WEARY and old, here let me die

Here, in this ditch-I care not how. "He's drunk!" the passing crowd may cry;

I do not want their pity now. 'Tis so, save when, with shudd'ring glance

And scarce a pause, their sous are thrown.

Why stop to lose the play, the dance? Pass on! for I can die alone.

Yes, here to time I yield at last,

Since hunger can no longer kill. I once did hope, when youth was past, Myage some shelter'd nook might fill; But in no Refuge was there room,

So many wretches houseless roam! The streets through life have been my doom;

So, after all, I die at home.

When young, to those who earned their bread

"Teach me your trade," I used to say. "We scarce find work ourselves," they said;

"Go beg, my lad," and turned away. Ye rich, who bade me work, nor saw How hard I strove, ye gave, 'tis true, My crust of bread, my couch of straw : I dare not lay my curse on you.

I might have robbed-I begged instead :

The greatest theft I can recall, Was but the apple o'er my head That overhung some garden wall. Yet want has such an evil look, That into gaol I oft was thrown; The only wealth I had they took :

At least the sunshine was my own. What country has the poor man? None! How shared I in your corn and wine?

The battles by your soldiers wonYour arts, your commerce, were not mine.

Yet, when beneath the strangers' rule The pride of France lay crushed and low,

I wept! 'Twas like a thoughtless fool, For rich and generous was the foe.

If we, indeed, mere vermin are,

'Twere wise to crush us ere we sting; If men, oh! teach us-wiser farHow from our lives some good may spring.

Worm that I am, had human aid
Or guidance reached me, even I
Might here have laboured, loved, and

CROMER, August 12, 1861.

DEAR MR. EDITOR,

Your contributors are probably just now scattered, or scattering, over the whole of Europe, if not farther. Having myself been away from town since the 3d, I don't know much of what may have been the talk there about the American war, and the defeat of the Northern army at Manassas Junction. You may have fixed on some one to write on the subject, and in that case

you can consign this letter to the wastepaper basket; but, if there is no one told off for this duty, I hope you will let me volunteer, for I do think that the tone of all our leading journals (so far as I have been able to see them in this delightfully quiet little fishing village), has, with the single exception of the Spectator, been ungenerous and unfair, and has not represented the better mind of England. At the same time, under present circumstances, it is better, perhaps, to put what I have to say in the form of a letter, for which I alone am responsible.

In the first place, then, this defeat, this panic at Manassas Junction, had it been ten times as disastrous as it has been, has not altered in the least, and cannot alter the rights and wrongs of the great question at issue. A truism this, no doubt: but, for all that, when one sees the way in which mere success is worshipped here, and the sudden spring which the South has made into popularity in newspaper columns, since the last mails, a truism which needs repeating! If the North were right before, they are right now, though defeated. If the Confederates were rebels before, they are rebels still, though triumphant for the moment.

If the United States were to remain a nation at all, they had not only the right, but were bound by every feeling of national honour to strain every nerve, to bring the Secessionists to reason. How did they set about the work? They were utterly unprepared, without troops, without officers, without military stores. Their troops had been carefully scattered in small detachments over the Western and Southern states; the officers were almost all Southerners, who resigned their commissions, and joined the rebels; the stores had been accumulated in the Southern forts and arsenals. They waited as long as there was hope of an amicable arrangement; when that hope came to nothing, at the word of the President the whole North rose as one man. That rising was as grand, as noble, a national act, as any which we have seen, or are likely to see, in our generation. It wrung an approval even from that portion of the press and people of this country who were most exasperated at the unlucky Morrill tariff, and at the menacing attitude which the President's government chose to assume towards us.

Have they flinched from their work? We hear, indeed, of a regiment or two of volunteers, enlisted for three months, who are going home; but the nation has not shown the slightest symptom

of turning back. On the contrary, the President, Congress, and the nation, though they may show their resolution in ways which do not please us-which would not be ours, perhaps, under like circumstances do show the most unflinching resolution to go through with what they have begun. When this is so no longer, it will be time enough to sneer at them.

