Chapter 2 No.2

Two years passed away. At the end of this time Mrs. Schroder died. They had passed on, as years go, slowly and quickly. Sometimes, as a carriage takes us through narrow city-streets, and we look in at the windows we are passing, we wonder at the close life that is going on behind them, and we say to ourselves, "How slow the life must be within those confined walls!" At other times, when our own life is cramped or jarred by circumstances, we look with envy on the happy family-circles we see smiling within, and have a fancy that the roses have fallen to others, and we only have the thorns.

There are full years, and there are years of famine, just as there come moments to all that seem like a life-time, and lives that hurry themselves away in a passing of the pendulum. It is of no use to shake the hour-glass; yet, when we are counting upon time, the sands hurry down like snow-flakes.

It was true, as Violet had foreboded, that Harry missed Ernest. He went heavily about his work, and the house seemed silent without him. Harry confessed this sadly to Violet, when his brother had been gone about a year. They had heard from Ernest in Florence, that he was getting on well. He had found occupation in the workshop of a famous sculptor, and had time besides to carry out some of his own designs.

"He writes me," said Harry, "that he will be able now to support himself, and that he does not need my help. Do you know, Violet, that takes the life out of me? I feel as if I had nothing to work for. I always felt a pride in working for Ernest, because I thought he was fitted for something better. Violet, it saddens me to think he can do without me. I go to my daily work; I lift my hammer and let it fall; but it is all mechanically; there is no vital force in the blow. It is hard to live without him."

"This is what I was afraid of," said Violet. "I was afraid he would think he could do without us. But he cannot do without you."

"Say that he cannot do without us" said Harry; "for he needs you, as I need you, and the question is, with which the need is greater."

Violet turned red and pale, and said,-

"We cannot answer that question yet."

After Mrs. Schroder died, it was sad enough in the old rooms. In the daytime, when Harry was away at his work, Violet would go up-stairs and put all things in order, and make them look as nearly as possible as they did when the mother was there. Harry came to pass his evenings with Violet.

A few days after his mother's death, he said to Violet,-

"Is it not time for you to tell me that it is I who need you more than Ernest? He writes very happily now. He is succeeding; he has an order for his statue. He writes and thinks of nothing else but what he will create,-of the ideas that have been waiting for an expression. I am a carpenter still, I shall never be more, and my work will always be less and lower than my love. Could you be satisfied with him? He has attained now, Ernest has, what he was looking for; and have I not a right to my reward?"

The tears tumbled from Violet's eyes.

"Dear, noble Harry! I am not ready for you yet. I do believe he is above us both, and satisfied to be above us both; but I am not ready yet."

A day or two afterwards, Harry brought Violet a letter from Italy. It was from an artist friend of Ernest's, whose wife and mother had kindly received him into their home. Carlo wrote now that Ernest had been taken very ill. They thought him recovering, but he was still very low, and his mind depressed, and he continued scarcely conscious of those around him. He talked wildly, and begged that his home friends would come to him; and though his new Italian friends promised him all that kindness could give, Carlo wrote to ask if it were not possible for his brother or his mother to come out. He had been working very hard, was just finishing an order that had occupied him the last year, and he had overtasked his mind as well as his body.

"You will go to him!" exclaimed Violet, when she had read the letter.

"If nothing better can be done," answered Harry. "Only yesterday I made a contract for work with a hard master. It would be difficult to break it; but I will do it gladly, if there is nothing better to be done."

"You mean that you would like to have me go to Ernest," said Violet.

"Will you go?" asked Harry. "That will be the very best thing."

Aunt Martha broke in here. She had been sitting quietly at the other side of the table, as usual, apparently engrossed with her knitting.

"You do not mean to send Violet to Italy, and to take care of Ernest?" she exclaimed. "What are you thinking of? I would never consent to Violet's going alone; it would not be proper."

Violet grew crimson at the reproof. She was standing beneath the light, and turned away her head.

"Not if I were Harry's betrothed?" she asked.

Aunt Martha looked up quickly. She saw the glad, relieved expression of

Harry's face.

"If you are engaged to Harry, that is different, indeed!" she said.

It did make a difference in Aunt Martha's thoughts. In the first place, it gave her pleasure. Harry was well-to-do in, the world. He would make a good husband for Violet, and a kindly one. She liked him better than she did Ernest. She had supposed Violet would marry one or other of the boys, and, "just because things went at cross-grain in the world," she had always supposed Violet would prefer Ernest. She had never liked him herself. He was always spinning cobwebs in his brain; she never could understand a word of his talk. She did not believe he would live, and then Violet would be left a poor widow, as his mother had been left when her Hermann died. She remembered all about that. Ernest's absence had encouraged her with regard to Harry; but two years had passed, and it seemed to her the two were no nearer an engagement.

But now it was settled; and if this foolish plan of Violet's going to

Italy had brought it about, the plan itself wore a different color.

Aunt Martha said no more of the impropriety. She reserved her complainings for the subject of the trouble of getting Violet ready, all of a sudden, for such a voyage.

Little trouble fell to Aunt Martha's share. Violet went about it gladly. She advised directly with a friend who could tell her from experience exactly how little she would want, while Harry completed all the business arrangements. The activity, the adventure of it, suited Violet's old tastes. She had no dread of a solitary voyage, of passing through countries whose languages she could not speak. Though burdened with anxiety for Ernest and for Harry, she went away with a glad heart. Unconsciously to herself, she reversed her old exclamation, saying to herself,-

"The men, indeed, should not have all the work, and the women all the play!"

The journey was in fact easily accomplished. At another time Violet's thoughts would have been occupied with the scenes she passed through. Now she travelled as a devotee travels heavenward, making a monastery of the world, and convent-walls out of rays from Paradise. She thought only of the end of her journey; and everything touched her through the throbbings of her heart. On shipboard, she was busy with the poor old sick father whom his children were carrying home to his native land. In passing through Paris, she used all her time in helping a sister to find a brother; because her energy was always helpful. In travelling across France, she looked at her companions, asking herself to what home they were going, what friends they were bound to meet. From Marseilles to Leghorn, she was the only one of the women-passengers who was not sick; and she was called upon for help in different languages, which she could understand only through the teachings of her heart.

It was this same teacher that led her to understand Ernest's friends in

Florence, when she had found them, and that led them to understand her.

Ernest was in much the same state as when they wrote. He was growing

stronger, but his mind seemed to wander.

"And do you know, dear lady," said Monica, Carlo's mother, "that we fear he has been starving,-starving, too, when we, his friends, had plenty, and would have been glad to give him? He was to have been paid for his work when he had finished it; and he had given up his other work for his master, that be might complete his own statue. Oh, you should see that! He is putting it into the marble,-or taking it out, rather, for it has life almost, and springs from the stone."

"But Ernest?" asked Violet.

"Well, then, just for want of money, he was starving,-so the doctor says, now. I suppose he was too proud to write home for money, and his wages had stopped. And he was too proud to eat our bread. That was hard of him. Just the poor food that we have, to think he should have been too proud to let us give it him!-that was not kind."

Ernest did not recognize Violet at first, but she took her place in the daily care of him. Monica begged that she would prepare food for him such as he had been used to have at home. She was very sure that would cure him. It would be almost as good for him as his native air. She was very glad a woman had come to take care of him. "His brother's betrothed,-a sister,-she would bring him back to life as no one else could."

Violet did bring him back to life. Ernest had become so accustomed to her presence in his half-conscious state, that he never showed surprise at finding her there. He hardly showed pleasure; only in her absence his feverish restlessness returned; in her presence he was quiet.

He grew strong enough to come out into the air to walk a little.

"I must go to work soon," he said one day. "Monsieur will be coming for his Psyche."

"Your Psyche! I have not seen it!" exclaimed Violet. "I have not dared to raise the covering."

They went in to look at it. Violet stood silent before it. Yes, as Monica had said, it was ready to spring from the marble. It seemed almost too spiritual for form, it scarcely needed the wings for flight, it was ethereal already,-marble only so long as it remained unfinished.

At last Violet spoke.

"Do not let it go! Do not finish it; it will leave the marble then, I know! Oh, Ernest, you have seen the spirit, and the spirit only! Could not you hold it to earth more closely than that? It was too bold a thought of you to try to mould the spirit alone. Is not the body precious, too? Why wilt you be so careless of that?"

"If the body would care for me," said Ernest, "I would care for the body. Indeed, this work shows that I have cared for the body," he went on. "One of these days, I shall receive money for my work; I have already sold my Psyche. One lives on money, you know. But it is but a poor battle,-the battle of life. I shall finish my Psyche, give it to the man who buys it, and then"--

"And then you will come home, come home to us!" said Violet; "and we will take care of you. You shall not miss your Psyche!"

"And then," continued Ernest, shaking his head, "then I shall go into

Sicily. I shall help Garibaldi. I shall join the Italian cause."

"Garibaldi! The cause!" exclaimed Violet. "Are you not ashamed to plead it? You know you would go then not for others, but to throw away your own life! You are tired of living, and you seek that way to rid yourself of life! Confess it at once!"

"Very well, then," answered Ernest, "it is so."

"Then do not sully a good cause with a traitor's help," said Violet, "nor take its noble name. The life you offer would be worth no more than a spent ball. You have been a coward in your own fight, and Garibaldi does not-nor does Italy-want a coward in his ranks. Oh, Ernest, forgive me my hard words! but it is our life that you are spending so freely, it is our blood that you want to pour out! If you cannot live for yourself, for me, will you not live for Harry's sake?"

"For you, for you, Heart's-Ease!" exclaimed Ernest, calling Violet by one of her old childish names, "But Harry lives for you, and you for him; and God knows there is no life left for me. But you are right: I am a coward and a bungler, because I can create no life. I give myself to you and him."

Violet stood long before the statue of Psyche, cold as the marble, with hot fires raging within.

"He loves me, loves me as Harry does! His love is deeper, perhaps,-higher, perhaps. He was not above me,-he lifted me above himself, looked up to me! He dies for me!"

Presently she found Ernest.

"Ernest, you say you will do as we wish. I must go home directly, and without you. I shall take a vessel from Leghorn. Harry and I planned my going home that way. It is less expensive, more direct; and I confess I do not feel so strong about going home alone as I did in coming. My head is full of thoughts, and I could not take care of myself; but I would rather go alone. You will stay here, and we will write to you, or Harry will come for you. But you must take care of yourself; you must not starve yourself."

Her Italian friends accompanied her to the vessel and bade her good-bye, Ernest was with them. She wrote to Harry the day she sailed. The vessel looked comfortable enough; it was well-laden, and in its hold was the marble statue of a great man,-great in worth as well as in weight.

A few weeks after Violet left, Harry appeared in Florence. He had just missed her letter.

"I came to bring you both home," he said. "I finished my contract successfully, and gave myself this little vacation."

Harry was dismayed to find that Violet was gone.

"But we will return directly, and arrive in time, perhaps, to greet her as she gets home."

Monica urged,-

"But you must not keep him long. See how much he has done in Italy! You will see he must come back again."

"Monsieur" had been for his statue, and was to send for it the next day, more than satisfied with it.

Harry was astonished.

"Five hundred dollars! It would take me long enough to work that out!

Ah, Ernest, your hammering is worth more than mine!"

Harry's surprise was not merely for the money earned. When he saw the white marble figure, which brought into the poor room where it stood grandeur and riches and life and grace, he wondered still more.

"I see now," he said. "You spent your life on this. No wonder you were starving when your spirit was putting itself into this mould!"

Harry was in a hurry to return. Ernest's little affairs were quickly settled. Harry was surprised to find Italian life was so like home life in this one thing: he had been treated so kindly, just as he would have been in his own home,-just as Mrs. Schroder, and even Aunt Martha, would have treated a poor Italian stranger who had sought a lodging in their house; they had welcomed Harry with the same warmth and feeling with which they had all along cared for Ernest. This was something that Harry knew how to translate.

"When we were boys," he said to Ernest, as they set out to return, "and you used to talk about Europe, we little thought I should travel into it so carelessly as I did when I came here. I crossed it much as a pair of compasses would on the map: my only points of rest were the home I left and the one I was reaching for."

Much in the same way they passed through it again. Harry spoke of and observed outward things, but everything showed that it was but a superficial observation. His thoughts were with Violet.

"'The Nere?d!' are you very sure the Nere?d is a sound vessel?" he often asked.

"What should I know of the Nere?d?" at last answered Ernest, impatiently.

"I believe you don't care a rush for Violet!" cried Harry. "You can have dreams instead! Your Psyche, your winged angels and all your visions, they suffice you. While for me,-I tell you, Ernest, she is my flesh and blood, my meat and drink. To think of her alone on that ocean drives me wild; that inexorable sea haunts me night and day." He turned to look at Ernest, and saw him pale and livid.

"God forgive me!" he said. "I know you love her, too! But it is our old quarrel; we cannot understand each other, yet cannot live either of us without the other. Yet I am glad to quarrel even in the old way. That is pleasant, after all, is it not?"

They had a long, stormy voyage home; and a delay in crossing France had made them miss the steamer they hoped to take. At each delay, Ernest grew more silent, sadder, his face darker, his features thinner and more sharpened. Harry was wild in his impatience, and angry, but more and more thoughtful and careful for Ernest.

At last they reached the harbor. A friend met them who had been warned of their arrival by telegraph from Halifax. He met them to tell them of ill news; they would rather hear it from him.

The Nere?d was lost,-lost just outside the Bay,-the vessel, the crew, all the passengers,-in a fearful storm of a week ago, the very storm that had delayed their own passage.

"Let us go home," said Harry. "Where is it?" asked Ernest. "Why were we not lost in the same storm?" cried Harry. "How could we pass quietly along the very place?"

The brothers went home into the old room. Kindly hands had been caring for it,-had tried to place all things in their accustomed order. Even the canary had come back from Aunt Martha's parlor.

There was a letter on the table. Harry saw that only. It was Violet's letter, which she wrote on leaving Leghorn. He tore it from its cover,-then gave it, opened, to Ernest.

"You must read it for me,-I cannot!" and he hurried into an inner room.

