Is it not recorded in all the books of relative history, that the Normans, under William the Conqueror, invaded and subjugated Saxon England and made virtual slaves of the unfortunate countrymen of Harold? Yet who were the conquered eventually? England was Saxon within fifty years of Hastings: England is Saxon to-day. The broad bosom of the Saxon mother, even when the sire of her child was a ravisher, gave out drops of strength that moulded it in spite of him, to be at last her avenger and his master! The Saxon pirate still sweeps the seas in his descendants: the Norman robber is only heard of at long intervals when he meets his opportunity at a Balaklava. The revenges of history are fearful; and if the end of human experience is not reached in our downfall, other races will be careful never to rivet a chain of caste or color, or so to rivet it that no meddling fingers of fanaticism can ever unloose the shackle! Perhaps it is proper as well as inevitable that the negro should have changed his place and mounted astride of the national neck instead of being trodden under the national foot. Everything else in our surroundings has changed--why not he? We do not yet quite understand the fact--it may be; but the foundations of the old in society have been broken up as effectually, within the past two years, as were those of the great deep at the time of Noah's flood. The old deities of fashion have been swept away in the flood of revolution. The millionaire of two years ago, intent at that time on the means by which the revenues from his brown-stone houses and pet railroad stocks could be spent to the most showy advantage, has become the struggling man of to-day, intent upon keeping up appearances, and happy if diminished and doubtful rents can even be made to meet increasing taxes. The struggling man of that time has meanwhile sprung into fortune and position, through lucky adventures in government transportations or army-contracts; and the jewelers of Broadway and Chestnut Street are busy resetting the diamonds of decayed families, to sparkle on brows and bosoms that only a little while ago beat with pride at an added weight of California paste or Kentucky rock-crystal. The most showy equipages that flashed last summer at Newport and Saratoga, were never seen between the bathing-beach and Fort Adams, or between Congress Spring and the Lake, in the old days; and on the "Dinorah" nights at the Academy[4] there have been new faces in the most prominent boxes, almost as _outre_ and unaccustomed in their appearance as was that of the hard-featured Western President, framed in a shock head and a turn-down collar, meeting the gaze of astonished Murray Hill, when he passed an hour there on his way to the inauguration. [Footnote 4: December 1862.]