body of the public who support the war, not only thousands, but millions, are born Irishmen and Germans. New York is, in population, the fourth German city in the world. The swarms of republican aliens settled here, and who are more furious against the South than the native Americans, may be patriots, but they are surely not "lovers of their country." They have only become citizens of this once free republic since the day before yesterday, and they have abandoned their own countries to take care of themselves. Converts are always more bigoted than those to the manner born of a creed, and to the Irish and German patriots their adopted country may have greater charms than those which they have deserted; the honest and naked truth being, however, that Irish and German patriotism means simply so much satisfaction at being in a land where work is plentiful, wages good, and provisions abundant, and where the very lowest of the population has a chance of rising to political power and place-mingled with a rankling spite against their old homes in Europe, and a subdued desire to bully and overawe the Government under which they were hardly worked, poorly paid, and shut out, through the existence of a long established aristocratic or governing class, from political advancement. You may hear a good deal of nonsense talked from time to time about the Fenian brotherhood; and, let me tell you, that nonsense is, like most nonsense when properly read, as full of instruction as a sermon, or as a paper read at the Meeting of the British Association at Bath. There was a fancy fair held by that chivalrous order at Chicago in the summer of '64. The catalogue of articles donated by enthusiastic Fenian sym

pathisers was one of the funniest I ever read. Item, there were two photographs of the Venerable Archbishop M‘Hale; a moiré antique gent's vest; a piece of Lord Edward Fitzgerald's coffin; an Irish MS.; a few numbers of "Punch; several Ninety-eight pikes and shillelaghs; a bog-oak négligé; a jar of whisky that had never paid duty-by cock and pye, it would have to pay duty, and a swingeing excise too, to the U.S. Government!-the stone on which Sarsfield signed the violated treaty; a doll dressed to represent a Tipperary man's " dark-eyed Mary;" a sod from the grave of Theobald Wolfe Tone; a pair of lady's boots worked with a '98 pike; a portrait of Emmett, "in one of his pensive moods;" a Scottish claymore, taken at Wexford; a watch-pocket, "worked by a lady who hopes it will be worn next to a manly heart;" "A Bird's-eye view of the Protestant Reformation;" a pair of pink cork-soled slippers; a gross of pins, manufactured expressly for the fair; a portrait of St. Patrick; a crowbar, used by the Crowbar Brigade in '46-7; and a "curious bone, discovered on the island of Inchidonig." Next to the "cook's drawer" of Thomas Hood, the Fenian collection must have been about the queerest omnium gatherum ever brought together. Now, I don't think these Fenians will do much harm to the Saxon domination, or that the majority of the Celts who come to this country trouble themselves much more about the emancipation of the Green Isle from British rule, than the great body of the Teutons trouble themselves about German unity or the creation of a Federal fleet. Patriotism and love of country are if the whole truth must out-only questions of

nomenclature.

The supremely governing power in the human mind is selfishness, and nine hundred and ninetynine patriots out of a thousand love that country the best where they can make the most money, and do the most harm to those whom they hate.

CHAPTER XV.

DEMOCRACY AND THE DUSTBIN.

I HAVE Somewhere seen it remarked that Ireland would be a very nice country if they would only sweep it out, and make the beds about once a fortnight. So, likewise, would New York be one of the most magnificent cities in the world, if the authorities would only take the trouble to put its streets in some kind of decent order. It may without exaggeration be said that, with the exception of Broadway and Fifth Avenue-and they even are not wholly immaculate— there is no single thoroughfare in New York which does not most strongly and offensively remind the foreigner equally of Seven Dials, London, the Coomb in Dublin, and the Judegasse in Frankfort-on-the-Maine. This is surely not a political question. I may bring forward the expediency of drainage and the unsightliness of openly-displayed offal without becoming amenable to the charge of libelling the Americans and wilfully misrepresenting their institutions. My strictures are addressed simply to "whom they may concern," for I am not aware at whose door precisely the responsibility of the Empire City's sanitary shortcomings may lie. I merely argue on what my own eyes and nose have taught me at every hour of the day and night. There

is, I suppose, some kind of "Edility" here. There is a mayor; I have been introduced to him, and a very worthy soul he seemed to be. There is also, I presume, a board of aldermen, to assist Mr. Godfrey Gunther in his municipal duties. There is, I know, a board of councilmen. There are also, I should imagine, paving and lighting boards, district surveyors under Building Acts, and commissioners of police, nuisances, markets, and health. It is singular, if this city of over a million souls be indeed provided with all these "Ediles," that the streets should be in so very disgraceful a state. They cannot, it is true, be termed dirty in the active or moist signification of the term. Dirty is not precisely the word—they are more and less than dirty. In summer time there is scarcely any mud in New York, for the reason that the streets are rarely if ever watered, that it seldom rains, and that the power of the sun is so tremendous that any deposit of liquid formed on the roadway is almost instantaneously dried up to an impalpable powder, and in the form of dust careers from north to south, and from east to west, in wild simooms, or wafts itself down your throat, and settles on your lungs, and chokes up the pores of your skin. Mr. Mechi would not do much with his liquid-manure process on the island of Manhattan. The sun would so fry and dry him up as speedily to drive him to desperation. But dry dirt may become as intolerable as wet. The uncleanliness of New York is best expressed by a word inelegant in itself, but suggestive to all observant housewives of a very pregnant meaning-that of "Muck." The inhabitants of every street, with the two exceptions I have named, seem to