uthern cheers: but it is not the English people who make up the
Quarterly Reviews. It was not the voice of Mill or Cairnes that answered
first across the waters to the boom of Liberty's guns. When our blood
was hot and our hearts high, and sneers were ten thousand times harder
to bear than blows, we found sneers in plenty where we looked for
God-speed. It may not have been the English heart, only the English
head. But we could not get at the English heart, and the English head
was continually thrust against ours. The fires may have burned warmly on
many a hearth, but we could not see them. The only light that shot
athwart the waters was from the high watch-towers, and it was lurid.
This wrought a change. The English may take on airs in literature; for
our little leisure leaves us short repose, and it would be strange
indeed, if their civilization of centuries had not left its marks in a
finer culture and a deeper thought. But when, leaving literature and
coming down into the fastnesses of life, they gave us hatred for love,
and scorn for reverence,--when they sneered at that which we held
sacred, and reviled that which we counted honorable,--when, green-eyed
and gloating, they saw through their glasses not only darkly, but
disjointed and askance,--when devotion became to them fanaticism, and
love of liberty was lust of power,--did virtue go out of them, or had it
never been in? This, at least, was wrought: when one part of the temple
of our reverence was undermined, the whole structure came down. They who
showed themselves so morally weak cannot maintain even the intellectual
or aesthetic superiority which they have assumed. Henceforth their blame
or praise is not what it was hitherto. When a man rails at my country,
it is little that he rails at me. If they have called the master of the
house Beelzebub, they of his household would as soon be called little
flies as anything else.

(As a matter of fact, I don't suppose my little venture has ever been
heard of across the ocean. You think it is very presumptuous in me ever
to have thought of it; but I did not think of it. I was only afraid of
it. Suppose the British Quarterly has not vision microscopic enough to
discern you; you like to know how you would feel in a certain
contingency, even if it should never happen. Besides, so many strange
things arise every day, that incongruity seems to have lost its force.
Nothing surprises. Cause and effect are continually dissolving