War! what miseries are heaped together in the sound!--What an accumulation of curses is breathed in that one word. To us, happy in our insular position, we have, within existing memory, known chiefly of war, its pomp and circumstance alone; the gay parade, the glancing arms, the bright colours, the inspiring music--these are what we see of war in its outset;--glory, and praise, and badges of honour, these are what appear to us as its result. The favourite son, the beloved brother, he who, perhaps, is dearer still, returns to the home of his youth or of his heart, having sown danger and reaped renown. Thus do we look on war. But ask the inhabitant of a country _which has been the seat of war_, what is _his_ opinion of it. He will tell you that he has seen his country ravaged, his home violated, his family ---- But no! the tongue recoils from speaking the horrors and atrocities of war thus brought into the bosom of a peaceful home. All the amenities and charities of domestic life are outraged, are annihilated. All that is dearest to man; all that tends to refine, to soften him--to make him a noble and a better being--all these are trampled under foot by a brutal soldiery--all these are torn from his heart for ever! He will tell you that he detests war so much that he almost despises its glories; and that he detests it because he has known its evils, and felt how poorly and miserably they are compensated by the fame which is given to the slaughterer and the destroyer, because he is such! _Tales of Passion._ * * * * * THE NEWSPAPERS. These square pieces of paper are the Agoras of modern life. The same skilful division of labour which brings the fowl ready trussed to our doors from the market, brings also an abstract of the Votum, timor, ira, voluptas, Gaudia, discursus,