The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1866-05-15
Our Distinguished Strangers.
From me World.

From The World.
Alas how changed are the esent times
from those piping days of peace when the first
iintimation of the presence within our borders
Of any illustrous being from foreign parts was
the signal for metropolitan Jubilee of exube-
rant hospitality
Stephens, the Head Centre of all Head Cen
Centres throughout the earth, the eloquent
capsheaf and living Keystone of the Irish Re-
public, Is now among us. Santa Anna the
antagonist of Scott and Taylor in that famous
war with Mexico which gave q President to
each of our two national parties, and California
to the people, has landed upon the classic
shores OF New Jersey. But where be now the
spectacle3 which OF old greeted such guests
as these; where be the enthusiastic aldermen.
monopolizing ali our hacks and buying up ali
our stock OF yellow kid gloves; where be the
committees organizing balls at the Academy
and banquets at the Astor House Where is
the abundant courtesy which dro wned japanese
Tommy in champagne where the cordial good
fellowship which crammed the astonished
mouth OF the Sultan's envoy with roast ham
and Topaz sherry The war has done its work
upon us. We are getting, we fear, to be a
people OF curmudgeons, sordIdly given to mind
ing our own business, and basely disposed 10
inspect the bill before we order the least. So
in little things as in great, the pressure of a
mighty change reveals itself. The people who
have an income tax TO look after, and nation
to reconstruct, have given hostages to fortune.
new order of things probably meets their o wn
views more satisfactorily than the ancient and
amlable riot of our emotions might have done
For one OF them comes to us man oppressed
" th the task of liberating nationality, and
the other brings to us spirit weary with the
passions and projects of long and unsuccessful
career. What Stephens seeks among us, doubt
less, is leisure to examine into the origin of the
chaos which has supervened upon the affairs of
the Fenian Brotherhood, and to eliminate new
hopes Tor Ireland from the confusion worst con-
founded OF the 0Mahony y-Roberts-Sweeney-Eil
lian imbroglo What Santa Anna asks of US
can be only perfect repose. Doubtless the Mexi-
can eX-President was pressed TO make the voyage
he has now undertaken by the sympathetic
Seward, when that great man, turning away for
bIlef season from the turmoil of politics al
Washington, bathed his soul in the balm of
tropic airs, and took sweet counsel together with
the exile of AnahuaC amid the orange-groves of
St. Thomas
Party prestige or influence In Mexico Santa
Anna can scarcely be said to have. Throughout
his long and chequered lie in his own country
he labored TO arrest the development of that
wonderful anarchy into which for forty years
the tgment OF Mexican republicanism has been
resolving itself. In the pursuit of this laudable
object, however, 1t was his painful fate to be
compelled to use so many doubtful Instruments
and to adopt in turn so many inconsistent posi-
tions that when he finally saw MS long desire
eliminating in the re establishment OF an Impe-
rial Mexican throne, neither the Austrian oc-
cupant of that throne nor his Mexican sup
porteIs could be induced to make place for
the eXdictator in the hierarchy of the new mon.
archy. Reduced thus to the attitude OF o critic,
Santa Anna has come to the conclusion.
1t is understood, that the work which might
have been successfully accomplished under
his own supervision is in a sad way now, and
promises no lasting peace to his unhappy
country. 1t is surely, then, but natural that.
now touching closely upon the allotted term of
human life, he should once more feel within
himself, and more strongly than ever, that i'm
pulse. which moved him when, in February,
lS4s, he informed the Commanderin.C Chiet of
our victorious army that che desired to leave
Mexico forever, and seek an asylum on a foreign
soil. where he might pass his last days in that
tranquility which he never could find in the
land of his BIRTH" Let this natural yearning,
then, be respected. And if the presence of Ste
phens, absorbed and vexed in soul by the hercu-
lean task of calling nation into existence; and
of Santa Anna, worn out by the long torment of
a country rent and torn asunder by ncurable
faction, can teach us more Justly to estimate the
work which our fathers achieved, and make us
pause in the evil effort to undo that work for
ever, we shall owe more to these unobtrusye
visitors of to-day, than to any of their predeces-
sors whom we feted SO noisily in the past.