You will say, as was said to the trumpeter in Æsop--"No, no,--you make all the mischief; others cut throats, but you have set them on." But is the democratic spirit really of American origin? Our Plymouth orators--the men who annually glorify our earliest colonists--usually trace it to the Puritans, and through them to Geneva. At all events, it now infects the world, and those are the happy and the permanent governments which are prepared for its violence, by constitutional vents and floodgates. It is not to be stifled, or dammed up. We believe, therefore, that our own government is the best for ourselves, and few of us have any fear for that of England. On British matters we do not feel bound to judge by our own experiences. We are free to theorise on broader principles; and many of us form our own opinions, not as cool and critical foreigners, but as having a deep interest in the preservation of the institutions of our ancestors. Why should we not? The study of history carries us, at once, beyond the narrow limits of threescore years and ten, which is the age of our national existence, and as soon as we pass that boundary we too are Britons. The blood of our forefathers ran in English veins, or flowed for British freedom and sovereignty. This fact is enough to make our educated and reflecting men speculatively conservative as to British politics. We know the past, and do not feel the party-heats of the present in England. Hence I am far from being alone among my countrymen, in looking at English matters with an English heart. Even our commercial class have a reason for wishing internal peace and prosperity to England; and I believe there is generally something better than selfishness in the prevalent good-will toward her. I wish you could have watched, as I did, the feelings of our whole people, while lately, between the arrivals of two steamers, there was a solemn feeling of surprise as to what would be the results of the Chartist demonstration! Till the news came, the stoutest of us held our breath. I assure you, Basil, the peril of England was observed with a deep anxiety. During all that time I met not a respectable man who wished to see a revolutionary result. It was the talk of all circles. Our merchants trembled for England; our scholars hoped for her; a clerical gentleman assured me that he daily prayed for her. The press very generally predicted a triumph of order, but there were some specimens of newspaper literature that ventured an opposite augury. I wish you could have seen this city when the result was known. The news was received with a thrill. There was some laughing at the parturient mountain and the still-born mouse, but a graver cheerfulness was the reigning emotion. We deeply felt that, by the mercy of God, the world had been spared from a conflagration which the match of a madman could light, but which only another deluge could extinguish. For one, I was as a watcher by the sea-side, who, after a night of tempest,