wanderer's view. He smiles at the abundance of fancy names, some chosen
for their romantic sound, and others for the renowned associations,
which are attached to vocalist, shop, and mouchoir. He separates, in his
thought, the incongruous emblems around him at this moment,--tricolor
and cresent, St. George and the Lilies, 'God save the Queen' and High
Mass, banners that have floated over adverse armies since the
crusades,--amicably folded over the corpse of a French veteran! Nor are
character and manners less suggestive to such an observer; if an
American, he beholds with astonishment, after all he has heard of the
proverbial courtesy of the French, women habitually yield the wall to
men, and stops with ill-disguised impatience, on returning from an
afternoon's ride, to have his carriage examined at the gate; contrasts
the degraded state of the lower orders with the general urbanity and
quietness of demeanor and the stern sway of political rule; marks the
little crucifix and cup of holy water at the head of the peasant's bed,
and the diamond cross on the lace kerchief of the kneeling empress;
recognizes the force of character, the self-dependence, the mental
hardihood of the women, the business method displayed in their exercise
of sentiment, and the exquisite mixture in their proceedings of tact,
calculation, and geniality.

* * * * *

THE TRUE BASIS.

Never at any stage of American history was there such a crisis of ideas
as at present, and never was there such urgent necessity of setting
promptly, vigorously and clearly before the people the great and new
principles which this crisis is bringing to life. So vast are the issues
involved, so tremendous their inevitable consequences, that we acquit of
exaggeration the statesman who, in comparing even the gradual unfolding
of the mighty past with this our present, exclaimed, 'Now is the first
of the world's progress.'[A]

[Footnote A: Hon. Daniel S. Dickinson.]

The reader is doubtless perfectly familiar with the fact that in the
battle between the North and the South two opposite principles are
involved,--the same which have been at the bottom of all wars for
freedom, from the beginning of time. The one party believes that one
portion of society must flourish at the expense of another part, of a
permanently sunken class; while the other holds that history proves that
the lot of all persons in a commonwealth is capable of being grad