e a national
disease; and were it not for the safety-valve formed by the unmeasured
terms of mutual vituperation they heap upon each other on occasions of
domestic squabbles, their fate would assuredly be that of the frog in
the fable.

In the medical world, it is said no one has a cold without fever; and I
think it may with equal truth be asserted of the national world, no
nations are vain without being afflicted with sensitiveness: at all
events, it is true as regards the United States. No maiden in her teens
is so ticklishly sensitive as the Americans. I do not refer merely to
that portion of the community of which I have selected Mr. Douglas, of
Illinois, as the type; I allude also to the far higher order of
intelligence with which the Republic abounds. There is a touchiness
about them all with respect to national and local questions which I
never saw equalled: in fact, the few sheets of their Press which reach
this country are alone sufficient to convince any one on that point; for
in a free country the Press may always be fairly considered, to a
certain extent, as the reflex of the public mind. I suppose it is with
nations as with individuals, and that each are alike blind to their own
failings. In no other way can I account for the Republic overlooking so
entirely the sensitiveness of others. Take for instance the appointment
of M. Soule--a Frenchman naturalized in America--as minister to the
court of Spain. I do not say that he was a Filibustero, but he was
universally supposed to be identified with that party; and if he were
not so identified, he showed a puerile ignorance of the requirements of
a Minister, quite beyond conception, when he received a serenade of five
thousand people at New York, who came in procession, bearing aloft the
accompanying transparencies, he being at the time accredited to his new
ministry.

On the first transparency was the following motto:--

A STAR. PIERCE.

SOULE. CUBA.

On the second banner:--

YOUNG AMERICA AND YOUNG CUBA.
Free thought and free speech for the Cubans.

'Tis no flight of fancy, for
Cuba must be, and 'tis
Written by fate, an isle
Great and free.

O pray, ye doomed tyrants,
Your fate's not far:
A dread Order now watches you,--
It is the Lone Star.

On the third banner:--

Cuba must and shall be free.

The Antilles Flower,
The true Key of the Gulf,
Must be plucked from the Crown
Of the Old Spani