he says, “was supercilious pride; on that of the United States, aggressive coarseness.” To Sir Robert Peel is due the praise of having taken a decided step to settle the north-eastern boundary. Lord Ashburton, received with considerable enthusiasm in the United States, was at once accepted by President Tyler, and for the better adjustment of the difficulty, it was arranged that he should be met by Mr. Webster in a spirit of perfect candour; that memoranda and despatches were to be dispensed with, and that every honest, straightforward exertion should be made on both sides to come to a satisfactory settlement of the vexed question. Lord Ashburton had, however, to encounter not only the Secretary of State, but the Commissioners of Maine and Massachusetts, among whom were Mr. Abbott Lawrence and Mr. Preble. Mr. Grattan, who was actually invited to assist at the negotiations by the American Commissioners, and went to Washington as _amicus curiæ_, gives a most minute and interesting account of the whole of the proceedings, and states positively that Mr. Webster sent a confidential agent to the Commissioners, proposing a line far south of the St. John’s River, before they had got further than New York, which gave great offence to Mr. Preble, by whose influence it was rejected. His pertinacity and the pomposity of Lawrence, with which we are well acquainted in England, were obstacles in the way of a calm discussion of adverse claims, but the other Commissioners are described as exceedingly forbearing, unassuming, and well-behaved. At first Lord Ashburton seemed to make way with Mr. Webster, and to be on the point of obtaining a more favourable line than that proposed by the Netherlands compromise, but the British Commissioner had no special proof or absolute document to show that the highlands south of St. John indicated the boundary meant by the treaty of 1783. It was known that Dr. Franklin sent from Paris to Washington, at the time of making the treaty, a map on which was drawn a red ink line to show the boundary to Mr. Jefferson. It is strange enough that, in the state of confusion caused by conflicting statements and contradictory documents, it should not have occurred to Lord Ashburton or to Mr. Grattan, who records his own anxious searches after Dr. Franklin’s map, that a counterpart might have been readily found in Paris in the archives of the Foreign Office; but the fact was, Franklin’s map could nowhere be found in the State Paper Department of Washington.