for Ghita, whose acquaintance I cultivated on other
occasions. I saw her once among the ruins of Pompeii, where she greeted
me with a friendly nod, but without referring at all to our previous
meetings--I mean in words; for at parting she gave me a handful of
wild-flowers, and then ran away without waiting for a recompense.

PUBLIC OPINION AND THE PUBLIC PRESS.

Perhaps there is no better guarantee of peace and progress to this
country than the freedom of the Press. Opinion is King of England and
Victoria is Queen. Every phase of opinion speaks through some book or
journal and is repeated widely in proportion to the hold it takes upon
the public. Government is the representative of whatever opinions
prevail; if it prove too perverse it falls--ministers change, without a
revolution. Then too, when every man's tongue is free, we are accustomed
to hear all manner of wild suggestions. Fresh paint does not soon dazzle
us; we are like children lavishly supplied with toys, who receive new
gifts tranquilly enough.

Is King Opinion an honest ruler? Yes. For the English people speak
unreservedly their thoughts on public matters, and are open, though it
be with honorable slowness, to all new convictions. We must add,
however, as a drawback, that the uneducated class amounts to a
distressing number in this country in proportion to the whole. It forms,
as long as it is ignorant, a source of profit to designing speculators.
Nonsense is put into the mouths of men who mean no evil, but who
sincerely desire their own improvement. Truth is murdered, and her dress
is worn by knaves who burlesque sympathy with working-men for selfish
purposes. The poor man's sincere advocate, at last, can not speak truth
without incurring the suspicion of some treasonable purpose against
honesty or common sense. The very language necessary to be used in
advocating just rights sometimes becomes as a pure stream befouled by
those who have misused it.

Therefore, in England, the uneducated classes arrive slowly at the
privileges which they must acquire. They are impeded by false friends;
but, even false friends are not able to delude them beyond a certain
point. Among us, for example, even the most ignorant well know that
there is no field for a vulgar revolution against such a monarch as
Opinion makes. Arguments must be used for barricades, and we must knock
our neighbors on the head with facts; we must fire newspaper articles
instead of cannon-b