Ernest held the letter helplessly and looked round. For him there was a double desolation in the room. The books stood untouched upon the shelves; his mother's work-basket was laid aside. Suddenly there came back to him the memory of that last day at home,-the joyous spring-day in March,-which was so full of gay sounds. The clatter of the dropping ice, the happy laugh of the water breaking into freedom, the song of the canary, now hushed by the presence of strangers,-the thoughts of these made gay even that moment of parting. And with them came the image of the dear mother and of the warm-hearted Violet. Oh, the parting was happier than the return! Now there was silence in the room, and absence,-such unuse about all things,-such a terrible stillness! He longed for a voice, for a sound, for words.

In his hands were words, her own, her last words. Half unconsciously he read through the letter, as if unwillingly too, because it might not belong to him. Yet they were her words, and for him.

"DEAR HARRY,-

"Do you know that I love him?-that I love Ernest? I ought to have known it, just because I did not know how to confess it to myself or you. I thought he was above us both; and when I pitied myself that he could not love me, I pitied you, and my pity, perhaps, I mistook for love of you. Perhaps I mistook it, for I know not but I was conscious all the time of loving him. I learned the truth when I stood by the side of his Psyche, and saw, that, though she hovered from the marble, though he had won fame and success, he was unsatisfied still. It is true, he must always remain unsatisfied, because it is his genius that thirsts, and it is my ideal that he loves, not me. But he is dying; he asks for me. You never could refuse him what he asked. You will give me to him? If you were not so generous and noble-hearted, I could not ask you both for your pardon and your pity. But you are both, and will do with me as you will.

"Your

"VIOLET."

As Ernest finished reading, as he was fully comprehending the meaning of the words which at first had struck him idly, Harry opened the door and came in. Ernest could not look up at first. He thought, perhaps, he was about to darken the sorrow already heavy enough upon his brother.

But when Harry spoke and Ernest looked into his face, he saw there the usual clear, strong expression.

"I am going to tell you, Ernest, what I should have said before,-what I went to Florence to tell you.

"After Violet left, the whole truth began to come upon me. She loved you; I had no right to her. She pitied me; that was why she clung to me. You know I cannot think quickly. It was long before it all came out clearly; but when it did come, I was anxious to act directly. I had finished my work; I went to tell you that Violet was yours; she should stay with you in that warm Italian sir that you liked so much; she should bring you back to life. But I was too late. I know not if it is my failure that has brought about this sorrow, or if God has taken it into His own hands. I only know that she was yours living, she is yours now. I must tell you that in the first moment of that terrible shock of the loss, there came a wicked, selfish gleam of gladness that I had not given her up to you. But I have wiped that out with my tears, and I can tell you without shame that is yours, that I have given her to you."

"We can both love her now," said Ernest.

"If she were living, she might have separated us," said Harry; "but since God has taken her, she makes us one."

And the brothers read together Violet's letter.

* * * * *

THE NEW ATLANTIC CABLE.

When the indefatigable Cyrus told our people, five years ago, that he was going to lay a telegraph-cable in the bed of the ocean between America and Europe, and place New York and London in instantaneous communication, our wide-awake and enterprising fellow-citizens said very coolly that they should like to see him do it!-a phrase intended to convey the idea that in their opinion he had promised a great deal more than he could perform. But Cyrus was as good as his word. The cable was laid, and worked for the space of three weeks, conveying between the Old and New World four hundred messages of all sorts, and some of them of the greatest importance. Four years have elapsed since the fulfilment of that promise, and now Mr. Field comes again before the public and announces that a new Atlantic cable is going to be laid down, which is not only going to work, but is to be a permanent success; and this promise will likewise be fulfilled. You may shrug your shoulders, my friend, and look incredulous, but I assure you the grand idea will be realized, and speedily. I have been heretofore as incredulous as any one; but having examined the evidence in its favor, I am fully convinced not only of the feasibility of laying a cable, and of the certainty of its practical operation when laid, but of its complete indestructibility. If you will accompany me through the following pages, my doubting friend, I will convince you of the correctness of my conclusions.

When the fact of the successful laying of the old Atlantic cable was known, there was no class of people in this country more surprised at the result than the electricians, engineers, and practical telegraphers. Meeting a friend of mine, an electrician, and who, by the way, is also a great mathematician, and, like all of his class, inclined to be very exact in his statements, I exclaimed, in all the warmth and exuberance of feeling engendered by so great an event,-

"Isn't it glorious, this idea of being able to send our lightning across the ocean, and to talk with London and Paris as readily as we do with New York and New Orleans?"

"It is, indeed," responded my friend, with equal enthusiasm; "my hopes are more than realized by this wonderful achievement."

"Hopes realized!" exclaimed I. "Why, I didn't consider there was one chance in a thousand of success,-did you?"

"Why, yes," replied my exact mathematical friend; "I didn't think the chances so much against the success of the enterprise as that. From the deductions which I drew from a very careful examination of all the facts I could obtain, I concluded that the chances of absolute failure were about ninety-seven and a half per cent.!"

For many of the facts contained in this article I am indebted to the

very clear and able address delivered by Mr. Cyrus W. Field before the

American Geographical and Statistical Society, at Clinton Hall, New

York, in May last, upon the prospects of the Atlantic telegraph.

At the start, of course, every one was very ignorant of the work to be done in establishing a telegraph across the ocean. Submarine telegraphy was in its infancy, and a?rial telegraphy had scarcely outgrown its swaddling-clothes. We had to grope our way in the dark. It was only by repeated experiments and repeated failures that we were able to find out all the conditions of success.

The Atlantic telegraph, it is said by some, was a failure. Well, if it were so, replies Mr. Field, I should say (as is said of many a man, that he did more by his death than by his life) that even in its failure it has been of immense benefit to the science of the world, for it has been the great experimenting cable. No electrician ever had so long a line to work upon before; and hence the science of submarine telegraphy never made such rapid progress as after that great experiment. In fact, all cables that have since been laid, where the managers availed themselves of the knowledge and experience obtained by the Atlantic cable, have been perfectly successful. All these triumphs over the sea are greatly indebted to the bold attempt to cross the Atlantic made four years ago.

The first Atlantic cable, therefore, has accomplished a great work in deep-sea telegraphy, a branch of the art but little known before. In one sense it was a failure. In another it was a brilliant success. Despite every disadvantage, it was laid across the ocean; it was stretched from shore to shore; and for three weeks it continued to operate,-a time long enough to settle forever the scientific question whether it was possible to communicate between two continents so far apart. This was the work of the first Atlantic telegraph; and if it lies silent at the bottom of the ocean till the destruction of the globe, it has done enough for the science of the world and the benefit of mankind to entitle it to be held in honored and blessed memory.

Now, as to the prospect of success in another attempt to lay a telegraph across the ocean. The most erroneous opinions prevail as to the difficulties of laying submarine telegraphs in general, and securing them against injury. It is commonly supposed that the number of failures is much greater than of successes; whereas the fact is, that the later attempts, where made with proper care, have been almost uniformly successful. In proof of this I will refer to the printed "List of all the Submarine Telegraph-Cables manufactured and laid down by Messrs. Glass, Elliot, & Co., of London," from which it appears that within the space of eight years, from 1854 to 1862, they have manufactured and laid down twenty-five different cables, among which are included three of the longest lines connecting England with the Continent,-namely, from England to Holland, 140 miles, to Hanover, 280 miles, and to Denmark, 368 miles,-and the principal lines in the Mediterranean,-as from Italy to Corsica and thence to Toulon, from Malta to Sicily, and from Corfu to Otranto, and besides these, the two chief of all, that from France to Algiers, 520 miles, laid in 1860, and the other, laid only last year, from Malta to Alexandria, 1,535 miles! All together the lines laid by these manufacturers comprise a total of 3,739 miles; and though some have been lying at the bottom of the sea and working for eight years, each one of them is at this hour in as perfect condition as on the day it was laid down, with the exception of the two short lines laid in shallow water along the shore between Liverpool and Holyhead, 25 miles, and from Prince Edward's Island to New Brunswick, 11 miles; the latter of which was broken by a ship's anchor, and the former by the anchor of the Royal Charter during the gale in which she was wrecked, both of which can be easily repaired.

Where failures have occurred in submarine telegraphs, the causes are now well understood and easily to be avoided. Thus with the first Atlantic cable, its defects have all been carefully investigated by scientific men, and may be easily guarded against. When this cable was in process of manufacture in the factory of Messrs. Glass, Elliot, & Co., in Greenwich, near London, it was coiled in four large vats, and there left exposed, day after day, to the heat of a summer sun, which was intensified by the tarred coating of the cable to one hundred and twenty degrees. This went on, day after day, with the knowledge of the engineer and electrician of the company, although the directors had given explicit orders that sheds should be erected over the vats to prevent the possibility of such an occurrence. As might have been foreseen, the gutta-percha was melted, so that the conductor which it was desired to insulate was so twisted by the coils that it was left quite bare in numberless places, thus weakening, and eventually, when the cable was submerged, destroying the insulation. The injury was partially discovered before the cable was taken out of the factory at Greenwich, and a length of about thirty miles was cut out and condemned. This, however, did not wholly remedy the difficulty, for the defective insulation became frequently and painfully apparent while the cable was being submerged. Still further evidence of its imperfect condition was afforded when it came to be cut up for charms and trinkets.

The first cable was, to a great extent, an experiment,-a leap in the dark. Its material and construction were as good as the state of knowledge at that time provided, and in many respects not unsuitable; but the company could not avail itself, at that time, of the instruments or apparatus for testing its conducting power and insulation, in the manner since pointed out by experience. The effects of temperature, as we have seen, were not provided for. The vast differences in the conducting power of copper were discovered only by means of that cable, when made. The mathematical law whereby the proportions of insulation to conduction are determined had not been fully investigated; and it was even argued by some of the pretended electricians in the employ of the company, that, the smaller the conductor, the more rapidly the current could pass through it. No mode of protecting the external sheath from oxidation had then been discovered; and the kind of machinery necessary for submerging cables in deep water could only be theoretically assumed.

Looking back to that period, and granting that there was too much haste in the preparations, and that other mistakes were committed which could now be foreseen and avoided, it is not too much to say, that, if that cable could be laid and worked, as was done, after one failure in 1857, and the consequent uncoiling and storage of it in an exposed situation, and after three attempts in 1858, under the most fearful circumstances as to weather, it would be an easy task to lay a cable constructed and submerged by the light of present experience.

[Illustration: The Cable laid in 1858.]

[Illustration: The proposed New Cable.]

The above cuts, representing sections of the cable laid in 1858 and the proposed new cable, will serve to show the difference between the two, and the immense superiority of the latter over the former. In the old Atlantic cable the copper conducting-wire weighed but ninety-three pounds to the mile, while in the new cable it weighs five hundred and ten pounds to the mile, or more than five times as much. Now the size, or diameter, of a telegraphic conductor is just as important an item, in determining the strength of current which can be maintained upon it with a given amount of battery-force, as the length of the conductor. To produce the effects by which the messages are expressed at the end of a telegraphic wire or cable, it is necessary that the electric current should have a certain intensity or strength. Now the intensity of the current transmitted by a given voltaic battery along a given line of wire will decrease, other things being the same, in the same proportion as the length of the wire increases. Thus, if the wire be continued for ten miles, the current will have twice the intensity which it would have, if the wire had been extended to a distance of twenty miles. It is evident, therefore, that the wire may be continued to such a length that the current will no longer have sufficient intensity to produce at the station to which the despatch is transmitted those effects by which the language of the despatch is signified. But the intensity of the current transmitted by a given voltaic battery upon a wire of given length will be increased in the same proportion as the area of the section of the wire is augmented. Thus, if the diameter of the wire be doubled, the area of its section being increased in a fourfold proportion, the intensity of the current transmitted along the wire will be increased in the same ratio. The intensity of the current may also be augmented by increasing the number of pairs of the generating plates or cylinders composing the galvanic battery.

All electrical terms are arbitrary, and necessarily unintelligible to the general reader. I shall, therefore, use them as sparingly as possible, and endeavor to make myself clearly understood by explaining those which I do use.

All telegraphic conductors offer a certain resistance to the passage of an electric current, and the amount of this resistance is proportional to the length of the conductor, and inversely to its size. In order to overcome this resistance, it is necessary to increase the number of the cells in the battery, and thus obtain a fluid of greater force or intensity.

On a?rial telegraph-lines this increase in the intensity of the battery occasions no particular inconvenience, other than by tending to the more rapid destruction of the small copper coils, or helices, employed; but upon submarine lines it has the effect of increasing the static electricity, or electricity of tension, which accumulates along the surface of the gutta-percha covering of the conducting-wire, in the same manner as static electricity accumulates on the surface of glass, or of a stick of sealing-wax, by rubbing it with a piece of cloth. The use of submarine or of subterranean conductors occasions, from the above cause, a small retardation in the velocity of the transmitted electricity. This retardation is not due to the length of the path which the electric current has to traverse, since it does not take place with a conductor, equally long, insulated in the air; but it arises from a static reaction, caused by the passage of an intense current through a conductor well insulated, but surrounded outside its insulating coating by a conducting body, such as sea-water or moist ground, or even by the metallic envelope of iron wires placed in communication with the ground. When this conductor is presented to one of the poles of a battery, the other pole of which communicates with the ground, it becomes charged with static electricity, like the coating of a Leyden-jar,-electricity which is capable of giving rise to a discharge-current, even after the voltaic current has ceased to be transmitted. Volta showed in one of his beautiful experiments, that, in putting one of the ends of his pile in communication with the earth, and the other with a non-insulated Leyden-jar, the jar was charged in an instant of time to a degree proportional to the force of the pile. At the same time an instantaneous current was observed in the conductor between the pile and the jar, which had all the properties of an ordinary current. Now it is evident that the subaqueous wire with its insulating covering may be assimilated exactly to an immense Leyden-jar. The glass of the jar represents the gutta-percha; the internal coating is the surface of the copper wire; the external coating is the surrounding metallic envelope and water. To form an idea of the capacity of this new kind of battery, we have only to remember that the surface of the wire is equal to fourteen square yards per mile. Bringing such a wire into communication by one of its ends with a battery, of which the opposite pole is in contact with the earth, whilst the other extremity of the wire is insulated, must cause the wire to take a charge of the same character and tension as that of the pole of the battery touched by it.

