GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 12, Issue 938, 28 April 1868, Page 2

GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN.

(Prom the 'Australasian.') The owner of this name, once notable among American traders in Melbourne, and irrepressible at 4th of July dinners in the Criterion-hall, has now become notorious throughout Christendom, and may,., ere long, be yet more famous. Apart from" the peculiar position in which h<j was placed when we last heard of him. Train is in himself a subject not unworthy " of study. He is not ; extremely, clever, extremely wealthy, nor extremely vicious, and. yet he has managed to make himself a name in the world, while millions with f vastly superior abilities remain unknown, and are content in their obscurity. He is a representative man of his class— a class which to men of, well balanced minds is not an enviable one. : He is a member of the Jefferson Brick family — " one of the most remarkable men -in the country, sir." His shortcomings in talent are compensated by the possession of an inexhaustible fund of impudence. If genius be his at all, it is the genius of "cheek," and this, in the present age of the worldj is not altogether despicable. He is the production of the nineteenth century. and the Yankee nation. No other age, no other nation, could have fathered him. He is one of the greatest advertisers of the day, and the article he advertises is himself. Whether the business be a remunerative one pecuniarily or not, we cannot say, but so far as present notoriety is concerned, it is certainly successful. .During the last few years one has heard of Train in various directions. First as a street-tramway projector in London, next as a lecturer and agitator in the States. During the civil war Train was one of the most industrious of the Republic, and the subject of his discourse was always Train. Since the cessation of active strife, his speaking powers have not slackened, and scarcely a month has passed without the newspapers reportinghis holding forth on the old subject. The noininal cause of the gathering which gave him his opportunity might be the negro question, might be Fenianism, or might be the rights of woman, it mattered not. Train upon Train has never been at a loss; Apart from his impudence, which isindomitable, hepossesses a much rarer quality, that of not appearing to know when he makes himself ridiculous. Satire and laughter fall upon him harmless, like a child's arrow on the hide of a rhinoceros.. .He can do the most absurd things without seeming to knowthat they are absurd. He left Australia avowedly because the partner of his bosom was about to present him with an olive branch, and he would not risk that a son of his should lose his chance of the Presidentship by being born outside the boundaries of the great Republic. A man like this, though he be well laughed at, has many friends. He is the clown in the ring whom everyone terms a fool, and chaffs and makes merry over, but entertains a sneaking kindness for at heart. We have a sort of contempt for Mr. Merryman for making himself a public laughing-stock ; but we do not like to see him ill-treated. :He is regarded somewhat, in the light of a child, by whose little pranks we are loftily amused, and whom we would not suffer to come to harm on any account. The ring-master we do not so much care about. He, we see at a glance, is a grand person, who can very well hold his own in the world, and if he gets a sly knock over the sconce or a trip of the heels, our joy is excessive. But with the clown all are on intimate terms, and if any real evil comes upon him, all are grievously touched by it. Some such regard as this, we doubt not, the American nation entertain for men of the Train stamp. They are no more taken in by them than we are ; their papers lampoon them and call them buffoons and mountebanks; and there is slight likelihood of their ever being entrusted with the conduct of any serious mission. But we are inclined to think, for the reason we have indicated, that an injury done to a man like Train will be very promptly and generally resented. The fact of his making himself, as a rule, so egregiously ridiculous, it will be argued, ought to have proved his best shield from any serious attack. We should not, therefore, be in the least surprised to hear by the next mail that the arrest and imprisonment of Train by the British authorities at Cork, proved a more serious irritant to the Americans than the fitting up and despatch of half a hundred Alabamas. The latter might be accomplished in defiance of the I English Government, but the former is the act of the agents of the Government itself. To seriously regard Train as a Fenian conspirator will be considered too wild an absurdity, and the arrest will be looked upon as a deliberate attempt to intimidate an American, whose freedom of speech and pen has been exercised on American soil. In this way the farce which was being played at the date of the despatch of the last mail may have a tragical ending. Slighter things than this, though it is difficult to conceive any, have set nations by the ears, and from the time of the Trajan war to the present day, trifling causes have been at the bottom of many bloody conflicts. It will be a ,terri.i ble disaster for the world at large, and possibly for this colony peculiarly, if the two great maritime nations fall foul of each other, and a fruitful theme for the moralists of the future if G-. F. Train be the immediate occasion of the outbreak. We shall be rejoiced to find that our vaticination is an incorrect one ; but the pages of history teach that it is " on the cards."