_Cannes, December 8th_. There is a new complication of the American case, and I fear, though I don't join in what I find the universal feeling in England, that the Government of Washington will hold out. But even if they give in, this hesitation, and their manifest fear of the mob, is the most complete confirmation of all I have been so long and so often preaching, of the extreme mischief of mob-government. They are in the hands of the mob--and one of the worst mobs in the world. You see they even are under this dominion as to their military operations; for their disaster at Bull's Run was owing to the clamour forcing their comrades to advance and do something; and now no one can have the least doubt that, if Lincoln and Seward were left to themselves, a war with England would be the thing they most dreaded; yet it is very possible they may feel unable to resist the mob-clamour, and may bring on that calamity. The mob of Paris threw France into all the horrors of the reign of terror (1793-4), which have left such indelible disgrace on the French, and which stopped all improvement both in France and in Europe for a quarter of a century, and which even now create such a force in favour of despotism--as they did in the first Napoleon's time. But I don't think the evils of mob-government--that is, of the supreme power being in persons not individually responsible--can be more clearly manifested, though they may not lead to such atrocious crimes, than in the States of America--and the southern as well as the northern--for the mob governs in both. My opinion will be the same, even if, contrary to probability, the Washington men are stout enough to resist the mob; for this hesitation and this struggle against the insanity of war could only be occasioned by the mob tyranny. Prince Albert died on December 14th. It was impossible to allow an event so important in the political as well as in the social history of the reign to pass without a notice in the 'Edinburgh Review,' and that on the earliest occasion; though, in the middle of December, some special arrangement had to be made for it. It was, in fact, brought into the concluding pages of the article on 'May's Constitutional History of England.' But the subject was one which called for exceeding care and delicacy in the handling. The services of Prince Albert to the Crown had been many and great; but by the country at large they were still looked on with jealousy and suspicion. A profound sympathy was everywhere felt for the death of the Queen's husband; the death of a man regarded by an ignorant prejudice as the embodiment of German influence in the Cabinet might easily be considered as no great loss. Reeve seems to have consulted Lord Clarendon as to how much or how little it was prudent to say; in answer to which Lord Clarendon wrote:--