These currents of static induction are proportional in intensity to the force of the battery and the length of the wire, whilst an inverse relation is true as regards the length of the conductor with the ordinary voltaic current.

Professor Wheatstone proved, by actual experiment, that a continuous current may be maintained in the circuit of the long wire of an electric cable, of which one of the ends is insulated, whilst the other communicates with one of the poles of a battery, whose other pole is connected with the ground. This current he considers due to the uniform and continual dispersion of the statical electricity with which the wire is charged along its whole length.

It was mainly owing to the retardation from this cause that communication through the Atlantic cable was so exceedingly slow and difficult.

I will now endeavor to show why the new cable will not be liable to this difficulty, to anything like the same extent.

I have alluded to the resistance offered by the conductor of a telegraph-cable to the passage of an electric current, and to the retardation of this current by static induction. The terms retardation and resistance are not considered technically synonymous, but are intended, as electrical terms, to designate two very different forces. The resistance of a wire, as we have seen above, is proportional to its length, and inversely to its diameter. It is overcome by increasing the number of cells in the battery, or, in other words, by increasing the intensity or force of the current. The retardation in a telegraphic cable, on the contrary, is proportional to the length of the conducting-wire and the intensity of the battery. In the former case, by increasing the electrical force you overcome the resistance; while in the latter, by augmenting the electrical force you increase the retardation.

From the foregoing law it will be seen that there are two ways of lessening the resistance upon telegraphic conductors,-one by reducing the length, and the other by increasing the area of the section of the conducting-wire. Now, as already remarked, the copper conducting-wire in the old cable weighed but ninety-three pounds to the mile, while in the new cable it weighs five hundred and ten pounds to the mile, or more than five times as much. If, then, by comparison, we estimate the resistance in the old Atlantic cable to have been equal to two thousand miles of ordinary telegraph-wire, the increased size of the conducting-wire of the new cable reduces the resistance to one-fifth that distance, or four hundred miles. And while it required two hundred cells of battery to produce intensity sufficient to work over the two thousand miles of resistance in the old cable, it will require but one-fifth as much, or forty cells, to overcome the four hundred miles of resistance in the new cable. The retardation which resulted from the intense current generated by two hundred cells will be also proportionately reduced in the comparatively small battery of forty cells. Thus we perceive, that, while the length of the cable is, electrically and practically, reduced to one-fifth of its former length, the retardation of the current is also decreased in the same proportion. Therefore, if, with the old cable, three words per minute could be transmitted, with the new cable we shall be able to transmit five times as many, or fifteen words per minute. This is not equal to our Morse system on the land-lines, which will signal at the rate of thirty-five words per minute, still less to the printing system, which can signal at the rate of fifty words per minute; but, even at this rate, the cable would be enabled to transmit in twenty-four hours one thousand despatches containing an average of twenty words apiece. Mr. Field, however, claims for the cable a speed of only twelve words per minute, which would reduce the number of despatches of twenty words each that could be transmitted in twenty-four hours to eight hundred and sixty-four. We will suppose, however, that the cable transmits only five hundred telegrams per day; this number, at ten dollars per message, would give an income of five thousand dollars per diem, or one million five hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars per annum. Quite a handsome revenue on an outlay of about one million of dollars!

The only instrument which could be used successfully in signalling through the old cable was one of peculiar construction, called the Marine Galvanometer. In this instrument, momentum and inertia are almost wholly avoided by the use of a needle weighing only one and a half grains, combined with a mirror reflecting a ray of light, which indicates deflections with great accuracy. By this means a gradually increasing or decreasing current is at each instant indicated at its due strength. Thus, when this galvanometer is placed as the receiving-instrument at the end of a long submarine cable, the movement of the spot of light, consequent on the completion of a circuit through the battery, cable, and earth, can be so observed as to furnish a curve representing very accurately the arrival of an electric current. Lines representing successive signals at various speeds can also be obtained, and, by means of a metronome, dots and dashes can be sent with nearly perfect regularity by an ordinary Morse key, and the corresponding changes in the current at the receiving end of the cable accurately observed.

A system of arbitrary characters, similar to those used upon the Morse telegraph, was employed, and the letter to be indicated was determined by the number of oscillations of the needle, as well as by the length of time during which the needle remained in one place. The operator, who watched the reflection of the deflected needle in the mirror, held a key in his hand communicating with a local instrument in the office, which he pressed down or raised, according to the deflection of the needle; and another operator deciphered the characters thus produced upon the paper. This mode of telegraphing was, of necessity, very slow, and it will not surprise the reader that the fastest rate of speed over the cable did not exceed three words per minute. Still, had the old cable continued in operation a few months longer, experience and practice would have enabled the operator to transmit and receive with very much greater facility. On our land-lines, operators of long experience acquire a dexterity which enables them not only to transmit and receive telegrams with wonderful rapidity, but to work the instruments during storms, when those of less experience would be unable to receive a dot. There is no occupation in which skill and experience are more necessary to success than in that of telegraphing, and at the time the Atlantic cable was laid no experience had been obtained upon similar lines, or with the instruments employed. Now, however, the company can avail itself of experienced operators from lines of nearly equal length, and who will require no time for experimenting, but may commence operations as soon as the two ends of the cable are landed upon the shores of Europe and America.

In the old cable the copper wire was covered but three times with gutta-percha, while in the new it is covered four times with the purest gutta-percha and four times with Chatterton's patent compound, by which the cable is rendered absolutely impenetrable to water. The old cable was covered with eighteen strands of small iron wire, which, as they had no other covering, were directly exposed to the action of the water. The new is covered with thirteen strands, each strand consisting of three wires of the best quality, and covered with gutta-percha, to render it indestructible in salt water. By this new construction, it has double the strength of the old cable, at the same time that it is lighter in the water, a very important matter in laying it across the ocean.

The risk of loss in laying the new cable would be very much diminished by the fact that it would be of such strength, that, even if broken, it could be recovered, as has been done in the Mediterranean; and besides, the principal and most expensive materials, copper and gutta-percha, being indestructible, would have at all times a market value.

Other routes to Europe have been proposed, and have been at times quite popular, the most feasible of which are those via Behring's Straits, or the Aleutian Islands, and via Labrador, Greenland, Iceland, and the Faroe Isles.

To the route via Behring's Straits there are several grave objections. The distance from New York to London by a route crossing the three continents of America, Asia, and Europe, is about eighteen thousand miles, or more than nine times as great as that from Newfoundland to Ireland. Of course, the mere cost of constructing a continuous telegraph three-quarters of the distance around the globe, and of maintaining the hundreds of stations that would be necessary over such a length of land-lines, would be enormous. But even that is not the chief difficulty. A line which should traverse the whole breadth of Siberia would encounter wellnigh insuperable obstacles in the country itself, as it would have to pass over mountains and across deserts; while, as it turned north to Kamtschatka, it would come into a region of frightful cold, where winter reigns the greater part of the year. Of this whole country a large part is not only utterly uncivilized, but uninhabited, and portions which are occupied are held by savage and warlike tribes.

Of the Greenland route, Doctor Hayes, the well-known Arctic traveller, expresses himself in the most decided manner, that it is wholly impracticable. He says it must be obvious that the ice which hugs the Greenland coast will prevent a cable, if laid, from remaining in continuity for any length of time. Doctor Wallich, naturalist attached to Sir Leopold McClintock's expedition to survey the Northern route, considers it impracticable on account of the volcanic nature of the bottom of the sea near Iceland, and the ridges of rock and the immense icebergs near Greenland.

The main argument in favor of this route, in preference to the more direct one across the Atlantic, is, that it would be impossible to work in one continuous circuit a line so long as that from Newfoundland to Ireland. This would seem to be answered sufficiently by the success of the old Atlantic cable. But it is alleged that it worked slowly and with difficulty, which is true, and hence it is thought that the distance would be at least a very great obstacle. But we have shown, that, practically, by the increased size of the conducting-wire, the new cable has been reduced in length four-fifths, and will work five times as fast as the old one. The cable extending from Malta to Alexandria is fifteen hundred and thirty-five miles long, and the whole of this line can be worked through without relay or repetition in a satisfactory manner, as regards both its scientific and commercial results, and with remarkably low battery-power. The Gutta-Percha Company, which made the core of this cable, says that a suitably made and insulated telegraph-conductor, laid intact between Ireland and Newfoundland, can be worked efficiently, both in a commercial and scientific sense, and they are prepared to guaranty the efficient and satisfactory working of a line of the length of the Atlantic cable as manufactured by themselves, and submerged and maintained in that state.

It can be shown by the testimony and experience of those most eminent in the science and practice of oceanic telegraphy, that neither length of distance, within the limits with which the Atlantic Company has to deal, nor depth of water, is any insuperable impediment to efficient communication by such improved conductors of electricity as are now proposed to be laid down. All those who are best able to form a sound opinion, from long-continued experimental researches on this particular point, are willing to pledge their judgment, that, on such a length of line as that between Ireland and Newfoundland, and with such a cable and such improved instruments as are now at command, not less than twelve words per minute could be transmitted from shore to shore, and that this may be done with greatly diminished battery-power as compared with that formerly used.

I think I have shown by facts, and not theory merely, that the Atlantic cable can and will be successfully laid down and worked, thus supplying the long-needed link between the three hundred thousand miles of electric telegraph already in operation on the opposite shores of the Atlantic.

There are many of our people who are inclined to look coldly upon this enterprise, from a conviction that it would give Great Britain an undue advantage over us in case war should occur between the two countries, and I confess to having entertained the same views; but the case is so well put by Mr. Field, in his address before the American Geographical Society, as, in my judgment, to relieve every apprehension upon this point.

The relative geographical position of the two countries cannot be changed. It so happens, that the two points on the opposite sides of the Atlantic nearest to each other, and which are therefore the natural termini of an ocean telegraph, are both in British territory. Of course, the Government which holds both ends can control the use of the telegraph, or stop it altogether. It has the power, and the only check upon the abuse of that power must be by a treaty, made beforehand. Shall we refuse to aid in constructing the line, for fear that England, in the exasperation of a war, would disregard any treaty stipulations in reference to its use? Then we throw away our only security. For, suppose a war to break out to-morrow, the first step of England would be to lay a cable herself, for her own sole and exclusive benefit. Then she would not only have the control, but would be unrestrained by any treaty-obligations binding her to respect the neutrality of the telegraph. We should then find this great medium of communication between the two hemispheres, which we might have made, if not an ally, at least a neutral, turned into a powerful antagonist.

Would it not, therefore, be better that such a line of telegraph should be constructed by the joint efforts of both countries, and be guarded by treaty-stipulations, so that it might be placed, as far as possible, under the protection of the faith of nations, and of the honor of the civilized world?

Mr. Field says, that, in the negotiations on this subject, Great Britain has never shown the slightest wish to take advantage of its geographical position to exact special privileges, or a desire to appropriate any advantages which it was not willing to concede equally to the United States.

Should not the Atlantic telegraph, if laid down under the conditions proposed by the Company, instead of being a cause of apprehension, in case of war, be rather looked upon with favor, as tending to lessen the risk of war between the United States and all European countries, affording, as it would, facilities for the prompt interchange of notes between the Government of the United States and those of the various nations on the other side of the Atlantic, whenever any misunderstanding should unhappily arise?

Let us, then, throw aside all feeling of apprehension from this cause, and be prepared to hail, with the same enthusiasm we experienced in 1858 at the laying of the old, the completion of the new Atlantic cable.

* * * * *

THE CABALISTIC WORDS.

[Since the following poem was written, we have had from the President the pledge that the "cabalistic words" shall be uttered by him on the first of January, 1863, unless the rebellion is abandoned before that time. Thanks and honor to the President for the promise! But we shall not look for the magical operation of the words till they are uttered without reservation or qualification.]

Hear, O Commander of the Faithful, hear

A legend trite to many a childish ear;

But scorn it not, nor let its teaching fail,

Although familiar as a nursery tale.

Cassim the Covetous, whose god was gold,

Once, by strange chance, found riches manifold

Hid in a rocky cavern, where a band

Of robbers who were ravaging the land

Kept their bright spoils. Cassim had learnt the spell

By which the dazzling heaps were guarded well.

Two cabalistic words he speaks, and, lo!

The door flies open: what a golden glow!

He enters,-speaks the words of power once more,

And swift upon him clangs the ponderous door.

Croesus! what joy to eyes that know their worth!

Huge bags of gold and diamonds on the earth!

Here piles of ingots, there a glistening heap

Of coins that all their minted lustre keep.

Cassim is ravished at the wondrous sight,

And rubs his hands with ever new delight;

Absorbed in gazing, lets the hours go by,

Nor can enough indulge his gloating eye.

He chooses what he can to bear away,

And then reluctant seeks the outer day.

The words,-what are they,-those that ope the door?

He falters,-loses all so plain before;-

Tries this word,-that,-in vain!-he cannot speak

The magic sentence;-he grows faint and weak,-

Spurns the base gold, cause of his wild despair;-

What if the thieves should come and find him there?-

Hark! they are coming!-yes, they come!-they shout

The precious words;-ah, now they end his doubt!-

Too late he hears; in vain he tries to fly;

Trembling he sinks upon his knees-to die!

Commander of the Faithful! dark the strait

Thy people stand in, in this hour of fate;

Thick walls of gloom and doubt have shut them in;

They grope beneath the ban of one great sin.

Yet there are two short words whose potent spell

Shall burst with thunder-crash these gates of hell,

Open a vista to celestial light,

Lead us to peace through the eternal Right.

Oh, speak those words, those saving words of power,

In this most pregnant, this supremest hour,-

Words writ in martyr blood, as all may see!-

Commander of the Faithful, say, BE FREE!

* * * * *

CONVERSATIONAL OPINIONS OF THE LEADERS OF SECESSION.

A MONOGRAPH.

