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Both are away from him. Laying aside his imperial splendor, he distributes standards to the legions which are to "fetch his wife and son."

bons had fallen, and Napoleon risen pro- | thunder into the arena; but the countenance portionately; so that the Cabinet, in resolv- of Napoleon is sad: he has no wife on his ing on a war policy, had to announce with right hand; on his left hand he has no son. caution, and almost with an apology. There can be no question, however, but that the preponderating sentiment, in and out of Parliament, was in favor of the war. The narrative is diffnse in the explanation it affords of the exact views with which the most prominent statesmen in France regarded the resumption by Napoleon of the Imperial authority, and of the feelings which animated the various classes of the population. There was, we think, more excitement than confidence in the sudden show of zeal on the part of the populace. The revised Constitution was coldly received in all quarters of the realm. Because, says M. Thiers, France could no more believe a Napoleon when he talked of liberty than Europe could when he talked of peace. The Royalists were, of course, hostile; the Revolutionists suspected the champion who had put his fect on their necks. And now, on the first of June, Napoleon meets the citizens of Paris. Shall he appear as emperor or general? He wishes to appear as he would when taking the oath. He stands forth, then, in robes of silk, in plume and imperial mantle, in the coronation coach drawn by cight horses; fifty thousand soldiers greet him; a gorgeous amphitheatre receives the emperor, the army and the multitude; the altar fronts the throne; a hundred cannon

He is impatient to be in the field, to spring from his throne into his saddle. People around him think he is melancholy; he never smiles; perhaps he has had a vision of Waterloo; possibly, he remembers what they had been saying at Vienna about an island in the Atlantic. And in this mood, after sundry strange night vigils, he went to Malmaison, where Josephine had died in the spring of the last year; he stayed several hours, walking through the château and the gardens full of Josephine's flowers. "Poor Josephine!" he said to Hortense at every turn of the walk; "I think I see her!" So he ordered a portrait of Josephine; kissed Hortense; said to Madame Bertrand as he entered the carriage, "Let us hope, Madame Bertrand, that we may not soon have to regret the Isle of Elba,"-and went to Waterloo. A week later he did, most probably, regret Elba, and much else.

M. Thiers has two superb opportunities left; the battle in Brabant, and St. Helena. We doubt not but that he has nearly completed the picture, radiant with the life of an unrivalled epoch.

WINE CORKS.-All wines which have been long in bottle acquire a flavor which we ascribe to the cork. This is as great a mistake as if we attributed the flavor of wine which has been long cellared to the cask. The cause, in both cases, is fundamentally the same, though the accessory circumstances may differ. The moist cork, one side of which is in contact with the air, allows, equally with the wood of the winecask, the development of mould plants. The taste and smell of wine is, under such circumstances, identical with that of many other mouldy substances, and is what we call musty. The mould of cork differs of course from that of wood, and the taste is consequently not exactly the same. The smell may be distinctly perceived in almost every warehouse in the country.

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The mould grows from the outside to the inside, and should it reach the inner side of the cask or cork it imparts a taste to the wine. On this account old wine-casks must from time to time be cleansed outside and inside, and new corks must be put into the bottles, even when the old ones are unhurt. If the inside of the cork be covered with resin or sealing-wax, the entrance of air is cut off, and the formation of mould hindered, though not prevented. Wines which have been long in bottle often acquire an unpleasant taste from this mouldiness; they are brought out to do honor to a guest, and praise is expected which cannot honestly be given. It really seems strange that in this age, when so many other means can be employed, cork should still be made use of to stop bottles.-Mulder's Chemistry of Wine.

From Macmillan's Magazine.
AMERICAN AFFAIRS.

Cromer, August 12, 1861. DEAR MR. EDITOR,-Your contributors are probably just now scattered, or scattering, over the whole of Europe, if not farther. Having myself been away from town since the 3d, I don't know much of what may have been the talk there about the American war, and the defeat of the Northern army at Manassas Junction. You may have fixed on some one to write on the subject, and in that case you can consign this letter to the waste-paper basket; but, if there is no one told off for this duty, I hope you will let me volunteer, for I do think that the tone of all our leading journals (so far as I have been able to see them in this delightfully quiet little fishing village), has, with the single exception of the Spectator, been ungenerous and unfair, and has not represented the better mind of England. At the same time, under present circumstances, it is better, perhaps, to put what I have to say in the form of a letter, for which I alone am responsible.

