of every American traveler before we let him on board, and be stopped in our work if we take anybody on one side whose journeyings may be conceived by the other side to be to them prejudicial!  Not on such terms will Englishmen be willing to spread civilization across the ocean!  I do not pretend to understand Wheaton and Phillimore, or even to have read a single word of any international law.  I have refused to read any such, knowing that it would only confuse and mislead me.  But I have my common sense to guide me.  Two men living in one street, quarrel and shy brickbats at each other, and make the whole street very uncomfortable.  Not only is no one to interfere with them, but they are to have the privilege of deciding that their brickbats have the right of way, rather than the ordinary intercourse of the neighborhood!  If that be national law, national law must be changed.  It might do for some centuries back, but it cannot do now.  Up to this period my sympathies had been with the North.  I thought, and still think, that the North had no alternative, that the war had been forced upon them, and that they had gone about their work with patriotic energy.  But this stopping of an English mail steamer was too much for me.

What will they do in England? was now the question.  But for any knowledge as to that I had to wait till I reached Washington.

CHAPTER XVII.

CAMBRIDGE AND LOWELL.

The two places of most general interest in the vicinity of Boston are Cambridge and Lowell.  Cambridge is to Massachusetts, and, I may almost say, is to all the Northern States, what Cambridge and Oxford are to England.  It is the seat of the university which gives the highest education to be attained by the highest classes in that country.  Lowell also is in little to Massachusetts and to New England what Manchester is to us in so great a degree.  It is the largest and most prosperous cotton-manufacturing town in the States.

Cambridge is not above three or four miles from Boston.  Indeed, the town of Cambridge properly so called begins where Boston ceases.  The Harvard College—­that is its name, taken from one of its original founders—­is reached by horse-cars in twenty minutes from the city.  An Englishman feels inclined to regard the place as a suburb of Boston; but if he so expresses himself, he will not find favor in the eyes of the men of Cambridge.

The university is not so large as I had expected to find it.  It consists of Harvard College, as the undergraduates’ department, and of professional schools of law, medicine, divinity, and science.  In the few words that I will say about it I will confine myself to Harvard College proper, conceiving that the professional schools connected with it have not in themselves any special interest.  The average number of undergraduates does not exceed 450, and these are divided into four classes.  The average number