throw themselves with them upon the beautiful capital of the Western States, and to sack and destroy it. Detroit, situated just opposite Western Canada, was also to be surprised, sacked, and burned. Some of the conspirators were discovered and arrested. Chicago and the Canadian frontier were placed under a strict surveillance. In New York there was no less anxiety. The democrats, sure of the connivance of the municipality and of Governor Seymour, had openly declared that they would not allow free voting for Mr. Lincoln; they had organised their forces, and held themselves ready for any violence. Some days before the election the Government sent General Butler to New York, and entrusted him with the command of the United States troops stationed in the environs. The mere name of Butler threw terror over the democratic ranks; he announced in a manifesto that the election would take place as usual, and without the aid of military authority, but that any attempt at disorder would be promptly repressed by the troops under his command. In the democratic meetings which preceded his arrival, the desperadoes had publicly declared that his life would be attacked, but he was soon seen slowly crossing New York on horseback in full uniform, followed by his staff. The day of the election passed without disorder, and the democrats had only the satisfaction of giving a majority of 37,000 votes to their candidate.

As early as the day after, and although the definitive figures were not ascertained, it was known throughout the Union that Mr. Lincoln was re-elected. From each

village, each city, the numbers were sent to the committees of either party; the employés of the telegraph and post offices and railways were occupied with little else. The victory of the republicans was soon certain; it became a brilliant triumph when, to the votes of New England and the West, were added the 26 votes of Pennsylvania, and lastly the 33 votes of the State of New York; there remained to the democratic party only the little State of New Jersey, and two slave States, Delaware and Kentucky. Mr. Lincoln received 213 votes to General M'Clellan's 21. Not only had the republicans given an enormous majority to their candidate, but they had succeeded in sending to Congress a sufficient number of deputies to obtain there the two-thirds majority without which it was impossible that the Constitution should be amended. In the Senate, as well as in the House of Representatives, the republicans were certain beyond doubt of the majority of three-fourths of the votes. The executive and legislative powers were then in perfect harmony, and thus for the first time since many years the legislative power found itself armed with sufficient authority to undertake the revision of the national Constitution, and to efface from it every trace of that fatal institution which had brought upon the country the scourge of civil war. An absolute calm succeeded at once to the emotions, anxieties, and agitations which preceded the 8th of November. The triumph of the republicans had nothing noisy in it: theirs was not the febrile joy which salutes the victories obtained on the battle-field; it was mute, deep, and selfcontained. Even the minority bowed with respect

before the expression of the popular will, and was not insensible to the grandeur of the spectacle offered to the world by the American people, when in the midst of the convulsions of civil war, and among so many hostile interests of hate and passion, it accomplished, with the same tranquillity as in the days of peace and prosperity, the normal functions of its constitutional life. Even the cannon before Richmond were silent, and the two armies during a tacit truce gave themselves up to the same pre-occupations.

CHAPTER VI.

FROM BOSTON TO NIAGARA.

BOSTON has been sometimes called 'the city of three hills.' A great part of New England is, like it, formed by gently-swelling hillocks. Before the country had a name, a great plane smoothed off all its roughnesses; an irresistible force passing over the hard syenites, granites, greenstones and conglomerates, has drawn a network of straight and striated furrows over them. Was it, as Agassiz thinks, an enormous glacier, covering the whole of North America, which left these traces, ground down the rocks, and modelled the country as it now is? Did a violent deluge roll, pellmell, all the débris that throw their rough cloak over the silurian strata of New England? Or was it only icebergs, come from the pole, that dropped their cargoes of erratic boulders, as they still continue to do on the banks of Newfoundland? These are the questions I put to myself, towards the end of the month of September, in going through the cuttings of the railway that leads from Boston to Portland in Maine, and which beyond goes on to Canada, passing at the foot of the White Mountains, which I was on my way

to visit. Few of the people round me paid any attention to the landscape; men and women read the morning papers; soldiers, convalescent or on furlough, wrapped in their blue coats, kept up the talk of the camp. Only a few Englishmen, en route for Canada, looked with an air of wearied curiosity upon the rounded hills, crowned with little cedars, the clumps of elms, maples, oaks, the little neat white wooden houses surrounded with trees and orchards, and the golden rods and the brown clusters of the sumachs that grew all along the track. Perhaps they were looking, though unable to find it, for some cabin, some shanty, some trace of misery. But if in America nature still retains here and there some of the grace of the wilderness, if wild flowers border cultivated fields, all the abodes of man, built with care, have a certain air of decency and finish that is a perpetual wonder to European travellers.

As far as Portland, the railway keeps near the sea, which dances and sparkles beneath a radiant sun. Its fringe of foam beats capriciously against the savage rocks of Nahant, kisses the sands of Marblehead, and dies away at the foot of the beautiful pine forests of Beverley. The mouth of the Merrimac is crossed at Newburyport, and, at Portsmouth, that of the Piscataqua. The rivers nearly all keep their fine Indian names; the towns have mostly foreign names, and those given by chance. Marshy meadows extend into the valleys, and are overflowed by the tide, which leaves a salt deposit on the grass: the hay is kept in ricks, perched on little piles to protect them from high water. From the sands and gravel that cover the coasts