In the first place, then, this defeat, this panic at Manassas Junction, had it been ten times as disastrous as it has been, has not altered in the least, and cannot alter, the rights and wrongs of the great question at issue. A truism this, no doubt; but for all that, when one sees the way in which mere success is worshipped here, and the sudden spring which the South has made into popularity in newspaper columns since the last mails, a truism which needs repeating! If the North were right before, they are right now, though defeated. If the Confederates were rebels before, they are rebels still, though triumphant for the moment.

If the United States were to remain a nation at all, they had not only the right, but were bound by every feeling of national honor to strain every nerve to bring the Secessionists to reason. How did they set about the work? They were utterly unprepared, without troops, without officers, without military stores. Their troops had been carefully scattered in small detachments over the Western and Southern States; the officers were almost all Southerners, who resigned their commissions and joined the rebels; the stores had been accumulated in the Southern forts and arsenals. They

waited as long as there was hope of an amicable arrangement; when that hope came to nothing, at the word of the President the whole North rose as one man. That rising was as grand, as noble a national act, as any which we have seen, or are likely to see, in our generation. It wrung an approval even from that portion of the press and people of this country who were most exasperated at the unlucky Morrill tariff, and at the menacing attitude which the President's government chose to assume toward us.

Have they flinched from their work? We hear, indeed, of a regiment or two of volunteers enlisted for three months, who are going home; but the nation has not shown the slightest symptoms of turning back. On the contrary, the President, Congress, and the nation, though they may show their resolution in ways which do not please us― which would not be ours, perhaps, under like circumstances-do show the most unflinching resolution to go through with what they have begun. When this is so no lcnger, it will be time enough to sneer at them.

Then, as to the battle itself, and the panic; what is the fair view of it? By the time this letter is printed, we may, perhaps, have full details; at present one has nothing beyond the barest possible despatches, and a set of one-sided accounts, written under strong excitement, to go upon. From these, however, we find that there was a determined struggle of many hours before the Northern troops were beaten. Jefferson Davis' despatch begins, "Manassas Junction, Sunday night. Night has closed upon a hard-fought field; our forces are victorious," etc. There is no evidence whatever as yet that the troops which were in action did not behave gallantly, but much the other way. Some regiments are reported as "cut to pieces." I think that these are most likely New England or New York Regiments, composed chiefly of Americans, and well organized-men who knew what they were fighting for, and how to fight. All accounts agree in the statement that the troops which took the lead in the panic were a rabble of all nations, Americans, Irish, Germans and others, who had been hastily thrown together, and half drilled. They will fight well enough yet, when they have been made into regulars; but volunteers, to fight well, must be

borne up by enthusiasm for a cause, which here was wholly wanting. And, as to the panic, we may just as well remember, what has been so well put in the Spectator, that these troops, "in their maddest excitement, did nothing which was not done by the Frenchmen who, within five days, drove the first infantry in Europe back from the hill of Valmy."

The advance was premature, badly planned, and not well executed. This is surely natural enough at the beginning of such a war. It seems that the Northern press are largely responsible for the movement. And here, again, there are good grounds for any thing but contempt and hard words. On the news of the defeat, all the best of the Northern papers have acknowledged their error, and formally undertaken to abstain from military criticism. Our own papers are so little in the habit of acknowledging themselves in the wrong, or of abstaining from criticism, however ill-judged, on any matter under the sun, that I confess to being rather struck by this action of the American journalists.

While speaking of American journals I may remark that the passages cited in the Times, and other papers, which have so disgusted and angered many of us, are from the New York Herald, a notoriously Southern paper, and one of the most scurrilous journals in the whole States. At the breaking out of the war the office of this paper was with difficulty preserved from destruction. Since that time it has not dared to show its Southern sympathies, but has devoted itself, in the obvious interests of its clients, to the work of embroiling the Northern States with us by its unscrupulous and lying virulence. I quite admit that the tone of the government and people of the North has been such as deeply to grieve and disappoint every right-minded Englishman; but don't let us saddle them with the frantic slanders of the New York Herald. These must be put in all fairness to the credit of the South.

