13. And Abraham arose, and went forth into the
wilderness, and sought diligently for the man, and
found him, and returned with him to the tent; and
when he had entreated him kindly, he sent him
away on the morrow with gifts.

14. And God spake again unto Abraham, saying,
"For this thy sin shall thy seed be afflicted four
hundred years in a strange land;

15. "But for thy repentance will I deliver them;
and they shall come forth with power, and with
gladness of heart, and with much substance."

Number nine is the first of the papers
mentioned above, as relating particularly to
Washington. These papers contain selections from
Washington's diary; a letter from Washington
describing his feelings when his fame had made
him a sort of involuntary model for painters:
which letter Mr. Everett compares with one to
himself from the Duke of Wellington upon the
same subject; a description of Washington's
southern tour, and some "critical occasions and
incidents" in his life, which, in Mr. Everett's
opinion, prove distinctly that Washington was
under the special protection of an overruling
Providence. If his belief be superstitious, Mr.
Everett is content to incur the charge of
superstition. The point is one, perhaps, upon which
men will never be agreed, but it may be
considered tolerably certain that, had Washington
entered the royal navy, as he wished when a
boy; had he died of small-pox, as he very nearly
did at the age of nineteen; had he been drowned,
as he very nearly was by falling from his raft;
had he not escaped miraculously at the
melancholy defeat of Braddock; had he not come
safely out from the cross-fire at Princeton; had
he married Mary Philipse; or had he fallen a
victim to any one of the untoward accidents
which threatened him; the revolution would have
lost the leadership of Washington. Whether
Brutus could "raise a spirit as soon as Caesar,"
whether America was destitute of "noble
bloods," it is bootless to inquire; one man
escaped from perils innumerable, to be the father
of his country; and that one man was
Washington.

The eleventh paper treats of Louis Napoleon.
His boyhood, his trial in 1840 before the House
of Peers, his election as Prince President, and
his coup d'état, are the chief topics; it must have
been with peculiar feelings that Mr. Everett,
who in 1819 had dined with him at the ex-King
Louis Philippe's table, and in 1840 had witnessed
him on trial for his life, found himself writing
in 1859, "It devolved upon me, in an official
capacity, to send to Mr. Rivers, the American
minister in Paris, a letter of credence to his
Imperial Majesty Napoleon the Third." There
are in this paper some remarks upon the
American press which will seem not altogether
inapplicable on this side of the Atlantic: "It is
for good or for evil the most powerful influence
that acts upon the public mind, the most powerful
in itself, and is the channel through which
most other influences act. If it would learn
that an opponent is not necessarily an
unprincipled and selfish adventurer, a traitor, a
coward, and a knave; and that our neighbours,
on an average, are as honest and right-minded
as ourselves, it would increase its own power,
and the great interests of the country (which
languish under the poison of our party
bitterness) would be incalculably promoted."
Numbers thirteen and fifteen are full of
delightful reminiscences of Abbotsford and Sir
Walter Scott, though much of sadness clings
to them: for all his family have passed away,
and the magician's name alone is left. It fell to
Mr. Everett's lot to take to Abbotsford upon
his first visit the first copy of the Heart of
Midlothian which reached the family, "except the
copy which had come in the shape of proof-
sheets to the (as yet unadvised) author." Number
fourteen contains an account of the prodigy
which "became an historical fact on the 4th of
March, 1789," i.e. the establishment of the
present constitution of the United States, in the
time of profound peace, by the voluntary
consent of the whole people. In the sixteenth
paper we are presented with a slight sketch of
the Court of France in 1818 and its great
personages: Louis the Eighteenth, with his corpulent
figure and round unmeaning face; the Duchess
d'Angoulême, heroic, sad, and austere; the
Duke d'Angoulême, a short, thin, ordinary-
looking man, affecting military freedom and
pleasantries; the Count d'Artois, afterwards
Charles the Tenth; the Duke de Berri, short,
stout, and hearty; and last, not least, the
Duchess de Berri, whose devoted courage when
her husband fell by the hand of an assassin, and
when her son was driven from his hereditary
throne, entitle her memory to lasting honour.
The seventeenth paper is an outline of the life
of Lord Erskine, and contains a letter from him
to General Washington, in which Lord Erskine
says, "You are the only human being for whom
I ever felt an awful reverence." The eighteenth
and nineteenth papers are Mr. Everett's reply
to a request that he would state the cause of
the financial crisis of 1857. Mr. Everett
pronounces himself not wise enough to solve the
problem satisfactorily, but the solution he
proposes is, that "the whole country, individuals
and communities, trading-houses, corporations,
towns, cities, states, were labouring under a
weight of debt, beneath which the ordinary
business relations of the country were at length
arrested, and the great instrument usually employed
for carrying them on, CREDIT, broke down."
Numbers twenty and twenty-one have for their
subject Travelling, and some amusing extracts
from the Journal of Madam Sarah Knight, who
travelled from Boston to New York on horseback,
in 1704, are given; accommodation in
those days—especially for ladies—was anything
but what it should be, according to Madam
Knight, who says: "Being very hungry, I
desired a fricasee, wch the Frenchman
undertaking managed so contrary to my notion of
Cookery, that I hastened to bed superless; And
being shewd the way up a pair of stairs wch
had such a narrow passage that I had almost
stopt by the Bulk of my Body . . . . . Little
Miss went to scratch up my Kennell wch