Yet triumphal as had been the Prince's progress in Canada, it was nothing to the Teception which awaited him in America whither he now repaired; and it was perhaps this aspect of his Transatlantic tour which was the most significant. To be welcomed effusively by the subjects of his! mother in the Dominion was only natural but to be frantically acclaimed by the peo: plo of the United States who had emancipated themselves from the rule, or the misrule, of his great-grandfather, George ITI—w that not a convincing proof, if over there was one, that blood is thicker than water, and that there is a federation and a soli clarity between all the members of the British race stronger than could be effected by treaties and conventions? On first hearing of the Prince's intended visit to Canada, President Buchanan hid written to the Queen offering him a cordial welcome at Washington should he be pleased to visit the United States, while a similar invita! tion came from the City of New York. In both cases the replies were affirmative, with the addition that, from the moment of his quitting British soil, the. Prince would drop his royal title' and state, and simply travel as Baton Renfrow, so as to be able, as a private gentleman, to employ the small amount of time at his disposal in stodging the ordinary life of the America copie, "in whose extraordinary progress, tho'Prince himself said. before leavin: Canada, "every Englishman feels a coi mon interest."
But the Americans themselves would have none of this. Asone of their popular writers remarked, a mere 'Baron. Ren-! frow" would not do for them. They were not going "to be shabbed off by any other title tha 'His Royal Highness the Pri of Wales,' a real up-and-down and out-and-out Prince, of the right stuff too.—Fo: loved by our people than his royal mother," there is nota living being more sine rely
&c, Though the Prince's visit was a private one, it presently assumed a public character the hugest proportions. At Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, and St. Louis, the crowds which pressed to catch a glimpse of him were so vast that he sometimes could not get to his hotel; while one individual remarked thatthe curiosity to feel him could not have been greater if the distinguished visitor had been George Washington come to life ay "He is decidedly a popular character with us," said the other writer above quoted, and may consider himself a lucky lad if he escapes a nomination for President before he reaches his hom -ward-bound fleet."
Half a million spectators acclaimed him on his arrival New York, where he was the guest of the Mayor, and 3,000 of the leading people were invited to meet him at a ball where the crush was so great that the floor gave way. But the significance of his tour culminated at Washington where the Prince was a guest of the President, who accompanied him on a visit to the tomb of Washington Mount Vernon. "There was something," wrote the Times? correspondent, grandly suggestive of hi torical retribution in the reverential awe of the Prince of Wales, great-grandson of George IIT, standing' bare-headed at the foot of the coflin of Washington. For a few moments the party stood mute and: motionless, and the Prince then proceeded to plant a chestnut by the side of the tomb. It seemed when the royal youth closed in the earth around the little germ, that ho was burying the last faint trace of discord between us and our brethren in the West."
And yet within little more than a year of this significant event, which was followed by a warm exchange of complimentary letters between President Buchanan and the Queen, Great Britain and the United States were on the very verge of war. And there is little doubt, moreover, that they would have gone to war but for the fact that our emphatic and somewhat minatory dispatch to the Government of Wash ton asto the Federal boarding of the Brit mail steamer Trent, and the seizure of Messrs. Slidell and Mason, the Confederate Envoys to Europe, was toned down in such a judicious manner by the Prince Consort as to respect the sensitiveness of the Washington Government, build it n golden bridge of retreat, and cause it to "cheerfully liberate" the captured Southern passengers.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.