crystal palaces, peace and plenty, cockaigne and
dilettantism, to the end of time? Is it not full sixty whole years since
the first French revolution, and six whole years since the revolution of
all Europe? Bah!--change is a thing of the past, and tragedy a myth of
our forefathers; war a bad habit of old barbarians, eradicated by the
spread of an enlightened philanthropy. Men know now how to govern the
world far too well to need any divine visitations, much less divine
punishments; and Stangrave was an Utopian dreamer, only to be excused by
the fact that he had in his pocket the news that three great nations
were gone forth to tear each other as of yore.

Nevertheless, looking round upon those grim earth-mounds and embrasures,
he could not but give the men who put them there credit for supposing
that they might be wanted. Ah! but that might be only one of the direful
necessities of the decaying civilisation of the old world. What a
contrast to the unarmed and peaceful prosperity of his own country!
Thank heaven, New England needed no fortresses, military roads, or
standing armies! True, but why that flush of contemptuous pity for the
poor old world, which could only hold its own by such expensive and ugly
methods?

He asked himself that very question, a moment after, angrily; for he was
out of humour with himself, with his country, and indeed with the
universe in general. And across his mind flashed a memorable
conversation at Constantinople long since, during which he had made some
such unwise remark to Thurnall, and received from him a sharp answer,
which parted them for years.

It was natural enough that that conversation should come back to him
just then; for, in his jealousy, he was thinking of Tom Thurnall often
enough every day; and in spite of his enmity, he could not help
suspecting more and more that Thurnall had had some right on his side of
the quarrel.

He had been twitting Thurnall with the miserable condition of the
labourers in the south of England, and extolling his own country at the
expense of ours. Tom, unable to deny the fact, had waxed all the more
wroth at having it pressed on him; and at last had burst forth--

"Well, and what right have you to crow over us on that score? I suppose,
if you could hire a man in America for eighteen-pence a day instead of a
dollar and a half, you would do it? You Americans are not accustomed to
give more for a thing than it's worth in the market, are you?"

"