threaten her with an attack on it is to threaten a proud nation with outrage and an assault upon its honor. Finally, if
our people have misconstrued your acts, let me conjure

you to make due allowance
for our ignorance,--an ignorance which, in many cases, is as dark as night, but which the progress of events here begins gloriously

to dispel. We are not such a nation

of travellers as you
are, and scarcely one Englishman has seen America for a hundred Americans that have seen England. "Why does not Beauregard fly to the assistance of Lee?" said a highly educated Englishman to an American in England. "Because," was t he reply, "the distance is as great as it is from Rome to Paris." If these three thousand miles of ocean that lie between us could be removed for a few days,

and the
two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race could look each other in the face, and speak their minds to each other, there would be
an end, I believe, of all these fears. When an Englishman and an American meet, in this country or in England, they are friends, notwithstanding all that has passed; why not the two nations? I have not presumed, and shall not presume,
to touch on any question that
has arisen or may
arise between the Executive Government of my country and the Executive Government of yours. In England, Liberals have not failed to plead for justice to you, and, as we thought, at the same time,
for the maintenance of English honor. But I will venture to make, in conclusion, one or two brief remarks as to the general temper in which these questions should be viewed. In the first place, when great and terrible issues hang upon our
acts, perhaps upon our words, let us control our fancies

and distinguish realities from fictions. There hangs over every great struggle, and especially over every civil war, a hot a