otherwise than glad. Success makes an Englishman intolerable; and,
already, on the mistaken idea that the way was open to a prosperous
conclusion of the war, The Times had begun to throw out menaces against
America. I shall never love England till she sues to us for help, and,
in the mean time, the fewer triumphs she obtains, the better for all
parties. An Englishman in adversity is a very respectable character; he
does not lose his dignity, but merely comes to a proper conception of
himself. It is rather touching to an observer to see how much the
universal heart is in this matter,--to see the merchants gathering round
the telegraphic messages, posted on the pillars of the Exchange
news-room, the people in the street who cannot afford to buy a paper
clustering round the windows of the news-offices, where a copy is pinned
up,--the groups of corporals and sergeants at the recruiting rendezvous,
with a newspaper in the midst of them and all earnest and sombre, and
feeling like one man together, whatever their rank. I seem to myself
like a spy or a traitor when I meet their eyes, and am conscious that I
neither hope nor fear in sympathy with them, although they look at me in
full confidence of sympathy. Their heart "knoweth its own bitterness,"
and as for me, being a stranger and all alien, I "intermeddle not with
their joy."


October 9th.--My ancestor left England in 1630. I return in 1853. I
sometimes feel as if I myself had been absent these two hundred and
twenty-three years, leaving England just emerging from the feudal system,
and finding it, on my return, on the verge of republicanism. It brings
the two far-separated points of time very closely together, to view the
matter thus.