along the coast the british destroyed everything they could lay their hands on; but perhaps the rudest thing they did was to enter washington and burn the capitol, the congressional library, and the smoke-house in which president madison kept his hams. even now, when the writer is a guest of some great english dignitary, and perhaps at table picking the "merry-thought" of a canvas-back duck, the memory of this thing comes over him, and, burying his face in the costly napery, he gives himself up to grief until kind words and a celery-glass-full of turpentine, or something, bring back his buoyancy and rainbow smile. the hospitality and generous treatment of our english brother to americans now is something beautiful, unaffected, and well worth a voyage across the qualmy sea to see, but when cockburn burned down the capitol and took the president's sugar-cured hams he did a rude act.