The problem in selecting the best foreign representatives is to secure men who will represent our national character. Our diplomacy is unimportant. Such as we have to do can be carried on at Washington. We want ministers abroad who will be typical Americans, whose conspicuous position will display in them the best and truest results of our unique social and political system. If they are honored abroad, as Mr. Lowell has been in unusual ways and measure, the honor is given to us and glorifies us. There is always a fool to say that our minister is more English than American—simply because Englishmen respect him. It is a poor kind of criticism, and fortunately there is less and less of it in the press. We all stand better abroad, command more honest respect, are better understood in our best characteristics, because James Russell Lowell has represented us in London. May his successor succeed to the full measure of this representative office. The most distinguished honor ever conferred upon an American has come to Mr. Lowell. The English press, representing the best public opinion of that nation, invites him to remain., in England “as the unofficial representative of American literature, learning, manners, and knowledge of the world.” Nothing like that can be found in the long history of diplomacy. “He has been,” says one great journal, “a sort of guest-friend of England,” and it then describes him as “the most eminent American of this generation,” and adds, “Englishmen of all ranks and stations recognize in Mr. Lowell a faithful and jealous guardian of the interests of his country, and a type of all that is best in its intellectual and moral character.” There is not a word in all these encomiums which is not a eulogy of the American people. THE CHOLERA.