probable conduct of Mr. Lincoln's constitutional successor. The accession of Andrew Johnson to the presidency will be received with almost as much misgiving in America as here; and the mind of the American people is no doubt by this time at work as to the best means of obviating the danger to the State which this event may entail. Should necessity arise, means of securing the public interest will be found; though, in a nation so attached to constitutional forms, no unconstitutional expedient will be resorted to till the resources of the Constitution have been exhausted.

Even if it were clear that Andrew Johnson were no better than a Marat or a Masaniello, the Americans are not a Parisian or a Neapolitan mob: they are an educated nation, trained to political action, and capable, by their united intelligence and practical resources, of meeting almost any emergency, as the events of the war have shown. But it is quite premature to assume that Johnson when in power will turn out a Marat or a Masaniello. An American politician (and the same thing may be said of the politicians in our colonies) may be very rough, even coarse; and yet he may have in him sterling stuff, which power and responsibility may bring to light. Lincoln himself was originally a rough man; and if we had looked only to certain parts of his early writings and speeches, we might have despaired of his becoming the worthy ruler of a great nation.

At his inauguration, Andrew Johnson, under the joint influence, it appears, of great excitement and drink, behaved in a way which shocked his countrymen as much as it did us. But we ought not to forget that Pitt was once, at least, seen the worse for liquor in the House of Commons; and that, if current tradition does not deceive us, a speech was made by a very eminent member of the House of Lords, in the debate on the Reform Bill, which showed that the speaker was not under the influence of political excitement alone. This incident seems to me less seri

ous than the arbitrary proceedings of which Johnson has more than once been guilty in Tennessee, and which appear to betray a character prone to violence, the thing most of all to be depre

cated and dreaded at the present juncture.

But Tennessee, where a desperate conflict has been going on between the secessionists and Union parties, and where Union men, Johnson himself among the number, have undergone every kind of outrage at the hands of their opponents, is the land of violence; and it is not to be assumed that a man would behave everywhere as he would behave there. High position and heavy responsibilities have sometimes a great effect in moderating and elevating the character, especially among the class of rough, strong men to whom I think it very probable the new President belongs. I shall not despair, till facts compel me, of seeing him, in his new dignity, mend his manners, throw off his Tennessean animosities, behave as becomes his station, and tread, to the best of his ability, both at home and abroad, in the steps of the truly great man (for so, though in an unimposing form, Lincoln was), into whose place he has been unexpectedly called.

His first speech seems to promise well. I do not mean to underrate the gravity of the accident, which, at this crisis, substitutes, for a representative of the shrewd and kindly West, a man chosen to what seemed an office of little importance by way of tribute to the Unionist martyrs of the violent and stabbing South. I only wish to avoid aggravating evil (as we well may) by anticipation; and, at any rate, to aid in arresting, if possible, the flood of dangerous vituperation which is ready to flow from the pens of a portion of our press. These journalists have just had as tremendous a lesson on their own fallibility as the severity of destiny could read them; and they could scarcely select a more dangerous moment than the present for another exhibition of their temperance and discretion.

The Senate, the House of Representatives, the Supreme Court, all have in their hands powers of restraining the action of the Executive; which, especially in the case of the Senate and House of Representatives, increase in effectiveness in proportion as the personal influence of the President over the nation diminishes. The army is in the hands of Grant, who has been styled by journalistic omniscience a "butcher," as Lincoln was styled a "Robespierre," but who is in fact an American Duke of Wellington, as straightforward and simple in character, as modest, as devoid of irregular ambition, as little likely to swerve from the strict path of military or civil duty; while his recent treatment of Lee and the captured army shows that he knows well how to behave to a vanquished enemy.

APRIL 27.

I am, &c.,

GOLDWIN SMITH.

P.S.-"Now that Mr. Lincoln is dead," says a virulent Tory journal, his good qualities seem to come to the foreground." And why, let me ask in the name of common honesty and veracity, did they not "come to the foreground" at the time when they were being displayed? In the same article, I find the new President belabored with all the aristocratic epithets bestowed till yesterday on his predecessor, with an unthinking repetition of the impudent falsehood originated by the "Times," that he proposed "to hang the Southern leaders as high as Haman." Thus slander leaves the dead, with a hypocritical tribute to the virtues it has maligned, only to fix upon the living.

London Daily News, April 26, 1865.

SPEECH OF SR. REBELLO DA SILVA:

DELIVERED IN THE CHAMBER OF PEERS, LISBON, PORTUGAL.

MR.

R. PRESIDENT,- I desire to offer to the Chamber some observations on a subject I deem most grave, for the purpose of introducing a motion which I intend to lay upon the table.

The Chamber has been made aware, by the official documents in the foreign journals, that a flagrant outrage has recently covered with mourning a great nation beyond the Atlantic,- the powerful Republic of the United States.

President Lincoln has been assassinated in the theatre, almost in the arms of his wife!

The perpetration of so foul a deed has caused the deepest grief in America, and throughout all the courts of Europe. Cabinets and parliaments have evinced the most universal sorrow at an event so grievous.

It belongs to civilized communities, it becomes almost a duty with all constituted political bodies, to accompany their manifestations with the sincere expression of horror at acts and crimes. so infamous.

Through a fatality, or a sublime disposition or unfathomable mystery of Providence, which is the more Christian interpretation of history, it often happens, not only in the life of nations,

but in that of individuals, when the loftiest heights have been reached, the boldest destinies fulfilled, even the last degrees of human greatness attained; when the way is suddenly made smooth, and the horizon casts off its clouds and shadows, and smiles flooded with light,—that then an unseen hand is lifted in the darkness, that a power, secret and inexorable, is armed in silence, and, waving the dagger of Brutus, pointing the cannon of Wellington, or offering the poisoned cup of Asiatic herbs, hurls the conqueror, crowned with laurels, from his height, at the feet of Pompey's statue, like Cæsar; at the feet of fortune, weary with following him, like Napoleon; at the feet of the Colossus of irritated Rome, like Hannibal.

The mission of great men and heroes makes them seem to us almost like demigods; for they receive for a moment from on High the omnipotence which revolutionizes societies and transfigures nations: they pass, like tempests, in their car of fire, to see themselves dashed at last in an instant against the eternal barriers of the impossible, - barriers which no one can remove, where they all find the pride of their ephemeral power reduced to nought, and humbled to the dust, - for immutable and great alone is God. Death overtakes them, or ruin reaches them, in their apogee, to show to princes, to conquerors, and to people, that their hour is one only and short; that their work is fragile, as the work of man, so soon as the pillar of fire which guided them is extinguished, and night falls upon their way: the new paths they had opened for themselves, and through which they thought to pass boldly and secure, become gulfs which open and swallow them, when, as instruments of the designs of the Most High, the days of their empire and their enterprise shall have been counted and finished.

Thus is seen a terrible example, a memorable lesson, in the catastrophe of the most noted characters of history. So come to