The causes of the present Rebellion, the personal history of its leaders, and the incidents immediately preceding the breaking out of the conspiracy, will ever remain objects of chief interest to the historian of the present period of the Republic. Influenced by a desire to obtain unimpeachable information upon these topics from unprejudiced sources, the writer of the following article, then a student at Yale College, availed himself of the vacation in December, 1860, and January, 1861, to visit the National capital, and while there to improve the reasonably ready access with which most public men are approached, whenever the object is either to give or to receive information, for the purpose of studying a period then promising to exceed in importance anything in the past history of the nation. It has been suggested to the writer, that certain interviews, such as younger men, when collegians, were then allowed with the frank Southern leaders, and which he has occasionally sketched in conversation, have had the seal of privacy removed by the tide of events, and should now be described for the public, as aiding to unmask, from unquestionable authority, the real causes and origin of the Rebellion, and contributing something, perhaps, to sustain public sentiment in the defence of the nation against a conspiracy which the statements of these Southern apologists themselves prove to have been conceived in the most reckless disregard of honor and law, and which, if successful, will give birth to a neighboring nation actuated by the same spirit.

The more important interviews alluded to were with the Honorable Robert Toombs, the Honorable R.M.T. Hunter, and the Honorable Jefferson Davis, at that time prominent members, as is well known, of the United States Senate, from the States respectively of Georgia, Virginia, and Mississippi. The communications of the Senators are proved to have been sincere by their subsequent speeches and by public events. The writer is by no means insensible to the breach of privilege, of which, under ordinary circumstances, notwithstanding the unfolding of events, he would be guilty, in detailing in print private conversations; but he believes that the public will sustain the propriety of the present revelations, now that the persons chiefly concerned have become enemies of the nation and of mankind.

Not, as he may possibly be accused, with the purpose of adding a syllable of unnecessary length to the narrative, but for the sake of vividness in presenting the idea of the personnel of the Southern leaders, soon to be known only as historical characters, and of scrupulous accuracy in representing their sentiments, to which, in this case, a notice of time, place, and manner seems as necessary as that of matter, the writer has taken not a little pains, through all the usual means, to remember, and will endeavor to state, the conversations, always with logical, and nearly always, he believes, with verbal accuracy, in order that the conclusions to be drawn from them by the reader may have the better support.

It is well known that public men in Washington, out of business hours, are visited without formal introduction or letters, especially upon their reception-days, and that the privilege of a single interview implies no distinction to the visitor. The urbanity and frankness with which proper approaches are met, especially by the Southern leaders, are also well known. Young men, with unprejudiced minds, upon whom public characters are always anxious to impress the stamp of their own principles, are perhaps received with quite as much frankness as others.

* * * * *

The first interview sought was with Mr. Toombs, the most daring and ingenuous, and perhaps the most gifted in eloquence of the Southern leaders, whose house, at that time, was a lofty building upon F Street, only two doors from the residence of Mr. Seward. A negro servant, who, with all the blackness of a native African, yet with thin lips and almost the regular features of a Caucasian, appeared to the writer to be possibly the descendant of one of the superior, princely African tribes, showed the way to an unoccupied parlor. The room was luxuriously furnished with evidences of wealth and taste: a magnificent pianoforte, several well-chosen paintings, and a marble bust of some public character standing upon a high pedestal of the same material in the corner, attracting particular attention, and a pleasant fire in the open grate making the December evening social. A step presently heard in the hall, elastic, buoyant, and vigorous, was altogether too characteristic of Mr. Toombs's portly, muscular, confident, and somewhat dashing figure, to be mistaken for any other than his own. Mr. Toombs appeared to be now about forty-five years of age, but carried in his whole mien the elastic vigor, and irresistible self-reliance, frankness, decision, and sociality of character, which mark his oratory and his public career. His good-evening, and inquiry concerning the college named on the card of the writer, were in a tone that at once placed his visitor at ease.

"Your first visit to Washington, Mr. --?"

"Yes, Sir. Like others, I have been attracted by the political crisis, and the purpose of studying it from unprejudiced sources."

"Crisis? Oh, that's past."

The writer will not soon forget the tone of perfect confidence and nonchalance with which this was uttered. The time was the last week of December, 1860.

"You are confident, then, Sir, that fifteen States will secede?"

"Secede? Certainly,-they must secede. You Northerners,-you are from a Northern college, I believe,"-referring to the writer's card,-"you Northerners wish to make a new Constitution, or rather to give such an interpretation to the old one as to make it virtually a new document. How can society be kept together, if men will not keep their compacts? Our fathers provided, in adopting their Constitution, for the protection of their property. But here are four billions of the property of the South which you propose to outlaw from the common Territories. You say to us, by your elected President, by your House of Representatives, by your Senate, by your Supreme Court, in short, by every means through which one party can speak to another, that these four billions of property, representing the toil of the head and hand of the South for the last two hundred years, shall not be respected in the Territories as your property is respected there. And this property, too, is property which you tax and which you allow to be represented; but yet you will not protect it. How can we remain? We should be happy to remain, if you would treat us as equals; but you tax us, and will not protect us. We will resist. D-n it,"-this and other striking expressions are precisely Mr. Toombs's language,-"we will meet you on the border with the bayonet. Society cannot be kept together, unless men will keep their compacts."

This was said without the intonation of fierceness or malignity, but with great decision and the vigor of high spirit.

It was taking, of course, with considerable emphasis, a side in a famous Constitutional question, familiar to all readers of American Congressional Debates, once supported by Mr. Calhoun, and rather strangely, too, with that philosophical leader, confusing the absurdly asserted State right of seceding at will with the undoubted right, when there exists no peaceful remedy, of seceding from intolerable oppression: an entire position which Mr. Webster especially, and subsequent statesmen, in arguments elucidating the nature and powers of the General Government, to say nothing of the respect due to a moral sentiment concerning slavery, which, permeating more than a majority of the people, has the force, when properly expressed, wherever the Constitution has jurisdiction, of supreme law, are thought by most men, once and forever, to have satisfactorily answered. It was a complaint, certainly, which the South had had ever since the Constitution was formed, and which could with no plausibility be brought forward as a justification of war, while there existed a Constitutional tribunal for adjusting difficulties of Constitutional interpretation. Yet, as it was almost universally asserted, of course, by the Northern partisan presses, and by Northern Congressmen, that the Rebellion was utterly causeless, and as the writer was therefore exceedingly anxious to obtain, concerning their grievances, the latest opinions of the Southern leaders, as stated by themselves, he ventured to propose, in a pause of Mr. Toombs's somewhat rapid rhetoric, a question which, at that moment, seemed of central importance to the candid philosophical inquirer into the moving forces of the times:-

"Are we, then, Sir, to consider Mr. Calhoun's old complaint-the non-recognition of slave-property under the Federal Constitution-as constituting now the chief grievance of the South?"

"Undoubtedly," was Mr. Toombs's instant reply, "it all turns on that.

What you tax you must protect."

This is the very strongest argument of the Southern side. But the alleged slave-property is protected, though only under municipal law, by the Constitution. To protect it elsewhere is against its whole spirit, and, in the present state of public sentiment, against its very letter. Originally, as is well known, it was not proposed to protect at all, under the General Government, property so monstrous, except as it became necessary as a compromise, in order to secure a union. But the provision of the Constitution that the slave-trade should be abolished, the absolute power given to Congress to make all laws for the Territories, the spirit of the preamble, the principles of the Declaration, indeed, the whole history of the origin and adoption of the fundamental law, prove that its principle and its expectation were, if not absolutely to place slavery in the States in process of extinction, at least never to recognize it except indirectly and remotely under municipal law, not even by admitting the word slave to its phraseology.

"Even in the Northern States themselves, to say nothing of the Territories, I am not safe with my property. I can travel through France or England and be safe; but if I happen to lose my servant up in Vairmount,"-Mr. Toombs pronounced the word with a somewhat marked accent of derision,-"and undertake to recover him, I get jugged. Besides, your Northern statesmen are far from being honest. Here is Billy Seward, for instance,"-with a gesture toward his neighbor's house,-"who says slavery is contrary to the Higher Law, and that he is bound as a Christian to obey the Higher Law; but yet he takes an oath to uphold the Constitution, which protects slavery. This inconsistency runs through most of the Northern platforms. How can we live with such men? They will not be true even to a compact which they themselves acknowledge."

"You would think, then, Wendell Phillips, for instance, more consistent in his political opinions than Mr. Seward?"

"Certainly. I can understand his position. 'Slavery,' he says, 'is wrong. The Constitution protects slavery; therefore I will have nothing to do with the Constitution, and cannot become a citizen.' This is logical and consistent. I can respect such a position as that."

Here Mr. Toombs-ejecting, as perhaps the writer ought not to relate, a competent mass of tobacco-saliva into the blazing coal-paused somewhat reflectively, perhaps unpleasantly revolving certain possible indirect influences of the position he had characterized.

"Upon which side, Sir, do you think there is usually the most misunderstanding,-on the part of the North concerning the South? or on the part of the South concerning the North?"

"Oh, by all odds," he replied, instantly, "we understand you best. We send fifty thousand travellers, more or less, North every summer to your watering-places. Hot down in Mobile,"-his style taking somewhat unpleasantly the intonation as well as the negligence of the bar-room,-"can't live in Mobile in the summer. Then your papers circulate more among us than ours among you. Our daughters are educated at Northern boarding-schools, our sons at Northern colleges: both my colleague and myself were educated at Northern colleges. For these reasons, by all odds, we have a better opportunity for understanding you than you have for understanding us."

"In case of general secession and war," the writer ventured next to inquire, "would there probably, in your opinion, be danger of a slave insurrection?"

"None at all. Certainly far less than of 'Bread or Blood' riots at the

North."

The writer was surprised to find, notwithstanding Mr. Toombs's eulogy of Southern opportunities, his understanding of the North so imperfect, and still more surprised at the political and social principles involved in the spirit of what followed.

"Your poor population can hold ward-meetings, and can vote. But we know better how to take care of ours. They are in the fields, and under the eye of their overseers. There can be little danger of an insurrection under our system."

The subject and the manner of the man, in spite of his better qualities, were becoming painful, and the writer ventured only one more remark.

"An ugly time, certainly, if war comes between North and South."

"Ugly time? Oh, no!"

The writer will never forget the tone of utter carelessness and nonchalance with which the last round-toned exclamation was uttered.

"Oh, no! War is nothing. Never more than a tenth part of the adult population of a country in the field. We have four million voters. Say a tenth of them, or four hundred thousand men, are in the field on both sides. A tenth of them would be killed or die of camp diseases. But they would die, any way. War is nothing."

The tone perfectly proved this belief, not badinage.

"Some property would be destroyed, towns injured, fences overturned, and the Devil raised generally; but then all that would have a good effect. Only yaller-covered-literature men and editors make a noise about war. Wars are to history what storms are to the atmosphere,-purifiers. We shall meet, as we ought, whoever invades our rights, with the bayonet. We are the gentlemen of this land, and gentlemen always make revolutions in history."

This was said in the tone of an injured, but haughty man, with perfect intellectual poise and earnestness, yet with a fervor of feeling that brought the speaker erect in his chair.

The significance of the last remarks, which the writer can make oath he has preserved verbatim, being somewhat calculated to draw on a debate, of course wholly unfitted to the time and place, the writer, apologizing for having taken so much time at a formal interview, and receiving, of course, a most courteous invitation to renew the call, found himself, after but twenty minutes' conversation, on the street, in the lonely December evening, with a mind full of reflections.

The utter recklessness concerning life and property with which the splendid intellect, under the lead of the ungovernable passions of this man, was plunging the nation into a civil war of which no one could foresee the end, was the thought uppermost. Certainly, the abstract manliness of asserting rights supposed to be infringed it was in itself impossible not to respect. But the man seemed to love war for its own sake, as pugnacious schoolboys love sham-fights, with a sort of glee in the smell of the smoke of battle. The judicial calmness of statesmanship had entirely disappeared in the violence of sectional passion. Perhaps he might be capable of ruining his country from pure love of turbulence and power, could he but find a pretext of force sufficient to blind first himself and then others. Yet Robert Toombs, in the Senate Chamber, takes little children in his arms, and is one of the kindest of the noblemen of Nature in the sphere of his unpolitical sympathies. The reader who is familiar with Mr. Toombs's speeches will need no assurance that he spoke frankly.[A]

[Footnote A: Ten days later, in the Senate, with a face full of the combined erubescence of revolutionary enthusiasm and unstatesmanlike anger, Mr. Toombs closed a speech to the Northern Senators in the following amazing words, (Congressional Globe, 1860-61, p. 271,) which justify, it will be seen, every syllable of the report of the conversation upon the same points:-

"You will not regard confederate obligations; you will not regard constitutional obligations; you will not regard your oaths. What am I to do? Am I a freeman? Is my State, a free State, to lie down and submit because political fossils raise the cry of 'The Glorious Union'? Too long already have we listened to this delusive song. We are freemen. We have rights: I have stated them. We have wrongs: I have recounted them. I have demonstrated that the party now coming into power has declared us outlaws, and is determined to exclude four thousand millions of our property from the common territories,-that it has declared us under the ban of the empire and out of the protection of the laws of the United States, everywhere. They have refused to protect us from invasion and insurrection by the Federal power, and the Constitution denies to us in the Union the right either to raise fleets or armies for our own defence. All these charges I have proven by the record, and I put them before the civilized world, and demand the judgment of to-day, of to-morrow, of distant ages, and of Heaven itself, upon these causes. I am content, whatever it be, to peril all in so noble, so holy a cause. We have appealed time and time again for these constitutional rights. You have refused them. We appeal again. Restore us these rights as we had them, as your court adjudges them to be, just as all our people have said they are, redress these flagrant wrongs, seen of all men, and it will restore fraternity and peace and unity to all of us. Refuse them, and what then? We shall then ask you to 'let us depart in peace.' Refuse that, and you present us war. We accept it; and inscribing upon our banners the glorious words, 'Liberty and Equality,' we will trust to the blood of the brave and the God of battles for security and tranquillity."

