, though it may be an unconscious influence on the mind of the writer. It is one thing to nourish our fancies alone, and quite another to confront them with the hard and stubborn realities of an actual world, and especially with such a world as Oxford, and Chatsworth, and Westminster Hall, and English culture and English courtesy present to a mind so impressible and so fair as Mr. Emerson's. It may be a fancy of our own, but we are inclined to believe that the Mr. Emerson, who went out to England in 1847, to deliver a series of lectures, and to see the people and the country, was a somewhat different man in thought and feeling from the Mr. Emerson who returned to Concord, to muse upon what he had seen and heard. We believe that England was too much for him-that he found more in it than he expected. He went out, doubtless, determined to be true to himself, and perhaps first refreshed himself from his accustomed fountain of inspiration, in order that he might stand strongly and surely upon his own theories. He returned "a sadder and a wiser man," but not the Mr. Emerson who went out; and the result of his meditations, after due elaboration for the prescribed period of nine years, he has given to his admirers and the world.

We think we see a confirmation of this opinion in that Mr. Emerson gives so few notices of his impressions of England in 1833. We should have been better pleased if he had omitted a portion of the little which he has thought fit to publish. It may please Mr. E. and some of his readers, to laugh over Mr. Coleridge's solemn reference to something which he had written on the fly-leaf of Waterland,' and at Mr. Wordsworth's school-boy recitation of his own verses. We dare not aver that he could have found nothing better than this contemptuous gossip to record, or to bring out from his notes, after an interval of twenty-three years. If he found nothing more worthy than notes like these, it were better to have left everything unprinted. The sage of Concord has been visited by strangers often enough to know the awkwardness of the position; and though he may have better judgment than to put himself into attitudes for the gratification of lookers on, yet, if rumor is to be believed, he has not quite escaped the humor of the wags who have chosen, now and then, to make sport of him and his