Reverting to Sir Henry Parkes' letters, there seems to me a real historic interest in his conviction that his want of success was the result of the American Civil War. Sir Henry himself held very strong opinions concerning that awful fratricidal quarrel. He took his stand beside John Bright, who, on the question of the dismemberment of the United States, as on that of the separation of Great Britain and Ireland, may be regarded as the true representative of the English-speaking world. Hardly a letter that Sir Henry sent off to Sydney but was filled with expressions of profound sympathy for the North. As we know there was a very large number of high-minded and intelligent Englishmen whose sympathies were just as strong on the other side; the late Mr. A. Beresford Hope,[1] for instance. We know that after his own country and his Church, the warmest sympathies of that generous, high-minded English gentleman were given to the Southerners, who, in his eyes, were the Transatlantic Cavaliers fighting
- ↑ Tennyson and Carlyle might also be cited. "Spent the evening at the house of Mr. Woolner, sculptor, with Tennyson, a quiet, simple man, who smoked a pipe and drank hot punch with us. He deplores the American War, and talks of the Yankees, whom he detested."—Diary of J. R. Thompson, Lippincott's Magazine, November 1888.
