the negro would die out unless protected by the artificial legislation of the slave system. His own observation throughout life had led him to the conviction that the climate and habits of the North were fatal, in the long run, to the health and prosperity of coloured citizens. In his own house, he could recall, when a boy, half a dozen members of different negro families [emancipation did not take place in New York till 1820]; but at the present moment, though he had kept in sight the negroes of his father's household, and their descendants, he did not believe that there were three or four of them left; while the white members of the same household, whose history he had also followed, now counted the number of their descendants by hundreds. In the colonization project, as it appeared to me, he had little faith; and he obviously looked to the solution of the negro question by the gradual dying out of the black race, as soon as emancipation had really begun to work.

Probably the most striking-looking of the ministers is Mr. Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury. His head would be a treasure to any sculptor as a model of benevolence. His lofty, spacious forehead, his fresh, smooth countenance, his portly figure, and his pleasant, kindly smile, all seem to mark the stock old philanthropist of the stage, created to be the victim and providence of street-beggars. One wonders how so kind-looking a man can find it in his heart to tax anybody; and I believe this much is true, that a man of less ability

and sterner mould would have made a better financier than Mr. Chase has proved. Mr. Blair, though a Maryland man, is the only one of the ministers who has what we consider the characteristic Yankee type of face—the high cheek bones, sallow complexion, and long, straight hair. Of Mr. Gideon Welles, the Secretary for the Navy, who expressed such premature approval of Capt. Wilkes, there is little to be said, except that he wears a long white beard, and a stupendous white wig, which cause him to look like the heavy grandfather in a genteel comedy, and that there is such an air of ponderous deliberation about his face, that you ask yourself whether the "modern Rip-Van-Winkle," as the Herald used to style him, has ever clearly realized, in so short a time as one year, that America is in a state of civil war. Mr. Stanton was laid up with illness most of the time that I was in Washington, so that I saw but very little of him. In look, he is the least distinguished of any of the ministers, and the expression of his face is by no means a pleasant one. Mr. Bates, of Missouri, the Attorney-General, is a shrewd, quiet lawyer, very much like elderly legal authorities in other parts of the world.

Americans complain constantly that we know nothing of their public men. The complaint is hardly a fair one, as there are barely half a dozen English statesmen to whom Americans attach the slightest individuality; and the names of our minor celebrities, such as Lowe and Layard, would convey as little to American ears as

those of Colfax or Conkling would do to us. Amongst men not in power at this period, the one, I own, that impressed me most was Caleb Cushing, known, and that not altogether favourably, to the English public as Attorney-General under President Pierce's administration, during the Frampton difficulty. From his connexion with the old Democratic party, and his reputed sympathy with the Secession leaders, he was out of favour with the country and the Government, and, above all, with his own State of Massachusetts, where a bitter personal prejudice exists against him. Having had the pleasure of meeting him frequently and intimately, I found him to be a man of extreme acuteness, and immense and varied reading, and, indeed, one of the pleasantest companions whom it has been my fortune to meet with in life. While the war lasts, he has little chance of re-entering public life. But I am much mistaken if a man of his power and ability does not, before long, play an important part in the politics of his country.

This record would be incomplete unless I were to say something of Mr. Sumner. He is too well known in Europe to need much description.

Many of my readers

Many of

that great, sturdy,

are acquainted, doubtless, with English-looking figure, with the broad, massive forehead, over which the rich mass of nut-brown hair, streaked here and there with a line of grey, hangs loosely; with the deep blue eyes, and the strangely

winning smile, half bright, half full of sadness. He is a man whom you would notice amongst other men, and whom, not knowing, you would turn round to look at as he passed by you. Sitting in his place in the Senate, leaning backwards in his chair, with his head stooping slightly over that great, broad chest, and his hands resting upon his crossed legs, he looks, in dress, and attitude, and air, the very model of an English country gentleman. A child would ask him the time in the streets, and a woman would come to him unbidden for protection. You can read in that worn face of his-old before its time-the traces of a life-long struggle, of disappointment and hope deferred, of ceaseless obloquy and cruel wrong. Such a life-training as this is a bad one for any man, and it has left its brand on the senator for Massachusetts. There are wrongs which the best of men forgive without forgetting, and, since Brook's brutal assault upon him, those who know him best, say they can mark a change in Charles Sumner. He is more bitter in denunciation, less tolerant in opposition, just rather than merciful. Be it so. Be it so. It is not with soft words or gentle answers that men fight as Sumner has fought against cruelty and wrong.

MR. RUSSELL AND MR. STANTON.

IT is one of the unfortunate elements in the relations between England and America that the Americans should combine such an almost morbid desire for English appreciation, with such a fatal ingenuity in offending English taste. There probably has been no action on the part of the American Government which created such disgust, and such reasonable disgust, throughout England, as the treatment of Mr. Russell. I am not going in any way to defend the conduct of the Washington Cabinet. I only wish to point out the facts which render the act less inexcusable than it may appear on this side the Atlantic. Let me say at starting, that I trust no word of mine will be understood as written in disparagement of Mr. Russell. It is superfluous to say that I have the highest admiration for his remarkable literary ability. To any one who knows him it is equally superfluous to add, that even a very slight acquaintance is sufficient to create a feeling towards him of genuine friendliness. My whole object