Far more unfortunate was the fate of M. Gorki, who visited America to preach the gospel of Freedom, as he thought, in willing ears. With the utmost propriety he did all that was expected of him. He apostrophised the statue in a voice tremulous with emotion. He addressed the great Continent, as it loves to be addressed. "America! America!" he exclaimed, "how I have longed for this day, when my foot should tread the soil where despotism cannot live!" Alas for his lost enthusiasm! A despot, grim and pitiless, was waiting for him round the corner. In other words, the proprietor of his hotel discovered that Mme. Gorki had no right to that name, and amid the cheers of the guests he and his companion were driven shamefully into the street. Were it not for the wanton inconvenience inflicted upon M. Gorki, the comedy of the situation would be priceless. The Friends of Russian Freedom, piously enamoured of assassination, and listening intently for the exquisite reverberation of the deadly bomb, sternly demand of the Apostle his marriage-lines. The Apostle of Revolution, unable to satisfy the demand, is solemnly excommunicated, as if he had apostrophised no statue, as if he had felt no expansion of his lungs, no tingling of his blood, when he first breathed the air of Freedom. O Liberty! Liberty! many follies have been committed in thy name! And now thy voice is hushed in inextinguishable laughter! The truth is, American Liberty is the mere creature of rhetoric. It is a survival from the time when the natural rights of man inspired a simple faith, when eager citizens declared that kings were the eternal enemies of Freedom. Its only begetter was Thomas Jefferson, and its gospel is preached in the famous Declaration of Independence. The dogmatism and pedantry upon which it is based are easily confuted. Something else than a form of government is necessary to ensure political and personal liberty. Otherwise the Black Republic would be a model to England. But Jefferson, not being a philosopher, and knowing not the rudiments of history, was unable to look beyond the few moral maxims which he had committed to memory. He was sure that the worst republic was better than the noblest tyranny the world had ever seen. He appealed not to experience but to sentiment, and he travelled up and down Europe with his eyes closed and his mind responsive only to the echoes of a vain theory. "If all the evils which can arise among us," said he, "from the republican form of our government, from this day to the Day of Judgment, could be put into a scale against what France suffers from its monarchical form in a week, or England in a month, the latter would preponderate." Thus he said, in sublime ignorance of the past, in perfect misunderstanding of the future. And his empty words echo to-day in the wigwams of Tammany.