Sincere, but undoubtedly mistaken, Mr. Toombs! To this philippic, let the words of another Southern, but not sectional Senator, reply, and that from a golden age:-

"But if, unhappily, we should be involved in war, in civil war, between the two parts of this Confederacy, in which the effort upon the one side should be to restrain the introduction of slavery into the new territories, and upon the other side to force its introduction there, what a spectacle should we present to the astonishment of mankind, in an effort, not to propagate right, but-I must say it, though I trust it will be understood to be said with no design to excite feeling-a war to propagate wrong in the territories thus acquired from Mexico. It would be a war in which we should have no sympathies, no good wishes, in which all mankind would be against us; for, from the commencement of the Revolution down to the present time, we have constantly reproached our British ancestors for the introduction of slavery into this country."-HENRY CLAY, Congressional Globe, Part II., Vol. 22, p. 117.]

Sick at heart, as the future of the nation stood to his dim vision through the present, the writer found his way to his hotel. At this time the North was silent, apparently apathetic, unbelieving, almost criminally allowed to be undeceived by its presses and by public men who had means of information, while this volcano continued to prepare itself thus defiantly beneath the very feet of a President sworn to support the laws!

* * * * *

The formal interview with the Honorable R.M.T. Hunter was sought in company with two other students of New-England colleges. We had hoped to meet Mr. Mason at the same apartments, but were disappointed. The great contrast of personal character between Mr. Hunter and Mr. Toombs made the concurrence of the former in the chief views presented by the latter the more significant. The careful habits of thought, the unostentatiousness, and the practical common sense for which the Virginian farmer is esteemed, and which had made his name a prominent one for President of a Central Confederacy, in case of the separate secession of the Border States, were curiously manifested both in his apartments and his manner. The chamber was apparently at a boarding-house, but very plainly furnished with red cotton serge curtains and common hair-cloth chairs and sofa. The Senator's manner of speech was slow, considerate,-indeed, sometimes approaching awkwardness in its plain, farmer-like simplicity. One of the first questions was the central one, concerning the chief grievance of the South, which had been presented to Mr. Toombs.

"Yes," was Mr. Hunter's reply, somewhat less promptly given, "it may be said to come chiefly from that,-the non-recognition of our property under the Constitution. We wish our property recognized, as we think the Constitution provides. We should like to remain with the North."

He spoke without a particle of expressed passion or ardor, though by no means incapable, when aroused, as those who have seen his plethoric countenance and figure can testify, of both.

"We are mutually helpful to each other. We want to use your navy and your factories. You want our cotton. The North to manufacture, and the South to produce, would make the strongest nation. But, if we separate, we shall try to do more in Virginia than we do now. We shall make mills on our streams."

His language was chiefly Saxon monosyllables.

"The climate is not as severe, the nights are not as long with us as with you. I think we can do well at manufacturing in Virginia. The Chesapeake Bay and our rivers should aid commerce. As for the slaves, I think there is little danger of any trouble. There may be some," he said, with a frankness that surprised us slightly, but in the same moderate, honest way, his hands clasped upon his breast, and the extended feet rubbing together slowly, "in the Cotton States, where they are very thick together; but I think that there is very little danger in Virginia. The way they take to rise in never shows much skill. The last time they rose in our State, I think the attempt was brought on by some sign in an eclipse of the moon."

Nearly all that passed of political interest is contained in the foregoing sentences, except one honest reply to a question concerning his opinion of the probability of the North's attempting coercion.

"If only three States go out, they may coerce," said Mr. Hunter; "but if fifteen go, I guess they won't try."

At the present period of the Rebellion, this indication of the anticipations of its leaders in engaging in it must be of interest.

It must be understood that the writer and his companions presented themselves simply as students, with no fixed exclusive predilections for either of the public parties in politics,-which, in the writer's case at least, was certainly a statement wholly true,-and that this evident freedom from political bias secured perhaps an unusual share of the confidence of the Southern Senators. It will be remembered, also, that in every conversation, however startling the revelation of criminal purpose or absurd motive, the manner of these Senators was always totally devoid of any approach to that vulgar intellectual levity which too often, in treating of public affairs, painfully characterizes the fifth-rate men whom the North sometimes chooses to make its representatives. The manner of the Southern leaders was to us a sufficient proof of their sincerity.

* * * * *

At the house of the Honorable Jefferson Davis, now in the world's gaze President of the then nascent Confederacy, the writer, in the intelligent and genial company of the graduate of Harvard and the student of Amherst before mentioned, called formally, on the evening of the New Year's reception-day. A representative from one of the Southwestern States was present, but we were soon admitted to the front of the open blazing grate of the reception-parlor. We had before seen Mr. Davis busy in the Senate.

The urbanity, the intellectual energy, and the intensely shrewd watchfulness and ambition, combined with a covertly expressed, but powerful native instinct for strategy and command, which have made Mr. Davis a public leader, were evident at the first glance. The Senator seemed compact of ambition, will, intellect, activity, and shrewdness. A high and broad, but square forehead; the aquiline nose; the square, fighting chin; the thin, compressed, but flexible lips; the almost haggardly sunken cheek; the piercing, not wholly uncovered eye; the dark, somewhat thinning hair; the clear, slightly browned, nervous complexion, all well given in the best current photographs, were united to a figure slightly bent in the shoulders, of more respiratory than digestive breadth, in outlines almost equally balancing ruggedness and grace, of compactness wrought by the pressure of perhaps few more than fifty summers, not above medium height, but composed throughout of silk and steel. A certain similarity between the decorations of the parlor and the character of the owner, perhaps more fanciful than real, at once attracted attention. Everything was simple, graceful, and rich, without being tropically luxuriant; the paintings appeared to be often of airy, winged, or white-robed figures, that suggested a reflective and not unimaginative mind in the one who had chosen them. This was the leader whom Mr. Calhoun's fervent political metaphysics and his own ambition for place and power had misled. His conversation was remarkable in manner for perfect unostentatiousness, clearness, and self-control, and in matter for breadth and minuteness of political information. In the whole conversation, he never uttered a broken or awkwardly constructed sentence, nor wavered, while stating facts, by a single intonation. This considerable intellectual energy, combined with courtesy, was his chief fascination. Yet, underneath all lay an atmosphere of covert haughtiness, and, at times, even of audacious remorselessness, which, under stimulative circumstances, were to be feared. Undoubtedly, passion and ambition were natively stronger in the countenance than reason, conscience, and general sympathy,-an observation best felt to be true when the face was compared in imagination with the faces of some of the world's chief benefactors; but culture, native urbanity, and a powerful reflective tendency had evidently so wrought, that, though conscience might be imperilled frequently by great adroitness in the casuistry of self-excuse, justice could not be consciously opposed for any length of time without powerful silent reaction. The quantity of being, however, though superior, was not of so high a measure as the quality, and the principal deficiencies, though perhaps almost the sole ones, were plainly moral. In his presence, no man could deny to him something of that dignity, of a kind superior to that of intellect and will, which must be possessed by every leader as a basis of confidence. But mournful severe truth would testify that there was yet, at times, palpably something of the treacherous serpent in the eye, and it could not readily be told where it would strike.

In reply to a reference to a somewhat celebrated speech by Senator Benjamin of Louisiana, which we had heard the day previous, he said that we might consider it, as a whole, a very fair statement both of the arguments and the purposes of the South. Perhaps a speech of more horrible doctrine, upheld by equal argumentative and rhetorical power, has never been heard in the American Senate. In reply, also, to the one central question concerning the chief grievance of the South, he gave in substance the same answer, uttered perhaps with more logical calmness, that had been given by Mr. Hunter and Mr. Toombs, that it was substantially covered by Mr. Calhoun's old complaint, the non-recognition of slave-property under the Federal Constitution. Of course we were as yet too well established in the belief that slavery in the United States is upheld by the Constitution only very remotely and indirectly, under local or municipal law, to desire, even by questions, to draw on any debate.

In reply to a question by the gentleman from Harvard, he spoke of a Central Confederacy as altogether improbable, and thought, if Georgia seceded, as the telegrams for the last fortnight had indicated she would, Maryland would be sure to go. "I think the commercial and political interests of Maryland," he remarked, in his calm and simple, but distinct and watchful manner, manifesting, too, at the same time, a natural command of dignified, antithetical sentences, "would be promoted, perhaps can be only preserved, by secession. Her territory extends on both sides of a great inland water communication, and is at the natural Atlantic outlet, by railway, of the Valley of the West. Baltimore in the Union is sure to be inferior to Philadelphia and New York: Baltimore out of the Union is sure to become a great commercial city. In every way, whether we regard her own people or their usefulness to other States, I think the interests of Maryland would be promoted by secession."

"But would not Maryland lose many more slaves, as the border member of a foreign confederacy, than she does now in the Union?"

The reply to this question we looked for with the greatest interest, since no foreign nation, such as the North would be, in case of the success of the attempted Confederacy, ever thinks of giving up fugitives, and since the policy of the South upon this point, in case she should succeed, would determine the possibility or impossibility of peace between the two portions of the Continent.

Mr. Davis's reply was in the following words, uttered in a tone of equal shrewdness, calmness, and decision:-

"I think, for all Maryland would lose in that way she would be more than repaid by reprisals. While we are one nation and you steal our property, we have little redress; but when we become two nations, we shall say, Two can play at this game."

We breathed more freely after so frank an utterance. The great importance of this reply, coming from the even then proposed political chief of the Confederacy, as indicating the impossibility of peace, even in case of the recognition of the South, so long as it should continue, as it has begun, to make Slavery the chief corner-stone of the State, will be at once perceived.

"But," the writer ventured to inquire, "what will become of the Federal

District, since its inhabitants have no 'State right of secession'?"

"Have you ever studied law?" he asked.

The gentleman from Amherst confessed our ignorance of any point covering the case.

"There is a rule in law," continued Mr. Davis, "that, when property is granted by one party to another for use for any specified purpose, and ceases to be used for that purpose, it reverts by law to the donor. Now the territory constituting at present the District of Columbia was granted, as you well know, by Maryland to the United States for use as the seat of the Federal capital. When it ceases to be used for that purpose, it, with all its public fixtures, will revert by law to Maryland. But," and his eye brightened to the hue of cold steel in a way the writer will never forget, as he uttered, in a tone perfectly self-poised, undaunted, and slightly defiant, the words, "that is a point which may be settled by force rather than by reason."

This was January 1, 1861, only eleven days after South Carolina had passed her Act of Secession, and shows that even then, notwithstanding the professed desire of the South to depart in peace, the attack not only upon the national principles of union, but upon the national property as well, was projected. Mr. Davis, loaded with the benefits of his country, yet occupied a seat in the Senate Chamber, under the most solemn oath to uphold its Constitution, which, even if his grievances had been well founded, afforded Constitutional and peaceful remedies that he had never attempted to use. Presenting regards, very formal indeed, sick at heart, indignant, and anxious, we left the house of the traitor.

The historical conclusions to be drawn from the above slight sketches are important in several respects. Mr. Davis, Mr. Toombs, and Mr. Hunter are among the strongest leaders of the Rebellion. Representing the Northern, Southeastern, and Southwestern populations of the disaffected regions, their testimony had a wide application, and was perhaps as characteristic and pointed in these brief conversations, occurring just upon the eve of the bursting of the storm, as we should have heard in a hundred interviews. That they spoke frankly was not only evidenced to us by their entire manner, but, as it is not unimportant to repeat, has been proved by subsequent events. The conversations, therefore, indicate,-

1. That the grand, fundamental, legal ground for the Rebellion was a view of Constitutional rights by which property in human beings claimed equal protection under the General Government with the products of Free Labor, and to be admitted, therefore, at will, to all places under the jurisdiction of the Federal power, and not simply to be protected under local or municipal law,-rights which the South proposed to vindicate, constitutionally, by Secession, or, in other words, by the domination of State over National sovereignty: an entire view of the true intent of the Federal compacts and powers, which, in the great debates between Mr. Webster and Mr. Calhoun, to say nothing of elucidations by previous and subsequent jurists and statesmen, has been again and again abundantly demonstrated to be absurd.

2. That the immediate, comprehensive pretext for the Rebellion was the success of a legal majority having in its platform of principles the doctrine of the non-extension of involuntary human bondage in the territories over which the Constitution had given to the whole people absolute control, a doctrine which the mass of the Southern populations were educated to believe not only deadly to their local privileges, but distinctly unconstitutional.

3. That the leaders of the Rebellion frankly admitted, that, excepting this one point of Constitutional grievance, the interests of the populations which they represented would be better subserved in the Union than out of it.

4. That the leaders of the Rebellion appear not to have anticipated coercion; but yet, from the earliest days of Secession, contemplated the spoliation of the Southern National property, and particularly the seizure of the Federal capital.

5. That, even should the independence of the South be acknowledged, peace could not result so long as Slavery should continue: their avowed system of reprisals for the certain escape of slaves precluding all force in any but piratical international law.

6. That the spirit of the Rebellion is the haughty, grasping, and, except within its own circle, the remorseless spirit universally characteristic of oligarchies, before the success of whose principles upon this continent the liberties of the whites could be no safer than those of the blacks.

"We are the gentlemen of this land," said the Georgian senator, "and gentlemen always make revolutions in history." And just previously he had said, with haughty significance, "Your poor population can hold ward-meetings, and can vote. But we know better how to take care of ours. They are in the fields, and under the eye of their overseers."

In these two brief remarks, taken singly, or, especially, in juxtaposition, from so representative a source, and so characteristic of oligarchical opinions everywhere, appears condensed the suggestive political warning of these times, indeed of all times, and which a people regardful of civil and religious liberty can never be slow to heed.

Let the pride of race and the aristocratic tendencies which underlie the resistance of the South prevail, and we shall see a new America. The land of the fathers and of the present will become strange to us. In place of a thriving population, each member socially independent, self-respecting, contented, and industrious, contributing, therefore, to the general welfare, and preserving to posterity and to mankind a national future of inconceivable power and grandeur, we shall see a class of unemployed rich and unemployed poor, the former a handful, the latter a host, in perpetual feud. The asylum of nations, ungratefully rejecting the principles of equality, to which it has owed a career of prosperity unexampled in history, will find in arrested commerce, depressed credit, checked manufactures, an effeminate and selfish, however brilliant, governing class, and an impoverished and imbruted industrial population, the consequences of turning back upon its path of advance. The condition of the most unfortunate aristocracies of the Old World will become ours.

