its nest and watched over it with wings that had battled with the
storm: and from that moment the child, who took the name of Herbert,
seemed to recognize Roland better than his nurse or even mother,--seemed
to know that in giving him that name we sought to give Roland his son
once more! Never did the old man come near the infant but it smiled
and crowed and stretched out its little arms; and then the mother and
I would press each other's hand secretly, and were not jealous. Well,
then, Blanche and Pisistratus were seated near the cradle and talking in
low whispers, when my father pushed aside the screen and said,--

"There, the work is done! And now it may go to press as soon as you
will."

Congratulations poured in; my father bore them with his usual
equanimity; and standing on the hearth, his hand in his waistcoat, he
said, musingly, "Among the last delusions of Human Error I have had to
notice Rousseau's phantasy of Perpetual Peace, and all the like pastoral
dreams, which preceded the bloodiest wars that have convulsed the earth
for more than a thousand years!"

"And to judge by the newspapers," said I, "the same delusions are
renewed again. Benevolent theorists go about prophesying peace as a
positive certainty, deduced from that sibyl-book the ledger; and we are
never again to buy cannons, provided only we can exchange cotton for
corn."

Mr. Squills (who, having almost wholly retired from general
business, has, from want of something better to do, attended sundry
"Demonstrations in the North," since which he has talked much about the
march of improvement, the spirit of the age, and "Us of the nineteenth
century ").--"I heartily hope that those benevolent theorists are true
prophets. I have found, in the course of my professional practice, that
men go out of the world quite fast enough, without hacking them into
pieces or blowing them up into the air. War is a great evil."

Blanche (passing by Squills, and glancing towards Roland).--"Hush!"

Roland remains silent.

Mr. Caxton.--"War is a great evil; but evil is admitted by Providence
into the agency of creation, physical and moral. The existence of evil
has puzzled wiser heads than ours, Squills. But, no doubt, there is One
above who has his reasons for it. The combative bump seems as common to
the human skull as the philoprogenitive,--if it is in our organization,
be sure it is not there without cause. Neither is it just to man, nor
wisely submissive to t