Hitherto I have been speaking without immediate reference to the great cause in issue. I believe that, apart from that cause, the North are entitled to our good wishes. They are in the right, apart from all questions of slavery. If they really mean to leave "State rights" untouched-if they are not

even fighting to keep "the territories" free if, as we are often told in newspaper articles, slavery has nothing to say to the war at all-I must repeat that they are emphatically right.

But does anybody seriously believe this? Will any serious person get up and say, in his own name, or write in his own name, that the meaning of the whole war-the point really at issue, from first to last-has not been, and is not (to put it at the lowest), whether slavery shall be confined to its present limits in North America, or allowed to extend as and where it can? That was the issue; and perhaps it is so still. But those who entered on the war with this as the goal of their hopes and efforts, who would gladly have accepted the limitation of slavery to its present limits a few months or weeks ago, will, unless they are very different men from what I believe them to be-unless the teaching of all history is vain-not be content now with this compromise. The great cause of freedom will draw them, and the nation after them, along paths which they would never have sought for themselves.

It is the battle of human freedom which the North are fighting, and which should draw to them the sympathy of every Englishman, and make him cast to the winds all Morrill tariffs and angry talk about Canada, all bad manners and hard words. If the North is beaten, it will be a misfortune such as has not come on the world since Christendom arose. An empire will be founded in these Southern States on the simple base of slavery, having no other starting-point or principle whatever than their right to enslave men of their own flesh and blood. It is of no use to speculate upon what the acts and policy of such a State will be. The world will see that soon enough, should it arise. Meantime, the Northern States stand alone between us and it, and the greatest misfortune which can happen to us and to mankind will be their defeat.

God grant that they may hold on, and be strong! God grant that they may remember that the greatest triumphs have always come, and must always come to men through the greatest humiliations. God himself could not set men free but through this rule. I am yours very truly,

THOMAS HUGHES. *Author of Tom Brown at Rugby.

From (Forney's) Press, Philadelphia, 12 Sept.
SLAVERY AND THE REBELLION.

United States laws against the African slave trade they might obtain supplies for a few hundred dollars per head. The dissolution Ir is a significant and singular fact that of the Union, which, until the last few years, out of the very prosperity of the slave inter- was rarely or never spoken of without horest in this country, indirectly, arose the re- ror, as one of the most frightful of calamibellion which now threatens to terribly in- ties, by the masses of the Cotton States, bejure, if not to destroy it. While the halls of gan to be considered by them an essential Congress were resounding year after year condition of their prosperity-not on account with clamors for better protection for slav- of the reasons they put forward, that slave ery, the "peculiar institution" was so well property was insecure in the Union, but protected that slaves were constantly rising really because the policy of our Government in value much more rapidly than any other had rendered it so secure and profitable that species of property in our country. This in- slaves commanded a higher price than they crease was not spasmodic or irregular, but wished to pay. These pro-slavery philososteady and constant, and it was kept up un- phers, however, were as short-sighted in til the slaves of the United States sold for a their views of their selfish interests as they price far beyond that ever obtained for them were cruel and treasonable in their designs. in any other nation in which slavery had They forgot that the first effect of their blows been tolerated. All this continued to the against the Union would be the infliction of moment when the long-cherished secession a terrible blow, by themselves, upon their faheresies of the South culminated in open in-vorite institution—that in trying to destroy surrection against the Government; and it the Union for the purpose of getting rid of its afforded the very strongest proof that could laws against the revival of the slave trade, so have been given of the confidence of the cap- that they might buy slaves for a small sum, italists of the Slave States in the security of they would so diminish the value of slave laslavery while the Union was unbroken and bor, destroy the sale of its products, and ununassailed. But out of this high price of dermine the permanence and security of the slaves, which was an overwhelming and con- institution as to render it doubtful whether clusive answer to the flimsy pretences by slaves were worth having at any price, and in which the secession demagogues endeavored some states, questionable whether they could to justify their treason, arose the very feel- be held in bondage at all. The comparison ing which was one of the strongest levers may be a trite and not very complimentary used in precipitating the Cotton States into one, but they acted like the dog who in crossrevolution. We allude to the demand for ing the stream lost his meat by grasping at the revival of the slave trade which suddenly its shadow. And now, whatever damage has attained a surprising degree of popularity in been or may be done to their institution, that section. The planters grew tired of they must attribute to the influence of the paying $1,400 or $1,500 for field hands from rash counsels of their own trusted leaders. the Border States, and the poor whites be- Whatever glory or blame may be attached gan to consider that there was something to the infliction of the severe blows upon it, very unjust in compelling them either to pay that have already injured or will hereafter for slaves a sum which they could not com- injure it, is due to those great practical Abomand, or to dispense with their services al- litionists in disguise who figure as the saints together, when by an abrogation of the of the pro-slavery calendar.