But the venerated principles partially promulgated in our golden age forbid such unhappy auspices. Undoubtedly gentlemen make revolutions in history; but since all may be Christians, may not all men be gentlemen? At least, have not all men, everywhere, the sacred and comprehensive right of equal freedom of endeavor to occupy their highest capacities? Does not the Creator, who makes nothing in vain, wherever He implants a power, imply a command to exercise that power according to the highest aspiration, and is not responsibility eternally exacted, wherever power and command coexist? By that fearful sanction, may not all men, everywhere, become the best they can become? What that may be, is not free, equal, and perpetual experiment, judged by conscience in the individual and by philanthropy in his brother, and not by arrogance or cupidity in his oppressor, to decide? To secure the wisdom and perpetuity of this experiment, are not governments instituted? Is not a monopoly of opportunity by any single class, by all historical and theoretical proof, not only unjust to the excluded, but crippling and suicidal to the State? Nay, is not the slightest infringement of regulated social and political justice, liberty, and humanity, in the person of black or of white, that makes the greatest potential development of the highest in human nature impossible or difficult, to be resisted, as a violation of the peace of the soul, endless treachery to mankind, an affront to Heaven? Would not the very soil of America, in which Liberty is said to inhere, cry out and rise against any but an affirmative answer to such questions?

A near future will decide.

* * * * *

THE HOUR AND THE MAN.

The Twenty-Second of September, 1862, bids fair to become as remarkable a date in American history as the Fourth of July, 1776; for on that day the President of the United States, availing himself of the full powers of his position, declared this country free from that slaveholding oligarchy which had so long governed it in peace, and the influence of which was so potently felt for more than a year after it had broken up the Union, and made war upon the Federal Government. Be the event what it may,-and the incidents of the war have taught us not to be too sanguine as to the results of any given movement,-President Lincoln has placed the American nation in a proper attitude with respect to that institution the existence of which had so long been the scandal and the disgrace of a people claiming to be the freest on earth, but whose powers had been systematically used and abused for the maintenance and the extension of slave-labor.

It was our misfortune, and in some sense it was also our fault, that we were bound to uphold the worst system of slavery that ever was known among men; for we must judge of every wrong that is perpetrated by the circumstances that are connected with it, and our oppression of the African race was peculiarly offensive, inasmuch as it was a proceeding in flagrant violation of our constantly avowed principles, was continued in face of the opinions of the founders of the nation, was frankly upheld on the unmanly ground that the intellectual weakness of the slaves rendered it safe to oppress them, and was not excused by that general ignorance of right which has so often been brought forward in palliation of wrong,-as slavery had come under the ban of Christendom years before Americans could be found boldly bad enough to claim for it a divine origin, and to avow that it was a proper, and even the best, foundation for civil society. Our offence was of the rankest, and its peculiar character rendered us odious in the eyes of the nations, who would not admit the force of our plea as to the great difficulties that lay in the way of the removal of the evil, as they had seen it condemned by most communities, and abolished by some of their number.

The very circumstance upon which Americans have relied for the justification of their form of slavery, namely, that it was confined to one race, and that race widely separated from all other races by the existence of peculiar characteristics, has been regarded as an aggravation of their misconduct by all humane and disinterested persons. The Greek system of slavery, which was based on the idea that Greeks were noblemen of Heaven's own creating, and that they therefore were justified in treating all other men as inferiors, and making the same use of them as they made of horses; the Roman system, which was based on the will of society, and therefore made no exceptions on the score of color, but saw in all strangers only creatures of chase; the Mussulman system, brought out so strongly by the action of the States of Barbary, and which was colored by the character of the long quarrel between Mahometans and Christians, and under which Northern Africa was filled with myriads of slaves from Southern Europe, among whom were men of the highest intellect,-Cervantes, for example;-all these systems of servitude, and others that might be adduced, were respectable in comparison with our system, which proceeded upon the blasphemous assumption that God had created and set apart one race that should forever dwell in the house of bondage. If, in some respects, our system has been more humane than that of other peoples in other times, the fact is owing to that general improvement which has taken place the earth over during the present century. The world has gone forward, and even American slaveholders have been compelled to go with it, whether they would or not.

It was a distinctive feature of slavery, as here known, that it tended to debauch the mind of Christendom. So long as all men were liable to be enslaved, and even Shakspeare and Milton were in some danger of sharing the fate of Cervantes,-and the Barbary corsairs did actually carry off men from the British Islands in the times of Milton and Shakspeare,-there could not fail to grow up a general hostility to slavery, and the institution was booked for destruction. But when slavery came to be considered as the appropriate condition of one race, and the members of that race so highly qualified to engage in the production of cotton and sugar, tobacco and rice, the danger was, not only that slavery would once more come into favor, but that the African slave-trade would be replaced in the list of legitimate commercial pursuits, and become more extensive than it was in those days when it was defended by bishops and kings' sons in the British House of Lords. That this is not an unfounded opinion will be admitted by those who recollect that the London "Times," that representative of the average English mind, but recently published articles that could mean nothing less than a desire to revive the old system of slavery, with all that should be necessary to maintain it in force; that Mr. Carlyle is an advocate of the oppression of negroes; and that the French Government at one time seemed disposed to have resort to a course that must, if adopted, have converted Africa into a storehouse of slaves.

Our slaveholders were not blind to this altered state of the European mind, of which they availed themselves, and of which, in a certain sense, they had the best of all rights to avail themselves, for it was largely their own work. At the same time that England abolished slavery in her dominions, the chief Nullifiers, who were the fathers of the Secession Rebellion, assumed the position that negro slavery was good in itself, and that it was the duty of white men to uphold and to extend it. This was done by Governor McDuffie, of South Carolina, in 1834, and it was warmly approved by many Southern men, as well out of South Carolina as in that most fanatical of States, but generally condemned by the Democrats of that time, though now it is not uncommon to find men in the North who accept all that the old Nullifier put forward as a new truth eight-and-twenty years ago. Earnestly and zealously, and with no small amount of talent, the friends of slavery labored to impose their views upon the entire Southern mind,-and that not so much because they loved slavery for itself as because they knew, that, if the slaveholding interest could be placed in opposition to the Federal Union, that Union might be destroyed. They were fanatics in their attachment to slavery, but even their fanaticism was secondary to their hatred of that power which, as represented by Andrew Jackson, had trampled down Nullification, and compelled Carolina and Calhoun to retreat from cannon and the gallows. Mr. Rhett, then Mr. Barnwell Smith, said, in the debates in the Convention on the proposition to accept the Tariff Compromise of 1833, that he hated the star-spangled banner; and unquestionably he expressed the feelings of many of his contemporaries, who deemed submission prudent, but who were consoled by the reflection that slavery would afford them a far better means for breaking up the Union than it was possible to get through the existence of any tariff, no matter how protective it might be. All the great leaders of the first Secession school had passed away from the earth, when Rhett "still lived" to see the flag he hated pulled down before the fire that was poured upon Fort Sumter from Carolina's batteries worked by the hands of Carolinians. Calhoun, Hamilton, McDuffie, Hayne, Trumbull, Cooper, Harper, Preston, and others, men of the first intellectual rank in America, had departed; but Rhett survived to see what they had labored to effect, and what they would have effected, had they not encountered one of those iron spirits to whom is sometimes intrusted the government of nations, and who are of more value to nations than gold and fleets and armies. All that we have lately seen done, and more, would have been done thirty years since, had any other man than Andrew Jackson been at that time President of the United States. There was much cant in those days about "the one-man power," because President Jackson saw fit to make use of the Constitutional qualified veto-power to express his opposition to certain measures adopted by Congress; but the best exhibition of "the one-man power" that the country ever saw, then or before or since, was when the same magistrate crushed Nullification, maintained the Union, and secured the nation's peace for more than a quarter of a century. We never knew what a great man Jackson was, until the country was cursed by Buchanan's occupation of the same chair that Jackson had filled,-a chair that he was unworthy to dust,-and by his cowardice and treachery which made civil war inevitable. One man, at the close of 1860, could have done more than has yet been accomplished by the million of men who have been called to arms because no such man was then in the nation's service. The "one hour of Dundee" was not more wanting to the Stuarts than the one month of Jackson was wanting to us but two years ago.

The powerful teaching of the Nullifiers was successful. The South, which assumed to be the exclusive seat of American nationality, while the North was declared given up to sectionalism, with no other lights on its path than "blue lights," became the South so devoted to slavery that it could see nothing else in the country. Old Union men of 1832 became Secessionists, though Nullification, the milder thing of the two, had been too much for them to endure. They not only endured the more hideous evil, but they embraced it. Between 1832 and 1860 a change had been wrought such as twice that time could not have accomplished at any earlier period of human history. The old Southern ideas respecting slavery had disappeared, and that institution had become an object of idolatry, so that any criticisms to which it was subjected kindled the same sort of flame that is excited in a pious community when objects of devotion are assailed and destroyed by the hands of unbelievers. The astonishing material prosperity that accompanied the system of slave-labor had, no doubt, much to do with the regard that was bestowed upon the system itself. That was the time when Cotton became King,-at least, in the opinion of its worshippers. The Democratic party of the North passed from that position of radicalism to which the name of Locofocoism was given, to the position of supporters of the extremest Southern doctrines, so that for some years it appeared to exist for no other purpose than to do garrison-duty in the Free States, the cost of its maintenance being supplied by the Federal revenues. Abroad the same change began to be noted, the demand for cotton prevailing over the power of conscience. Everything worked as well for evil as it could work, and as if Satan himself had condescended to accept the post of stage-manager for the disturbers of America's peace.

To take advantage of the change that had been brought about was the purpose of the whole political population of the South. But though that section was united in its determination to support the supremacy of slavery, it was far from being united in its opinions as to the best mode of accomplishing its object. There were three parties in the South in the last days of the old Union. The first, and the largest, of these parties answered very nearly to the Southern portion of the Democratic party, and contained whatever of sense and force belonged to the South. It was made up of men who were firmly resolved upon one thing, namely, that they would ruin the Union, if they should forever lose the power to rule it; but they had the sagacity to see that the ends which they had in view could be more easily achieved in the Union than out of it. They were not disunionists per se, but were quite ready to become disunionists, if the Union was to be governed otherwise than in the direct and immediate interest of slavery. Slavery was the basis of their political system, and they knew that it could be better served by the American Union's continued existence than by the construction of a Southern Confederacy, provided the former should do all that slaveholders might require it to do.

The second Southern party, and the smallest of them all, was composed of the minions of the Nullifiers, and of their immediate followers, men whose especial object it was to destroy the Union, and who hated the subservient portion of the Northern people far more bitterly than they hated Republicans, or even Abolitionists. They would have preferred abolition and disunion to the triumph of slavery and the preservation of the Union. It was not that they loved slavery less, but that they hated the Union more. Even if the country should submit to the South, the leaders of this faction knew that they would not be the Southrons to whom should be intrusted the powers and the business of government. Few of them were of much account even in their own States, and generally they could have been set down as chiefs of the opposition to everything that was reasonable. A remarkable proof of the little hold which this class of men had on even the most mad of the Southern States, when at the height of their fury, was afforded by the refusal of South Carolina to elect Mr. Rhett Governor, her Legislature conferring that post on Mr. Pickens, a moderate man when compared with Mr. Rhett, and who, there is reason for believing, would have prevented a resort to Secession altogether, could he have done so without sacrificing what he held to be his honor.

The third Southern party consisted of men who desired the continuance of the Union, but who wished that some "concessions" should be made, or "compromises" effected, in order to satisfy men, one portion of whom were resolved upon having everything, while the other portion were resolute in their purpose to destroy everything that then existed of a national character. This third party was mostly composed of those timid men whose votes count for much at ordinary periods, but who in extraordinary times are worse than worthless, being in fact incumbrances on bolder men. They loved the Union, because they loved peace, and were opposed to violence of all kinds; but their Unionism was much like Bailie Macwheeble's conscience, which was described as never doing him any harm. What they would have done, had Government been able to send a strong force to their assistance at the beginning of the war, we cannot undertake to say; but they have done little to aid the Federal cause in the field, while their influence in the Federal councils has been more prejudicial to the country than the open exertions of the Secessionists to effect the nation's destruction.

Of these parties, the first had every reason to believe that it could soon regain possession of Congress, and that in 1864 it would be able to elect its candidate to the Presidency. Hence it had no wish to dissolve the Union; and if its leaders could have had their way, the Union would have been spared. But the second party, making up for its deficiency in numbers by the intensity of its zeal, and laboring untiringly, was too much for the moderates. Hate is a stronger feeling than love of any kind, stronger even than love of spoils; and the men who followed Rhett and Yancey, Pryor and Spratt, hated the Union with a perfect hatred. They got ahead of the men who followed Davis and Stephens, and the rest of those Southern chiefs who would have been content with the complete triumph of Southern principles in the Republic as it stood in 1860. As they broke up the Democratic party in order to render the election of the Republican candidate certain, so that they might found on his election the cri de guerre of a "sectional triumph" over the South, so they "coerced" the Southern people into the adoption of a war-policy. We have more than once heard Mr. Lincoln blamed for "precipitating matters" in April, 1861. He should have temporized, it has been said, and so have preserved peace; but when he called for seventy-five thousand volunteers, he made war unavoidable. The truth is, that Mr. Lincoln did not begin the war. It was begun by the South. His call for volunteers was the consequence of war being made on the nation, and not the cause of war being made either on the South or by the South. The enemy fired upon and took Fort Sumter before the first call for volunteers was issued; and that proceeding must be admitted to have been an act of war, unless we are prepared to admit that there is a right of Secession. And Fort Sumter was fired upon and taken through the influence of the violent party at the South, who were resolved that there should be war. They knew that it was beyond the power of the Federal Government to send supplies to the doomed fort, and that in a few days it would pass into the hands of the Confederates; and this they determined to prevent, because they knew also that the mere surrender of the garrison, when it had eaten its last rations, would not suffice to "fire the Northern heart." They carried their point, and hence it was that war was begun the middle of April, 1861. But for the triumph of the violent Southern party, the contest might have been postponed, and even a peace patched up for the time, and the inevitable struggle put off to a future day. As it was, Government had no choice, and was compelled to fight; and it would have been compelled to fight, had it been composed entirely of Quakers.

