Russian war.  But if fighting must needs be done, one did not feel special grief at fighting a Russian.  That the Indian mutiny should be put down was a matter of course.  That those Chinese rascals should be forced into the harness of civilization was a good thing.  That England should be as strong as France—­or, perhaps, if possible a little stronger—­recommended itself to an Englishman’s mind as a State necessity.  But a war with the States of America!  In thinking of it I began to believe that the world was going backward.  Over sixty millions sterling of stock—­railway stock and such like—­are held in America by Englishmen, and the chances would be that before such a war could be finished the whole of that would be confiscated.  Family connections between the States and the British isles are almost as close as between one of those islands and another.  The commercial intercourse between the two countries has given bread to millions of Englishmen, and a break in it would rob millions of their bread.  These people speak our language, use our prayers, read our books, are ruled by our laws, dress themselves in our image, are warm with our blood.  They have all our virtues; and their vices are our own too, loudly as we call out against them.  They are our sons and our daughters, the source of our greatest pride, and as we grow old they should be the staff of our age.  Such a war as we should now wage with the States would be an unloosing of hell upon all that is best upon the world’s surface.  If in such a war we beat the Americans, they with their proud stomachs would never forgive us.  If they should be victors, we should never forgive ourselves.  I certainly could not bring myself to speak of it with the equanimity of my friend the Senator.

I went through New York to Philadelphia, and made a short visit to the latter town.  Philadelphia seems to me to have thrown off its Quaker garb, and to present itself to the world in the garments ordinarily assumed by large cities—­by which I intend to express my opinion that the Philadelphians are not, in these latter days, any better than their neighbors.  I am not sure whether in some respects they may not perhaps be worse.  Quakers—­Quakers absolutely in the very flesh of close bonnets and brown knee-breeches—­are still to be seen there; but they are not numerous, and would not strike the eye if one did not specially look for a Quaker at Philadelphia.  It is a large town, with a very large hotel—­there are no doubt half a dozen large hotels, but one of them is specially great—­with long, straight streets, good shops and markets, and decent, comfortable-looking houses.  The houses of Philadelphia generally are not so large as those of other great cities in the States.  They are more modest than those of New York, and less commodious than those of Boston.  Their most striking appendage is the marble steps at the front doors.  Two doors, as a rule, enjoy one set of steps, on the outer edges of which there is generally no parapet or raised curb-stone.  This, to my eye, gave the houses an unfinished appearance—­as though the marble ran short, and no further expenditure could be made.  The frost came when I was there, and then all these steps were covered up in wooden cases.