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three days after the news of the seizure of Slidell and Mason had reached England, and that, on the same day, a Queen's Messenger left London with a despatch for Lord Lyons. Above all, he was not likely to forget that Lord Palmerston was the Prime Minister. To the eyes of the Australian, indeed, war seemed imminent. He weighed the pros and cons with a judicial hand. But on the whole he evidently came to the conclusion that the war party would carry the day, unless the two men, taken from the deck of a British ship, were given up to the British Ambassador. The whole affair, as we know, passed away like a summer cloud; the two Southerners were surrendered by the American Government to Lord Lyons, and duly resumed, on board the war-ship Rinaldo, their voyage to England, where their mission ended in failure. But the words of Sir Henry Parkes must have made a profound impression in Sydney a quarter of a century ago; for, be it remembered, this was before the era of the submarine cable, and the anxious colonists had to wait a month, sitting as it were in outer darkness, between each flash of intelligence, knowing not what fate was in store either for the mother country or themselves.