“The predominant vices of America, especially as represented by its great cities, are its irreverence, its recklessness, its impatience,--in one word, its materialism. A nation in which the artistic sense is almost dead; which is practically without a literature; which is impatient of all sanctions and indifferent to all religions; which is corrupt from the highest pinnacle of its public life down to the lowest depth of its primalism; which is at once thin-skinned under criticism and aggressive to criticise; which worships material forces in every shape and form; which despises conventional conditions, yet is slavish to ignoble fashions; which, too hasty to think for itself, takes recklessly at second-hand any old or new clothes philosophy that may be imported from Europe, yet, while wearing the raiment openly, mocks and ridicules the civilization that wove the fabric,” etc.--_Robert Buchanan in the same number of the same Review._ VIII. THE COURTS.--ONE JOURNALISTIC WARNING OUT OF MANY. “One of the main reliances of the criminal element of our city for escaping from the clutches of the law is the subornation of perjury. A class of professional false swearers has grown up, and their aid is invoked without hesitation in the criminal courts. This startling and shameful fact was fully revealed to the public on the Ford trial. Society can find no protection under the ægis of the courts until this iniquity shall have been uprooted and cast out. The ermine sits under a upas-tree as long as men and women in droves dare commit the crime of perjury. No jury can justly decide any case if a terrible blow be not first struck at false testimony. And there are back of these perjurers the suborners. The master should be reached as well as the hireling.”--_Editorial in the New Orleans Picayune, March 2, 1885._ IX. THE UNPROTECTED ATLANTIC COAST. Early in February, 1885, the New York Produce Exchange presented a Memorial to the Congress of the United States, setting forth, among other things, that the city of New York and the adjacent cities of Brooklyn and Jersey City “represent an interest in house ownership and real estate amounting to over $3,000,000,000; that all this realty is entirely unprotected from an attack by hostile fleets, which could bombard the city and the neighboring populated districts without even entering the Narrows. “It is known abroad as well as at home,” the memorialists say, “that the shores of this country are entirely unprotected; and it would be only an act of reasonable precaution that New York, the chief city of the nation, should be defended by such permanent forts, floating batteries, gunboats, and torpedo service as will give us a guaranty against sudden invasion until the country shall have time to build an adequate fleet for defensive purposes.” X. A SINGLE ILLUSTRATION OF THE IRISH-AMERICAN SPIRIT.