Royal, because there Dr. Franklin was entertained by the Duke of Orleans; remembers, at the church of St. Genevieve, that Abelard once lectured on its site; and, gazing on the beautiful ware in one of the cabinets of the Louvre, muses of the holy patience of Palissy.  By the handsome quays and bridges of the Seine, he tries to realize that once only an islet covered with mud hovels met the wanderer’s view.  He smiles at the abundance of fancy names, some chosen for their romantic sound, and others for the renowned associations, which are attached to vocalist, shop, and mouchoir.  He separates, in his thought, the incongruous emblems around him at this moment,—­tricolor and cresent, St. George and the Lilies, ‘God save the Queen’ and High Mass, banners that have floated over adverse armies since the crusades,—­amicably folded over the corpse of a French veteran!  Nor are character and manners less suggestive to such an observer; if an American, he beholds with astonishment, after all he has heard of the proverbial courtesy of the French, women habitually yield the wall to men, and stops with ill-disguised impatience, on returning from an afternoon’s ride, to have his carriage examined at the gate; contrasts the degraded state of the lower orders with the general urbanity and quietness of demeanor and the stern sway of political rule; marks the little crucifix and cup of holy water at the head of the peasant’s bed, and the diamond cross on the lace kerchief of the kneeling empress; recognizes the force of character, the self-dependence, the mental hardihood of the women, the business method displayed in their exercise of sentiment, and the exquisite mixture in their proceedings of tact, calculation, and geniality.

* * * * *

THE TRUE BASIS.

Never at any stage of American history was there such a crisis of ideas as at present, and never was there such urgent necessity of setting promptly, vigorously and clearly before the people the great and new principles which this crisis is bringing to life.  So vast are the issues involved, so tremendous their inevitable consequences, that we acquit of exaggeration the statesman who, in comparing even the gradual unfolding of the mighty past with this our present, exclaimed, ’Now is the first of the world’s progress.’[A]

[Footnote A:  Hon. Daniel S. Dickinson.]

The reader is doubtless perfectly familiar with the fact that in the battle between the North and the South two opposite principles are involved,—­the same which have been at the bottom of all wars for freedom, from the beginning of time.  The one party believes that one portion of society must flourish at the expense of another part, of a permanently sunken class; while the other holds that history proves that the lot of all persons in a commonwealth is capable of being gradually ameliorated, and that in any case it is our sacred duty to legislate for the poor, on this basis, by allowing them equal rights, and making every exertion to extend the best blessings of education to them, and open to every man, without distinction, every avenue of employment for which he is qualified.