By the death of Mr. Cobden America has lost one of her truest friends, one who in all this conflict, which has been reflected in England in a fierce warfare of parties, has been in the thick or the fight, "the white plume of Navarre." Nothing told more for the American cause in Europe than the celebrated speech of Cobden, made at the time when the busy Southerners were trying to show that the war was not for Slavery, but Free Trade, in which he declared that he had found the Southerners, and Jefferson Davis himself, whom he had visited, utterly indifferent to the Free Trade movement. He was accustomed to speak of American affairs as an American. I well remember his vehement expressions of feeling concerning the McClellan campaign in Virginia,--in connection with which he told me that he was at one time travelling with Jefferson Davis and McClellan together, and that Davis whispered to him, that, in case of war, "That man [McClellan] is one of the first we should put into service." I thought Mr. Cobden inclined to attribute McClellan's failures to something worse than incapacity. But this is only one instance of the way in which he followed our war-steps, and was interested in the subordinate questions which are usually interesting only to Americans. It is with a melancholy pleasure that we now know that his last public utterance was the letter on American affairs to our minister at Copenhagen, which reached England in the American papers the day before his death,--and that one of his last acts was to send from his death-bed a contribution to a poor and paralyzed American sailor who with his family was suffering in London, without any personal appeal having been made to him. These were the last pulses of a heart that beat only for humanity. Mr. Cobden was one of the finest speakers I have ever heard. There was a play as of summer lightning about his eloquence, which, whilst it did not strike and crash opponents, was purifying the atmosphere of the debate, and lightning up every detail of fact, so that error could not flourish in his presence, nor even well hide itself. There was a terseness and massiveness in his speech, curiously blended with subtilty and fervor. A question of finance would grow pathetic under his touch, and he could create a soul under the ribs of statistics. He might vie with Lowell's ideal Jonathan for "calculating fanaticism" and "cast-iron enthusiasm." But, after all, what more need be said than the epitaph proposed for his grave: "_He gave the people bread_"? MODERN IMPROVEMENTS AND OUR NATIONAL DEBT.