Volume 3 — EDITOR'S TABLE.

In the noble Message of President Lincoln, there are two paragraphs which should be committed to memory and constantly recalled by every man:

'Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down into honor or dishonor to the highest generation.

'We say 'we are for the Union!' The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save this Union. The world knows we know how to save it. We—even we here—hold the power and bear the responsibility!'

'We cannot escape history.' And this is true, not only of the Congress and of the Administration, but of all men who at the present day are raised one fraction above the veriest obscurity and completest nothing-ism. You, reader, and series of those whom you daily meet, may fancy that your deeds, speeches, writings, overshadowed as they are by the greater men and events of the day, will be forgotten. It is not so.

The last age was more antiquarian, more given to collecting, searching, and recording, than its predecessor. This present one is, however, a hundredfold more seeking and more chronicling than the last, and this tendency increases every year. As it is, scarce a hero or a traitor, even of the Revolution, is escaping glory or infamy. Will it be less the case with the good and bad men of the Emancipation? There is not one among them who shall escape history.

There is no thieving contractor, no 'helping' official, no shoddy scoundrel, no unrighteously 'commission' gathering leech, who is not quietly noted down here and there, to be duly exposed, some soon—some in after years. We know that extensive researches have been undertaken, to prepare and keep in black and white a record of the rascality of this war, in high places as well as low. They shall not escape history.

There is no cowardly, dishonest, selfish politician—be he who he may—no trimmer and truckler to the times—who will be forgotten. The most important war of all history—the greatest and most clearly outlined struggle between Aristocracy and Republicanism—will not pass away into oblivion. Men will toil away their lives that they may revive some of the salient points of this great fight for freedom. To commemorate the good, they must set forth the opposition of the bad—of those who aided the foe either by approving of endless slavery, by clogging the action of the Administration, or by turning the hardly earned income of Government, wrung from a suffering people, to their own profit. They shall not escape history.

Those who had the ability to aid the great cause of truth in any way, by brain or hand, and yet who did nothing—verily they shall not escape history.

The cautious, shrewd fellows, who hurrah loudly for the truth—after it has become safe and profitable to do so—they who run with the hound and hold with the hare—they may chuckle to themselves in their day, and rejoice at their shrewdness-but Time and GOD sift all things, however small—even such men as these. They shall not escape history.

And let them cry, 'After us the Deluge,' who will. You will live again in your children; the heritage of sin is repaid with compound interest to your name. How do you know but there is a GOD and a future knowledge of all this, that you act so boldly? What evil have your children or your name done you, that you should lay a curse on them? For if you do not put forth your hand to the great cause of truth and in the great battle of the Lord on behalf of Freedom, be certain that you are now shaping a malediction, and awaking the anathema maranatha, which shall go down into the deepest ages, and even in many lands, to cover you and yours with the dark shadow of shame forever. You shall not escape history.

But neither shall they escape who have fought the good fight for truth, for man and liberty. Truly, as the German proverb hath it, Zeit bricht Rosen und Zeit bringt Rosen—'Time breaks roses—but Time brings them also.' There is an age coming which will distinguish between the battles for conquest and idle glory and the honor of kings, and those which were fought for holy freedom. In that age, the great and good and wise, yes! even the smallest and weakest who chose the cause of Truth, will be prized above the men of all battles which ever were beforetime. Stand fast, O soldier! be firm, O friend of the good cause! let us see this thing bravely through to the end, come what may. GOD bless you!—and he will bless you! Die on the battle field, or labor humbly at home—if your heart and your hand have been given to the good work, you shall not escape history.

'Fate for you shall sheathe her shears, You shall live some thousand years.'

It has been nobly proposed, and we doubt not that the proposition will be as nobly realized, that a shipload of food be sent to the relief of the starving operatives of England. If the wealthy classes of Great Britain were generous in proportion to the same order of men in this country, and in proportion to their own riches, it would be simply absurd for us to offer to relieve their paupers. But they are not so; and it is a matter to be deeply deplored, that the manufacturers who have made fortunes from their operatives, are, in Great Britain, the ones who are least inclined to relieve the sufferings of their poor dependants. And this we state entirely on the authority of the British press, and from the comments made by it on a recent and wretchedly abortive effort to collect from manufacturing capitalists somewhat to feed the poor who had enriched them. To an American, accustomed to hear of deeds of generosity and public spirit, the list of moneys subscribed for such an object, against the names of millionaires, would seem incredibly beggarly and pitiful.