Then, as to the battle itself, and the panic; what is the fair view of it? By the time this letter is printed, we may, perhaps, have full details; at present one has nothing beyond the barest possible despatches, and a set of one-sided accounts, written under strong excitement, to go upon. From these, however, we find that there was a determined struggle of many hours before the Northern troops were beaten. Jefferson Davis's despatch begins, "Manas"sas Junction, Sunday night. - Nighthas "closed upon a hard-fought field; our "forces are victorious," &c. There is no evidence whatever as yet that the troops which were in action did not behave gallantly, but much the other way. Some regiments are reported as "cut to pieces." I think that these are most likely New England or New York regiments, composed chiefly of Americans, and well organised-men who knew what they were fighting for, and how to fight. All accounts agree in the statement that the troops which took the lead in the panic were a rabble of all nations, Americans, Irish, Germans, and others, who had been hastily thrown together, and half drilled. They will fight well enough yet, when they have been made into regulars; but volunteers, to fight well, must be borne up by enthusiasm for a cause, which here was wholly wanting. And, as to the panic, we may just as well remember, what has been so well put in the Spectator, that these troops, "in their maddest excitement, did no"thing which was not done by the "Frenchmen who, within five days, "drove the first infantry in Europe back "from the hill of Valmy."

The advance was premature, badly planned, and not well executed. This is surely natural enough at the beginning of such a war. It seems that the Northern press are largely responsible for the movement. And here, again, there are good grounds for anything but contempt and hard words. On the news of the defeat, all the best of the Northern papers have acknowledgedtheir error, and formally undertaken to abstain from military criticism. Our own papers are so little in the habit of acknowledging themselves in the wrong, or of abstaining from criticism, however illjudged, on any matter under the sun, that I confess to being rather struck by this action of the American journalists.

While speaking of American journals I may remark that the passages cited in the Times, and other papers, which have so disgusted and angered many of us, are from the New York Herald, a notoriously Southern paper, and one of the most scurrilous journals in the whole States. At the breaking out of the war the office of this paper was with difficulty preserved from destruction. Since that time it has not dared to show its Southern sympathies, but has devoted itself, in the obvious interests of its clients, to the work of embroiling the Northern States with us by its unscrupulous and lying virulence. I quite admit that the tone of the Government and people of the North has been such as deeply to grieve and disappoint every right-minded Englishman; but don't let us saddle them with the frantic slanders of the New York Herald. These must be put in all fairness to the credit of the South.

Hitherto I have been speaking without immediate reference to the great cause in issue. I believe that, apart from that cause, the North are entitled to our good wishes. They are in the right, apart from all question of Slavery. If they really mean to leave "State rights" untouched -if they are not even fighting to keep "the territories" free-if, as we are often told in newspaper articles, Slavery has nothing to say to the war at all-I must repeat that they are emphatically right.

But does anybody seriously believe this? Will any serious person get up

and say, in his own name, or write in his own name, that the meaning of the whole war-the point really at issue, from first to last-has not been, and is not (to put it at the lowest) whether Slavery shall be confined to its present limits in North America, or allowed to extend as and where it can? That was the issue; perhaps it is so still. But those who entered on the war with this as the goal of their hopes and efforts, who would gladly have accepted the limitation of Slavery to its present limits a few months or weeks ago, will, unless they are very different men from what I believe them to be unless the teaching of all history is vain-not be content now with this compromise. The great cause of freedom will draw them, and the nation after them, along paths which they would never have sought for themselves.

It is the battle of human freedom which the North are fighting, and which should draw to them the sympathy of every Englishman, and make him cast to the winds all Morrill tariffs and angry talk about Canada, all bad manners, and hard words. If the North is beaten, it will be a misfortune such has not come on the world since Christendom arose. An empire will be founded in these Southern States on the simple base of Slavery, having no other starting point or principle whatever than their right to enslave men of their own flesh and blood. It is of no use to speculate upon what the acts and policy of such a State will be. The world will see that soon enough, should it arise. Meantime the Northern States stand alone between us and it, and the greatest misfortune which can happen to us and to mankind will be their defeat.

God grant that they may hold on, and be strong! God grant that they may remember that the greatest triumphs have always come, and must always come, to men through the greatest humiliations. God himself could not set men free but through this rule.

I am yours very truly,

THOMAS HUGHES.