There is an excuse for every folly New York commits and the country imitates, for she is blessed with papers and politicians more than others practised to flatter vanity and mislead ignorance. When New York strews palm leaves before the feet of the Prince of Wales, it is done to cement the bond of love that links the New World to its venerable mother; when she runs after the Japanese, it is in search of a trans-oceanic brother, just discovered, and soon lovingly to be embraced (witness our doings in the Japanese waters); when she kisses the knout and collects Russian relics, it is done to inaugurate a sistership of the future, already dawning upon her in Muscovite smiles of friendship, in diplomatic hints of the czar, and in the hurrahs for the Union of Lissoffski's crews! In this case she only pays with American sympathy for Russian sympathy, and at the same time frowns a rebuke upon England and France for their un-Russian-like behavior, and insinuates a threat which may save this country from the perils of European intervention. But Russian imperial sympathy, with its diplomatic smiles and compulsory hurrahs, is nothing but a bait; he must be blind who does not see it. What is the natural tendency that would lead the czar, the upholder of despotism in the East, to sympathize with the model republic of the West? the empire which is again and again covered with the blood of Poland, divided by it and its accomplices, to have, amid its troubles, so much tender feeling for the indivisibility of this country? Is Alexander's friendship kindled by our acts of emancipation? It is true he has freed more than twenty millions of serfs in his empire, and, though following the dictates of political necessity, he may have acted with no more real anti-slavery sentiment than that which makes many avowed pro-slavery men emancipationists among ourselves, yet he certainly has achieved a noble glory, which even his monstrous reign in Poland may not entirely blot out from the pages of history. The same friendly disposition toward the United States was, however, ostentatiously evinced by Nicholas, who lived and died the true representative and guardian of unmitigated tyranny; it was as ostentatiously shown by Alexander at the time when Fremont's proclamation was repudiated as it is now, after the first of January, 1863; and it is he of all the monarchs of Europe who, as early as July, 1861, diplomatically advised this country to save the Union by compromise, as neither of the contending parties could be finally crushed down; that is to say, flagrantly to sacrifice _liberty_ in order to save _power_. The Russian nobility will naturally sympathize with the slaveholders of the South, and the lower classes of the Russian people are too ignorant to think about transatlantic affairs. Russian imperial and diplomatic sympathy will cordially be bestowed upon any nation and cause which promises to become hostile to England (or, on a given time,