However this may be, some one must feed the poor; and if John Bull cannot afford it, Jonathan must. There is a degree of suffering in which Englishman or confederate rebel becomes simply a suffering brother, and when he who would not act the good Samaritan becomes most truly an outlaw to all humanity. Therefore, let there be, not one, but many shiploads sent to the sufferers—let us cast our bread upon the waters, literally as well as figuratively, and give no heed or thought to its return. The London Times will, we presume, impugn the motives of the charity—call it Pecksniffian and Heep-ish—or possibly try to prove that the Federals had no hand in the good deed. Let it rave—the business in hand is to feed starving men, women, and children, and not to make political capital, or gain glory, or please a party—for that we most assuredly shall not—but to do good and act in the large-hearted manner which gives a good conscience, and which as a national trait is the noblest characteristic of a republican.

The South has been quicker than the North in perceiving that public opinion in England is rapidly changing in certain quarters in favor of the Federal cause, and it is for this reason that the press in Secessia has of late been so unamiable toward Great Britain, while Semmes has shown in his pirating so little kindness to English goods. Possibly Secessia may after all discover that she might do a more unprofitable thing than be in alliance offensive and defensive with us, and that she might go further and fare worse, either alone, or with foreign friends who are, after all, only foes in disguise.

But it is a mad and a foolish thing for England to hope to be benefited by our dissension. Have we grown weaker or less dangerous by the discovery that we are capable of raising the greatest armies and the most invincible fleets in the world? While we flourish in prosperity, we afford her an outlet for all her paupers, thieves, vagabond Bohemians, and refuse of all sorts, to say nothing of the vast mass of the really industrious poor who do well here, but who would have starved to death at home. With one person in eight in Great Britain dying as a pauper and buried at the public expense, it is hardly expedient for its people to wish to see us ruined. Were we to exclude her vagabonds and paupers by an alien act from entering this country, and at the same time close our markets to her goods, of what avail would all the cotton in the world be to her? The American public understand this thing perfectly—so perfectly that the first movement toward intervention would be to effectually shut out the offending party, to bear by itself the worst results of prostrated manufactures and a turbulent starving population.

But we trust that nothing of the kind may happen, and that England will perceive that a great, prosperous, and united America, though it covers the whole Western hemisphere, will be of more advantage to her than a divided, impoverished land, full of fighting factions. It is a bad, an inhuman, and a most un-Christian policy to set wealthy and powerful neighbors at dissensions, to rejoice at their losses, and finally hope to see them from prosperous citizens, turned into starved brigands. Envy is of the devil. And it is the more wicked, because we know, and every one of our readers knows with us, that there never existed in this country, within our recollection, any desire whatever to see England impoverished, injured, or in any way 'set back' as a country. That deep-seated desire, openly avowed by her orators and press, to see our growing greatness checked, was never seriously cherished by any true American—and it could be proved that the insulting expressions of such a desire have in almost every instance originated with British emigrés in this country, who are notoriously the most bitter foes to their fatherland.

It is finally worth noting that the sympathy expressed by Americans for Russia during the Crimean war, has been of late frequently urged in England as a reason for withholding sympathy from the Federals. Now it is most undeniably true that, with certain rare exceptions, the friendship for Russia at that time came in a great measure from the Democratic party, and especially from the South. It was an Irish antipathy to England in the North, and a serf-sympathy in the South which caused it all—naturally enough, in all conscience. If any one doubts this, let him recall Roger Pryor's book, indorsing Russia as the great power destined to swallow up all Europe—written at a time when Pryor was beyond question the first and loudest exponent living of Southern feelings and principles. This is the simplest and plainest of facts, most easily susceptible of proof—and yet how many Englishmen are there who would believe it?

The truth is that the whole criticism of America by England has presented the melancholy spectacle of prejudice and envy, made maudlin by gross ignorance—and the worst of it all has been the making the North responsible for the bygone evil deeds of the South. Repudiation, protection, Russian sympathy, filibustering, and other objections—are all heaped on the Federal head alone to bear? Will the truth ever come to light in England?

May we venture to mention to our readers that 'Among the Pines'—originally published in these pages—is now selling its thirtieth thousand, with constantly increasing orders. And in connection we would add that 'Americans in Rome'—originally published in The Continental under the title of Maccaroni and Canvas has appeared in book form, and may be obtained from George P. Putnam. This work is, we believe, one of the most remarkable collections of sketches and observation ever written on Italy; combining a very great amount of accurate personal observations of the Roman people, both in the city and country, with that of American artists' life there. The observations are throughout racily humorous, and those who have within a few years visited 'the Cradle of Art' cannot fail to recognize, as hit off with no sparing hand, more than one American notoriety. Art quackery as it exists, is well shown up in 'Americans in Rome;' the author having little in common with those amiable romancers who glorify every illiterate picture-maker, though he never fails to do justice to true genius. We believe, in short, that these sketches form a very peculiar, piquant, and earnest work, as truthful as it is amusing, and as such commend it to our readers.