War being unavoidable, and it being clear that slavery was the cause of it as well as its occasion, and that it would be the main support of our enemy, it ought to have followed that our first blow should be directed against that institution. Nothing of the kind happened. Whatever Government may have thought on the subject, it did nothing to injure slavery. But for this forbearance, which now appears so astonishing, we are not disposed to blame the President. He acted as the representative of the country, which was not then prepared to act vigorously against the root of the evil that afflicted it. A moral blindness prevailed, which proved most injurious to the Union cause, and from the effect of which it may never recover. It was supposed that it was yet possible to "conciliate" the South, and that that section could be induced to "come back" into the Union, provided nothing should be done to hurt its feelings or injure its interests! Looking back to the summer of 1861, it is with difficulty that we can believe that men were then in possession of their senses, so inconsistent was their conduct. The Rebels were at least as sensitive on the subject of their military character as they were on that of slavery; and yet, while we could not be sufficiently servile on the latter subject, we acted most offensively on the former. We asserted, in every form and variety of language, our ability to "put them down;" and but for the circumstance that not the slightest atom of ability marked the management of our military affairs, we should have made our boasting good. Men who could not say enough to satisfy themselves on the point of the right of the chivalrous Southrons to create, breed, work, and sell slaves, were equally loud-mouthed in their expressed purpose to "put down" the said Southrons because they had rebelled, and rebelled only because they were slaveholders, and for the purpose of placing slavery beyond the reach of wordy assault in the country of which it should be the governing power. There has been much complaint that foreigners have not understood the nature of our quarrel, and that the general European hostility to the American national cause is owing to their ignorance of American affairs. How that may be we shall not stop to inquire; but it is beyond dispute that no European community has ever displayed a more glaring ignorance of the character of the contest here waged than was exhibited by most Americans in the early months of that contest, and down to a recent period. The war was treated by nearly the whole people as if slavery had no possible connection with it, and as if all mention of slavery in matters pertaining to the war were necessarily an impertinence, a foreign subject lugged into a domestic discussion. Three-fourths of the people were disposed querulously to ask why Abolitionists couldn't let slavery alone in war-time. It was a bad thing, was Abolitionism, in time of peace; but its badness was vastly increased when we had war upon our hands. Half the other fourth of the citizens were disposed to agree with the majority, but very shame kept them silent. It was only the few who had a proper conception of the state of things, and they had little influence with the people, and, consequently, none with Government. Had they said much, or attempted to do anything, probably they would have found Federal arms directed against themselves with much more of force and effectiveness in their use than were manifested when they were directed against the Rebels. When a Union general could announce that he would make use of the Northern soldiers under his command to destroy slaves who should be so audacious as to rebel against Rebels, and the announcement was received with rapturous approval at the North, it was enough to convince every intelligent and reflecting man that no just idea of the struggle we were engaged in was common, and that a blind people were following blind leaders into the ditch,-even into that "last ditch" to which the Secessionists have so often been doomed, but in which they so obstinately continue to refuse to find their own and their cause's grave.

That Government was not much ahead of the people in 1861, and through most of the present year, respecting the position of slavery, is very evident to all who know what it did, and what it refused to do, with regard to that institution. With a hardiness that would have been strongly offensive, if it had not been singularly ridiculous, Mr. Seward told the astonished world of Europe that the fate of slavery did not depend upon the event of our contest,-which was as much as to say that we should not injure it, happen what might; and no one then supposed that the Confederates would willingly strike a blow at it, either to conciliate foreign nations or to obtain black soldiers. The words of the Secretary of State did us harm in England, with the religious portion of whose people it is something like an article of faith that slavery is an addition to the list of deadly sins. They injured us, too, with the members of the various schools of liberal politicians over all Europe; and they furnished to our enemies abroad the argument that there really was no difference between the North and the South on the slavery question, and that therefore the sympathies of all generous minds should be with the Southrons, who were the weaker party. Our cause was irreparably damaged in Europe through the indiscretion of the Honorable Secretary, who cannot be accused of any love for slavery, but who was then, as he appears to be up to the present hour, ignorant of the nature and the extent of the contest of which his country is the scene. Other members of the Administration had sounder ideas, but their weight in it was not equal to that of the Secretary of State.

It is but fair to the President to say, that his conduct was such that it was obvious that he did not favor slavery because he had any respect for it. He pulled so hard upon the chains that bound him, that his desire to throw them off was clear to the world; but they were too strong, and too well fastened, to be got rid of easily. He feared that all the Unionists of the Border States would be lost, if he should adopt the views of the Emancipationists; and the fear was natural, though in point of fact his course had no good effect in those States, beyond that of conciliating a portion of the Kentuckians. North Carolina, under the old system the most moderate of the Slave States, was as far gone in Secession as South Carolina, and furnished far more men to the Southern armies than her neighbor. The Virginians and Missourians who went with us would have pursued the same course, had the President's opinions on slavery been as radical and pronounced as those of Mr. Garrison. Maryland was kept from wheeling into the Secession line only by the presence on her soil, and in her vicinity, of strong Federal armies. In Tennessee, at a later period of the war, as in North Carolina, Federal power extended as far as Federal guns could throw Federal shot, though Tennessee had not been renowned for her extreme attachment to slavery. But the heavy weight on the Presidential mind came from the Free States, in which the Pro-Slavery party was so powerful, and the nature of the war was so little understood, that it was impossible for Government to strike an effective blow at the source of the enemy's strength. Before that could be done, it would be necessary that the Northern mind should be trained to justice in the school of adversity. The position of the President in 1861 was not unlike to that which the Prince of Orange held in 1687. Had William made his attempt on England in 1687, the end would have been failure as complete as that of Monmouth in 1685. It was necessary that the English mind should be educated up to the point of throwing aside some cherished doctrines, the maintenance of which stood in the way of England's safety, prosperity, and greatness. William allowed the fruit he sought to ripen, and in 1688 he was able to do with ease that which no human power could have done in 1687. So was it with Mr. Lincoln, and here. Had the Proclamation lately put forth been issued in 1861, either it would have fallen dead, or it would have met with such opposition in the North as would have rendered it impossible to prosecute the war with any hope of success. There would probably have been pronunciamientos from some of our armies, and the Union might have been shivered to pieces without the enemy's lifting their hands further against it. We do not say that such would have been the course of events, had the Proclamation then appeared, but it might have taken that turn; and the President had to allow for possibilities that perhaps it never occurred to private individuals to think of,-men who had no sense of responsibility either to the country, to the national cause, or to the tribunal of history. He would not move as he was advised to move by good men who had not taken into consideration all the circumstances of the case, and who could not feel as he was forced to feel because he was President of the United States. Probably, if he had been a private citizen, he would have been the foremost man of the Emancipation party; but the place he holds is so high that he must look over the whole land, and necessarily he sees much that others can never behold. He saw that one of two things would happen in a few months after the beginning of active warfare, toward the close of last winter: either the Rebels would be beaten in the field, in which event there would be reasonable hope of the Union's reconstruction, and the people could then take charge of slavery, and settle its future condition as to them should seem best,-or our armies would be beaten, and the people would be made to understand that slavery could no longer be allowed to exist for the support of an enemy who had announced from the beginning of their war-movement that their choice was fixed upon conquest, or, failing that, annihilation.

It was written that we should fail in the field. We sought to take Richmond, with an army of force that appeared to be adequate to the work. We were beaten; and after some months of severe warfare, the country had the supreme felicity of celebrating the eighty-sixth anniversary of its Independence by thanking Heaven that its principal army had escaped capture by falling back to the fever-laden banks of a river on which lay a naval force so strong as to prevent the further advance of the victorious Southrons. The exertions that were made to remove that army from a place that threatened its total destruction through pestilence led to another series of actions, in which we were again beaten, and the Secession armies found themselves hard by the very station which they had so long held after their victory at Bull Run. Had their numbers been half as large as we estimated them by way of accounting for our defeats, they could have marched into Washington, and the American Union would have been at an end, while the Southern Confederacy would have taken the place which the United States had possessed among the nations. Fortunately, the enemy were not strong enough to hazard everything upon one daring stroke. General Lee was as prudent, or as timid, after his victories over General Pope, as, according to some authorities, Hannibal was after winning "the field of blood" at Cannae. What he did, however, was sufficient to show how serious was the danger that threatened us. If he could not take Washington, which stood for Rome, he might take Baltimore, which should be Capua. He entered Maryland, and his movements struck dismay into Pennsylvania. Harrisburg was marked for seizure, and the archives of the second State of the Union were sent to New York; and Philadelphia was considered so unsafe as to cause men to remove articles of value thence to her ancient rival's protection. That the enemy meant to invade the North cannot well be doubted; but the resistance they encountered, leading to their defeat at South Mountain and Antietam, forced them to retreat. Had they won at Antietam, not only would Washington have been cut off from land-communication with the North, but Pennsylvania would have been invaded, and the Southrons would have fattened on the produce of her rich fields. While these things were taking place in Virginia and Maryland, Fortune had proved equally unfavorable to us in the South and the Southwest. We had been defeated near Charleston, and most of our troops at Port Royal had been transferred to Virginia. Charleston and Mobile saw ships constantly entering their harbors, bringing supplies to the Secession forces. Wilmington and Savannah were less liable to attack than some Northern towns. An attack on Vicksburg had ended in Federal failure. By the aid of gunboats we had prevented the enemy from taking Baton Rouge, and destroyed their iron-clad Arkansas; but our soldiers had to abandon that town, and leave it to be watched by ships, while they hastened to the defence of New Orleans, a city which they could not have held half an hour, had the protecting naval force been withdrawn. The Southwest was mostly abandoned by our troops, and the tide of war had rolled back to the banks of the Ohio. Nashville was looked upon as lost, Louisville was in great danger of being taken, and for some days there was a perfect panic throughout the country respecting the fate of Cincinnati, the prevailing opinion being that the enemy had as good a chance of getting possession of that town as we had of maintaining possession of it. There was hardly a quarter to which a Unionist could look without encountering something that filled his mind with vexation, disappointment, shame, and gloom. All that the most hopeful of loyal men could say was, that the enemy had been made to evacuate Maryland, and that they had not proceeded beyond threats against any Northern State: and that was a fine theme for congratulations, after seventeen months of warfare, in which the Rebels were to have been beaten and the Union restored!

Such was the state of affairs, when, six days after the Battle of Antietam, President Lincoln issued his Proclamation against slavery. Some persons were pleased to be much astonished when it appeared. They said they had been deceived. They were right. They were self-deceived. They had deceived themselves. The President had received their pledge of support, which they, with an egotism which is not uncommon with politicians, had construed into a pledge from him to support slavery at all hazards, under all circumstances, and against all comers. He had given no pledge either to them or to their opponents. Plainly as man could speak, he had said that his object was the nation's safety, either with slavery or without it, the fate of slavery being with him a secondary matter. If any construction was to be put upon his words to Mr. Greeley beyond their plainest possible meaning, it was that he preferred the destruction of slavery to its conservation, for it was known that he had been an anti-slavery man for years, and he had been made President by a party which was charged by its foes with being so fanatically opposed to slavery that it was ready to destroy the Constitution in order to gain a place from which it could hope to effect its extermination. But Mr. Lincoln meant neither more nor less than what he said, his sole object being the overthrow of the Rebels. He has done no more than any President would have been compelled to do who should have sought to do his duty. Mr. Douglas could have done no less, had he been chosen President, and had rebellion followed his election, as we believe would have been the fact. The Proclamation is not an "Abolition" state-paper. Not one line of it is of such matter as any Abolitionist would have penned, though all Abolitionists may be glad that it has appeared, because its promulgation is a step in the right direction,-a step sure to be taken, unless the first Federal efforts should also have been the last, because leading to the defeat of the Rebels, and the return of peace. The President nowhere says that he seeks the abolition of slavery. The blow he has dealt is directed against slavery in the dominions of the Confederacy. That Confederacy claims to be a nation, and some of our acts amount to a virtual recognition of the claim which it makes. Now, if we were at war with an old nation of which slavery was one of the institutions, it could not be said that we had not the right to offer freedom to its slaves. Objection might be made to the proclamation of an offer of the kind, but it would be based on expediency. England would not accept a plan that was formed half a century ago for the partition of the United States, and which had for its leading idea the proclamation of freedom to American slaves; but her refusal was owing to the circumstance that she was herself a great slaveholding power, and she had no thought of establishing a precedent that might soon have been used with fatal effect against herself. She did not close her ears to the proposition because she had any doubt as to her right to avail herself of an offer of freedom to slaves, or because she supposed that to make such an offer would be to act immorally, but because it was inexpedient for her to proceed to extremities with us, due regard being had to her own interests. Had slavery been abolished in her dominions twenty years earlier, she would have acted against American slavery in 1812-15, and probably with entire success. President Lincoln does not purpose going so far as England could have gone with perfect propriety. She could have proclaimed freedom to American slaves without limitation. He has regard to the character of the war that exists, and so his Proclamation is not threat, but a warning. In substance, he tells the Rebels, that, if they shall persist in their rebellion after a certain date, their slaves shall be made free, if it shall be in his power to liberate them. He gives them exactly one hundred days in which to make their election between submission and slavery and resistance and ruin; and these hundred days may become as noted in history as those Hundred Days which formed the second reign of Napoleon I., as well through the consequences of the action that shall mark their course as through the gravity of that action itself.

