ates, as Now ye are!

"Charmed with your commingled beauty
England sends the signal round,
'Every man must do his duty'
To redeem from bonds the bound!
Then indeed your banner's brightness
Shining clear from every star
Shall proclaim your joint uprightness,
Sister States, as Now ye are!

"So a peerless constellation
May those stars together blaze!
Three and ten-times threefold Nation
Go ahead in power and praise!
Like the many-breasted goddess
Throned on her Ephesian car,
Be--one heart in many bodies,
Sister States, as Now ye are!"

There are also several other like balladisms, and sundry sonnets, all of
which I had from time to time to greet my American audiences withal. And
thus before I paid my visits over there, the land was salted with ore
and the water enriched with ground-bait, so that when the poetaster
appeared he was welcomed by every class as a promoter of International
Kindliness.

CHAPTER XXXII.

AMERICAN VISITS.

A vast volume is before me containing my first American journal, which I
sent over piecemeal in letters and newspaper clippings to Albury, where
my wife and daughters arranged them and kept them safely, till on my
return after three months travel I pasted them duly into this big book.
If I were to record a tithe of the myriad memorabilia there entered, the
present volume now in progress would not afford space even for a tithe
of that: and after all, the result would only appear as a record of
numerous private hospitalities (which I object to making public), of
sundry well-appreciated kindnesses, compliments, and tokens of honour
from stranger friends in many cities, and the numerous incidents that a
tourist visitor ordinarily experiences; most of which, although
paragraphed in a gossiping fashion through hundreds of the 3000 American
papers, are not worth recording here. In fact, I look at this enormous
volume with despair,--the more so that there is its other equally bulky
brother about my second visit,--and so intend to give only some samples
of both. The world is too full of books, and does not call out for
another American Journal. The main social interest of my two visits
consisted in the contrast shown between the one in 1851 and that in
1876, just a quarter of a century after; between in fact the extreme
drinking habits of one generation and the extreme temperance of another:
mainly due, am