Travels in the United States, etc.,: during 1849 and 1850./ By the Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley.

AMERICA AND RUSSIA.
latter and Russia would be adjoining countries. The two grand
extremes would meet. Despotism and democracy would shake
hands over a rivulet, and smile at each other across a footpath.
Russia is determined to be on the best possible terms with the
United States at any rate, and I have been over and over again
impressed with that conviction, since I have been in America;
and that the latter takes her flattery-her complimentary cordiality, and gentle insidious advances very kindly, is most plainly
evident.
The empire of the Czar is wonderful certainly; but how much
it seems dwarfed when compared with America! Its progression
is chiefly or wholly in physical advancement; but that of the
United States is in both material and mental aggrandizement.
Russia will leave no methods untried, to attach the United States
to her interests-to insure at least her complete neutrality, in the
event of contingencies, which her telescopic view steadily contemplates, and her mighty hand ever labors to bring about. She has
no desire whatever to try her strength against the rival young
giant-to wrestle (like the mighty athletes of old) with that tremendous competitor, in the Amnphitheatre of Nations, for the edification of the world. She knows the prophecy, and has some
faith in it, but is bent on substituting (for a time at all events)
"and" for "or." The world may be shared, may be Cossack and
Republican. She positively will be modestly content, for a season, with only half a world. A Cossack hemisphere may hob and
nob in a friendly manner with a republican one, over the conquered empires of earth and of the ocean.
I have spoken of Russia watching; America watches too, but
unlike the contemporaneous colossus, it is more the powerful pulsations of her own mighty heart that draw her regards. If all is
right there, the future is at her feet and she knows it. And she
has occasion to watch, for more reasons than one; for there are
symptoms of grave disorder threatening there, and strange signs of
the dissolution of the great federal compact. Nothing more convinces the uninitiated stranger of this fact, than the incessant denunciations thundered against disunion, the accumulated protestations and manifestations and deprecations, all to the same eflect.
I think they exaggerate the evil that would arise, in the event of
dissolution, but the subject is too deep for discussion here.
After this long prose, I can not resist repeating an amusing
anecdote I heard the other day, relative to an American in Russia. This gentleman had a great wish to see the Czar, and asked
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