THE ENGLISH VOLUNTEERS DURING THE LATE INVASION

The most painful event since the bombardment of Alexandria has been what is called by an English writer the “invasion” of “American Literature in England.”  The hostile forces, with an advanced guard of what was regarded as an “awkward squad,” had been gradually effecting a landing and a lodgment not unwelcome to the unsuspicious natives.  No alarm was taken when they threw out a skirmish-line of magazines and began to deploy an occasional wild poet, who advanced in buckskin leggings, revolver in hand, or a stray sharp-shooting sketcher clad in the picturesque robes of the sunset.  Put when the main body of American novelists got fairly ashore and into position the literary militia of the island rose up as one man, with the strength of a thousand, to repel the invaders and sweep them back across the Atlantic.  The spectacle had a dramatic interest.  The invaders were not numerous, did not carry their native tomahawks, they had been careful to wash off the frightful paint with which they usually go into action, they did not utter the defiant whoop of Pogram, and even the militia regarded them as on the whole “amusin’ young ’possums” and yet all the resources of modern and ancient warfare were brought to bear upon them.  There was a crack of revolvers from the daily press, a lively fusillade of small-arms in the astonished weeklies, a discharge of point-blank blunderbusses from the monthlies; and some of the heavy quarterlies loaded up the old pieces of ordnance, that had not been charged in forty years, with slugs and brickbats and junk-bottles, and poured in raking broadsides.  The effect on the island was something tremendous:  it shook and trembled, and was almost hidden in the smoke of the conflict.  What the effect is upon the invaders it is too soon to determine.  If any of them survive, it will be God’s mercy to his weak and innocent children.

It must be said that the American people—­such of them as were aware of this uprising—­took the punishment of their presumption in a sweet and forgiving spirit.  If they did not feel that they deserved it, they regarded it as a valuable contribution to the study of sociology and race characteristics, in which they have taken a lively interest of late.  We know how it is ourselves, they said; we used to be thin-skinned and self-conscious and sensitive.  We used to wince and cringe under English criticism, and try to strike back in a blind fury.  We have learned that criticism is good for us, and we are grateful for it from any source.  We have learned that English criticism is dictated by love for us, by a warm interest in our intellectual development, just as English anxiety about our revenue laws is based upon a yearning that our down-trodden millions shall enjoy the benefits of free-trade.  We did not understand why a country that admits our beef and grain and cheese should seem to seek protection