importance.  In the North I had fancied that I could sometimes read a secessionist tendency under a cloud of Unionist protestations.  But in Philadelphia men did not seem to think it necessary to have recourse to such a cloud.  I generally found, in mixed society, that even there the discussion of secession was not permitted; but in society that was not mixed I heard very strong opinions expressed on each side.  With the Unionists nothing was so strong as the necessity of keeping of Slidell and Mason; when I suggested that the English government would probably require their surrender, I was talked down and ridiculed.  “Never that—­come what may.”  Then, within half an hour, I would be told by a secessionist that England must demand reparation if she meant to retain any place among the great nations of the world; but he also would declare that the men would not be surrendered.  “She must make the demand,” the secessionists would say, “and then there will be war; and after that we shall see whose ports will be blockaded!” The Southerner has ever looked to England for some breach of the blockade quite as strongly as the North has looked to England for sympathy and aid in keeping it.

The railway from Philadelphia to Baltimore passes along the top of Chesapeake Bay and across the Susquehanna River; at least the railway cars do so.  On one side of that river they are run on to a huge ferry-boat, and are again run off at the other side.  Such an operation would seem to be one of difficulty to us under any circumstances; but as the Susquehanna is a tidal river, rising and falling a considerable number of feet, the natural impediment in the way of such an enterprise would, I think, have staggered us.  We should have built a bridge costing two or three millions sterling, on which no conceivable amount of traffic would pay a fair dividend.  Here, in crossing the Susquehanna, the boat is so constructed that its deck shall be level with the line of the railway at half tide, so that the inclined plane from the shore down to the boat, or from the shore up to the boat, shall never exceed half the amount of the rise or fall.  One would suppose that the most intricate machinery would have been necessary for such an arrangement; but it was all rough and simple, and apparently managed by two negroes.  We would employ a small corps of engineers to conduct such an operation, and men and women would be detained in their carriages under all manner of threats as to the peril of life and limb; but here everybody was expected to look out for himself.  The cars were dragged up the inclined plane by a hawser attached to an engine, which hawser, had the stress broken it, as I could not but fancy probable, would have flown back and cut to pieces a lot of us who were standing in front of the car.  But I do not think that any such accident would have caused very much attention.  Life and limbs are not held to be so precious here as they are in England.  It may be a question