Page:Australian views of England.djvu/34

 LETTER III.

HIS will be a solemn Christmas-eve in England. Thousands of artisan families will meet it with the bitter prospect of want and starvation blanching their cheeks; and very many of their employers will hardly be able to turn their gaze from the brink of ruin on which they stand to the objects of grief and apprehension which weigh down the public mind. Breaking through the commercial gloom, every hour and from every quarter have come of late the discordant notes of warlike preparation, and the heavy tolling of the bell of death. Never, perhaps, was the nation in a more sorrowful mood, and never had it deeper cause for sorrow.

Let us reason as we will, we cannot free ourselves from the painful consciousness that we are