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AN ARAB NEWSPAPER.

Musheikha, President of the Senate (in

As the Athenæum takes cognizance of lit- America),—Fabor or Sefine bukhariye, for erature and its progress in all parts of the steamer or steam-vessel,—and Resail teleworld, it appeared to me that an Arabic grafiye, telegraphic despatches. The mernewspaper, published at Beirout, in Syria, chant may also learn that discount (iskat) would merit your attention. This journal at the Bank of England is at six per cent (of which by the kindness of the Royal (fi el maye), the Turkish loan at seventyAsiatic Society I have the number of the 7th three, and the state of the corn and silk of June now before me) is a weekly news- markets. An advertisement, also, in one of paper, which, in imitation of its European the May numbers, whieh, by the way, had a contemporaries, styles itself (siyasi, edebi, conspicuous position and importance given muttejeri) political, moral, and commercial, to it, which its European brethren would and is about the size of one of our local pa- much envy, stated that a certain Prof. Betpers. The amateur of Oriental languages ers had adapted the wonderful tale of Ruwill be much amused to see how such words binsun Kruzi (Robinson Crusoe) from the as subscription, advertisement, office, agents English language, and that the first part was are expressed respectively by ishtirak, ilan, just printed, price twenty-two grush. In mekteb (a most appropriate word, corre- the number of the 7th of June is seen, unsponding exactly to the one adopted by the der the head "Home Intelligence," an acmodern Greeks to express this idea; viz., count of the withdrawal of the French troops ypapɛiov); and, lastly, agents by "those who from Syria; and in one of the previous numwrite the names" (of subscribers) chez eux. bers a description of an asylum lately esAgain, he will be struck by finding the first tablished for the widows and orphans of the rude attempts at leading articles. In the sufferers in the massacres, and the pasha's number of last month, for example, there visit to it. The translation of the proclamawere articles on the Warlike Preparation in tion of the American President to the inEurope, the American War, the Warsaw habitants of New York is also to be found Massacres, etc., which, though weak com- in the number of the 30th of May. On the pared to the articles in our newspapers, in- whole, the publication is exceedingly creditdicate a great step in advance. The very able, and may become a great instrument of fact of their making this comparison, and civilization. The fact that it has been estheir reflection on it, and their taking notice tablished four years speaks much for the of the American affairs at all, is something possibility of introducing such Anglo-Orifor a nation whom many regard as complete ental productions. It must be confessed, barbarians. It is also somewhat curious to however, although not very creditable to us, find the names of Lord John Russell and that the French in this, as in all matters in Mr. Griffith figuring in Arabic,-the latter the East, seem to have got far before us, and asking the former why the Austrians have their influence, language, and manners to not withdrawn their troops on the frontiers have taken a deeper root than ours. There of Italy. Garibaldi (whom they call Jari- is every evidence of this paper being an baldi), the Emperor Napoleon (Emberatur imitation of a French one: they have Nabulion), and Victor Emmanuel (Fiktor adopted their word journal, although so Imanuel) may now see their names in Arabic chary of admitting any foreign word into and their acts recounted for the edification the language,-coin their new words after of the Mussulmans. In the same manner French models,—and, in the French fashthe doings of Cardinal Antonelli and the ion, have a tale at the end, continued from pope, the massacres in Warsaw, the state number to number. In this tale is to be of affairs in Naples, etc., are duly reported. noted an immense improvement-the adopAmongst the words I have noticed imported, tion of paragraphs. What may we expect coined, or adopted to express modern ideas after this? Perhaps a time may come when are: Jurnal, for newspaper,- Mejliss-ul- we may even have the Arabs punctuating! umum, for House of Commons,-Reis-ul- |

CHARLES Wells.

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