railway-station at the bottom of the hill; but before departing I had spent half an hour in strolling about the common in vague consciousness of certain emotions that are called into play (I speak but for myself) by almost any glimpse of the imperial machinery of this great country. The glimpse may be of the slightest: it stirs a peculiar sentiment. I know not what to call this sentiment unless it be simply an admiration for the greatness of England. The greatness of England: that is a very pregnant phrase, but I am not using it analytically. I use it only as it sounds in the imagination of any American who really enjoys the enjoyable parts of this head-spring of his patriotism. I mean the great part that England has played in history, the great space she has occupied, her tremendous might, her far-stretching sway. That these clumsily-general ideas should be suggested by the sight of some infinitesimal fraction of the English administrative system may seem to indicate a too hysterical cast of fancy; but if so, I must plead guilty to the weakness. Why should a sentry-box more or less set one thinking of the glory of this little island, which has manufactured the means of so vast a dominion? This is more than I can say; and all I shall attempt to say is, that in the difficult days that are now elapsing a sympathetic stranger finds his meditations singularly quickened. It is the picturesque element in English history that he has chiefly cared for, and he finds himself wondering whether the picturesque epoch is completely closed. It is a moment when all the nations of Europe seem to be doing something, and he waits to see what England, who has done so much, will do. He has been meeting of late a good many of his country-people--Americans who live on the Continent and pretend to speak with assurance of continental ways of feeling. These people have been passing through London, and many of them are in that irritated condition of mind which appears to be the portion of the American sojourner in the British metropolis when he is not given up to the delights of the historic sentiment. They have affirmed with emphasis that the continental nations have ceased to care a straw for what England thinks; that her traditional prestige is completely extinct; that General Ignatieff twisted Lord Salisbury round his finger; and that the affairs of Europe will be settled quite independently of the power whose capital is on the Thames. England will do nothing, will risk nothing: there is no cause bad enough for her not to find a selfish interest in it--there is no cause good enough for her to fight about it. Poor old England is exploded: it is about time she should haul in her nets. To all this the sympathetic stranger replies that, in the first place, he does not believe a word of it; and, in the second place, he does not care a fig for it--care, that is, what the continental nations think. If the greatness of England were really waning, it would be to him as a