In the medical world, it is said no one has a cold without fever; and I think it may with equal truth be asserted of the national world, no nations are vain without being afflicted with sensitiveness:  at all events, it is true as regards the United States.  No maiden in her teens is so ticklishly sensitive as the Americans.  I do not refer merely to that portion of the community of which I have selected Mr. Douglas, of Illinois, as the type; I allude also to the far higher order of intelligence with which the Republic abounds.  There is a touchiness about them all with respect to national and local questions which I never saw equalled:  in fact, the few sheets of their Press which reach this country are alone sufficient to convince any one on that point; for in a free country the Press may always be fairly considered, to a certain extent, as the reflex of the public mind.  I suppose it is with nations as with individuals, and that each are alike blind to their own failings.  In no other way can I account for the Republic overlooking so entirely the sensitiveness of others.  Take for instance the appointment of M. Soule—­a Frenchman naturalized in America—­as minister to the court of Spain.  I do not say that he was a Filibustero, but he was universally supposed to be identified with that party; and if he were not so identified, he showed a puerile ignorance of the requirements of a Minister, quite beyond conception, when he received a serenade of five thousand people at New York, who came in procession, bearing aloft the accompanying transparencies, he being at the time accredited to his new ministry.

On the first transparency was the following motto:—­

  A STAR.  PIERCE.

  SOULE.  CUBA.

On the second banner:—­

  YOUNG AMERICA AND YOUNG CUBA. 
  Free thought and free speech for the Cubans.

  ’Tis no flight of fancy, for
  Cuba must be, and ’tis
  Written by fate, an isle
  Great and free.

  O pray, ye doomed tyrants,
    Your fate’s not far: 
  A dread Order now watches you,—­
    It is the Lone Star.

On the third banner:—­

  Cuba must and shall be free.

  The Antilles Flower,
    The true Key of the Gulf,
  Must be plucked from the Crown
    Of the Old Spanish Wolf.

Monumental representation—­a tomb and a weeping willow.  On the tomb were the words—­

  LOPEZ AND CRITTENDEN,

  AGUERO AND ARMATERO.

  They and their companions are not forgotten.

M. Soule accepts the compliment, and makes a speech, in which he informs his audience that he cannot believe “that this mighty nation can be chained now within the narrow limits which fettered the young Republic of America,” &c.