Objections have been made to the time of issuing the Proclamation. Why, it has been asked, spring it so suddenly upon the country? Why publish it just as the tide of war was turning in our favor? Why not wait, and see what the effect would be on the Southern mind of the victories won in Maryland?-We have no knowledge of the immediate reasons that moved the President to select the twenty-second of September for the date of his Proclamation; but we can see three reasons why that day was a good one for the deed which thereon was done. The President may have argued, (1,) that the American mind had been brought up to the point of emancipation under certain well-defined conditions, and that, if he should not avail himself of the state of opinion, the opportunity afforded him might pass away, never to return with equal force; (2,) that foreign nations might base acknowledgment of the Confederacy on the defeats experienced by our armies in the last days of August, on the danger of Washington, and on the advance of Rebel armies to the Ohio, and he was determined that they should, if admitting the Confederacy to national rank, place themselves in the position of supporters of slavery; and, (3,) that the successes won by our army in Maryland, considering the disgraceful business at Harper's Ferry, were not of that pronounced character which entitles us to assert any supremacy over the enemy as soldiers. Something like this would seem to be the process through which President Lincoln arrived at the sound conclusion that the hour had come to strike a heavy blow at the enemy, and that he was the man for the hour.

Thus much for the Proclamation itself, the appearance of which indicates the beginning of a new period in the Secession contest, and shows that the American people are capable of conquering their prejudices, provided their schooling shall be sufficiently severe and costly. But the Proclamation itself, and without any change in our military policy, cannot be expected to accomplish anything for the Federal cause. Its doctrines must be enforced, if there is to be any practical effect from the change of position taken by the country and the President. If the same want of capacity that has hitherto characterized the war on our part is to be exhibited hereafter, the Proclamation might as well have been levelled against the evils of intemperance as against the evils of slavery. Never, since war began, has there been such imbecility displayed in waging it as we have contrived to display in our attacks on the enemies of the Union. It used to be supposed that Austria was the slowest and the most stupid of military countries; but America has got ahead of Austria in the art of doing nothing-or worse than nothing-with myriads of men and millions of money. We stand before the world a people to whom military success seems seldom possible, and, when possible, rarely useful. If we win a victory, we spend weeks in contemplating its beauties, and never think of improving it. Had one of our generals won the Battle of Jena, he would have rested for six weeks, and permitted the Prussian army to reorganize, instead of following it with that swiftness which alone can prevent brave men from speedily rallying after a lost battle. Had one of them won Waterloo, he would not have dreamed of entering France, but would have liberally given to Napoleon all the time that should have been necessary for his recovery from so terrible a defeat. They have nothing in them of the qualities even of old Blücher, who never was counted a first-class commander. Forbearance has never ceased to be a virtue with them. Whether their slackness is of native growth, or is the consequence of instructions from Government, it is plain that adherence to it can never lead to the conquest of the Southrons. There is now a particular reason why it should give way to something of a very different character. The Proclamation has changed the conditions of the contest, and to be defeated now, driven out of the field for good and all, would be a far more mortifying termination of the war than it could have been, if we had already failed utterly. We have committed the unpardonable sin against slavery, and to fail now would be to place ourselves in the same position that is held by the commander of a ship of war who nails his colors to the mast, and yet has to get them down in order to prevent his conqueror from annihilating him. The action of the Confederate Congress with reference to the Proclamation, so far as we have accounts of it, shows that the President's action has intensified the character of the conflict, and that the enemy are preparing to fight under the banner of the pirate, declaring that they will show no quarter, because they look upon the Proclamation as declaring that there shall be no quarter extended to them. The President of the United States, they say, has avowed it to be his purpose to inaugurate a servile war in their country, and they call fiercely for retaliation. They mean, by using the words "servile war," to convey the impression that there is to be a general slaying and ravishing throughout the South, on and after the first of next January, under the special patronage of the American President, who has ordered his soldiers and his sailors, his ships and his corps, to be employed in protecting black ravishers of white women and black murderers of white children. All they say is mere cant, and is intended for the European market, which they now supply as liberally with lies as once they did with cotton. Our foolish foes in England accept every falsehood that is sent them from Richmond, and hence the torrent of misrepresentation that flows from that city to London. Let it continue to flow. It can do us no harm, if our action shall be in correspondence with our cause and our means. If we succeed, falsehood cannot injure us; if we fail, we shall have something of more importance than libels to think of. We should bear in mind that our armies are not to succeed because the slaves shall rise, but that the slaves are to be freed as a consequence of the success of our armies. That our armies may succeed, there must be more energy displayed both by their commanders and by Government. The Proclamation must be enforced, or it will come to nought. There is nothing self-enforcing about it. Its mere publication will no more put an end to the Rebellion than President Lincoln's first proclamation, calling upon the Rebels to cease their evil-doings and disperse, could put an end to it. Its future value, like that of all papers that deal with the leading interests of mankind, must depend altogether upon the future action of the men from whom it emanates, and that of their constituents. It stands to-day where the Declaration of Independence stood for the five years that followed its promulgation, waiting for its place in human annals to be prepared for it by its supporters. Of what worth would the Declaration of Independence be now, had it not been for Trenton and Princeton, Saratoga and Yorktown? Of no worth at all; and its authors would be looked upon as a band of sentimental political babblers, who could enunciate truths which neither they nor their countrymen had the capacity to uphold and practically to demonstrate. But the Declaration of Independence is one of the most immortal of papers because it proved a grand success; and it was successful because the men who put it forth were fully competent to the grand work with the performance of which they were charged. It is for Mr. Lincoln himself to say whether the Proclamation of September 22, 1861, shall take rank with the Declaration of July 4, 1776, or with those evidences of flagrant failure that have become so common since 1789,-with the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, and Mexican Constitutions. That it is the people's duty to support the President is said by almost all men; but is it not equally the duty of the President to support the people? And have they not supported him,-supported him with men, with money, with the surrender of the enjoyment of some of their dearest rights, with their full confidence, with good wishes and better deeds, and with all the rest of the numerous moral and material means of waging war vigorously and triumphantly? And if they have done and are doing all this, who will be to blame, if the enemy shall accomplish their purpose?

The President and his immediate associates are placed so high by their talents and their positions that they must be supposed open to the love of fame, and to desire honorable mention in their country's annals, especially as they have to do with matters of such transcendent importance, greater even than those that absorbed the attention of Washington and Hamilton, of Jefferson and Madison, of Jackson and Livingston. It is for themselves to decide what shall be said of them hereafter, and through all future time,-whether they shall be blessed or banned, cursed or canonized. The judgment that shall be passed upon them and their work will be given according to the result, and from it there can be no appeal. The Portuguese have a well-known proverb, that "the way to hell is paved with good intentions;" but it is not the laborers on that broad and crowded highway who gain honorable immortality. The decisions of posterity are not made with reference to men's motives and intentions, but upon their deeds. With posterity, success is the proper proof of merit, when nothing necessary to its winning is denied to the players in the world's great games. Richmond is worshipped, and Richard detested, not because the former was good and great, and the latter wicked and weak, for Richard was the better and the abler man, but for the reason that the decision was in Richmond's favor on Bosworth Field. The only difference between Catiline and Caesar, according to an eminent statesman and scholar, is this: Catiline was crushed by his foes, and Caesar's foes were crushed by him. This may seem harsh, but we fear that it is only too true,-that it is in accordance with that irreversible law of the world which makes success the test of worth in the management of human affairs. If Mr. Lincoln and his confidential officers would have the highest American places in after-days as well as to-day, let them win those places by winning the nation's battle. They can have them on no other terms. That is one of the conditions of the part they accepted when they took upon themselves their present posts at the beginning of a period of civil convulsion. If they fail, they will be doomed to profound contempt. In the words of the foremost man of all this modern world, uttered at the very crisis of his own fortunes,-Napoleon I., in the summer of 1813,-"To be judged by the event is the inexorable law of history."

HOW TO CHOOSE A RIFLE.

To the Editors of the ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

Some thirty years ago, a gentleman who had just returned from Europe was trying to convey an idea of the size and magnificence of St. Peter's Church to a New-England country-clergyman, and was somewhat taken aback by the remark of the good man, that "the Pope must require a very powerful voice to fill such a building."

The anecdote has been brought to my mind by the unexpected position in which I am placed, as the recipient of such a multitude of letters, and from such widely separated portions of the country, elicited by my article on Rifle-Clubs in the "Atlantic" for September, that I find myself called upon to address an audience extending from Maine to Minnesota. Fortunately for me, however, the columns of the "Atlantic" afford facilities of communication not enjoyed by the Pope, and through that medium I crave permission to reply to inquiries which afford most gratifying proof of the wide-spread interest which is awakened in the subject.

Almost every letter contains the inquiry, "What is the new breech-loading rifle you allude to, and where is it to be had?"-but a large proportion of them also ask advice as to the selection of a rifle; and with such evidence of general interest in the inquiry, I have thought I could not do better than to frame my reply specially to this point.

The rifle above alluded to is not yet in the market, and probably will not be for some time to come. Only three or four samples have been manufactured, and after being subjected to every possible test short of actual service in the hands of troops, it has proved so entirely satisfactory that preparations are now making for its extensive production. Thus far it is known as the Ashcroft rifle, from the name of the proprietor, Mr. E.H. Ashcroft of Boston, the persevering energy of whose efforts to secure its introduction will probably never be appreciated as it deserves, except perhaps by those who have gone through the trial of bringing out an idea involving in its conception a great public benefit.

Lieutenant Busk, in hid "Hand-Book for Hythe," says, "I cannot imagine a much more helpless or hopeless position than that of an individual who, having determined to expend his ten or twenty guineas in the purchase of a rifle, and, guided only by the light of Nature, applies to a respectable gun-maker to supply his want. I never hear of an inexperienced buyer in search of a rifle without being reminded of the purchaser of a telescope, who, on asking the optician, among a multitude of other questions, whether he would be able to discern an object through it four miles off, received for reply, 'See an object four miles off, Sir? You can see an object four-and-twenty thousand miles off, Sir,-you can see the moon, Sir!' In like manner, if you na?vely inquire of a gun-maker whether a particular rifle will carry two hundred yards, the chances are he will exclaim, emphatically, 'Two hundred yards, Sir? It will carry fifteen hundred.' And so no doubt it may. The only question, is, How?"

The questions which have been addressed to me for a few weeks past have given me a keen appreciation of the difficulties alluded to, in which multitudes are at this moment plunged, to whom I shall be but too happy if it is in my power to extend a helping hand.

At the outset, however, it is but fair to declare my conviction that no man who has any just appreciation of the subject would attempt to choose a gun for another, any more than he would a horse, or, I had almost said, a wife; but he may lay down certain general rules which each individual must apply for himself, exercising his own taste in the details. Thus, I have elsewhere declared my own predilection for Colt's rifle; and I hold to it notwithstanding a strong prejudice against it which very generally exists. I do not mean to assert that it is a better shooter than many others, and still less would I urge any one else to procure one because I like it, but I simply say that its performance is equal to my requirements, and that the whole construction and getting-up of the gun suit my fancy; and the fact that another man dislikes it is no reason why I should discard it.

I have known men who were continually changing their guns, and seemed satisfied only with novelties. With such a taste I have no sympathy, but, on the contrary, my feeling of attachment to a trusty weapon strengthens with my familiarity with its merits, till it becomes so near akin to affection that I should find it hard to part with one which had served me well, and was associated in my mind with adventures whose interest was derived from its successful performance.

The first piece of advice I would offer to a novice in search of a gun is, "Don't be in a hurry."

The demand is such that a buyer is constantly urged to close a bargain by the assurance that it may be his last chance to secure such a weapon as the one he is examining,-and great numbers of mere toys have thus been forced upon purchasers, who, if they ever practise enough to acquire a taste for shooting, will send them to the auction-room, and make another effort to procure a gun suited to their wants. Several new patterns of guns have been produced within the last year, some of which are very attractive in their appearance, and to an inexperienced person seem to possess sufficient power for any service they may ever be called upon to perform. They are well finished, compact, light, and pretty. A Government Inspector, indeed, would be apt to make discoveries of "malleable iron," which would cause their instant rejection, but which in reality constitutes no ground of objection to guns whose parts are not required to be interchangeable. They might be described as "well adapted for ladies' use, or for boys learning to shoot;" but it gave me a sickening sense of the inexperience of many a noble-hearted youth who may have entered the service from the purest motives of patriotism, when a dealer, who was exhibiting one of these parlor-weapons, with a calibre no larger than a good-sized pea, informed me that he had sold a great many to young officers, being so light that they could be carried slung upon the back almost as easily as a pistol. It is with no such kid-glove tools as these that so many of our officers have been picked off by Southern sharp-shooters. At a long range they are useless; at close quarters, which is the only situation in which an officer actually needs fire-arms, a revolver is far preferable. I know of no rifle so well adapted to an officer's use as Colt's carbine,-of eighteen or twenty-one inch barrel, and not less than 44/100 of an inch calibre. It may be depended upon for six hundred yards, the short barrel renders its manipulation easy in a close fight, and the value of the repeating principle at such a time can be estimated only by that of life.

In a perfectly calm atmosphere, the light guns I have alluded to will shoot very well for one or two hundred yards; but no one can conceive, till he proves it by actual trial, what an amazing difference in precision is the result of even a very slight increase of weight of ball, when the air is in motion. Even in a dead calm no satisfactory shooting can be done beyond two hundred yards with a lighter ball than half an ounce, and any one who becomes interested in rifle-practice will soon grow impatient of being confined to short ranges and calm weather. This brings us, then, to the question of calibre, which I conceive to be the first one to be decided in selecting a gun, and the decision rests upon the uses to which the gun is to be applied. If it is wanted merely for military service, nothing better than the Enfield can be procured; but if the purchaser proposes to study the niceties of practice, and to enter into it with a keen zest, he will need a very different style of gun. A calibre large enough for a round ball of fifty to the pound, or an elongated shot of about half an ounce, is sufficient for six hundred yards; and a gun of that calibre, with a thirty-inch barrel, and a weight of about ten pounds, is better suited to the general wants of purchasers than any other size. In this part of the country it is by no means easy to find a place where shooting can be safely practised even at so long a range as five hundred yards,-which is sixty yards more than a quarter of a mile. It is always necessary to have an attendant at the target to point out the shots, and even then the shooter needs a telescope to distinguish them. For ordinary purposes, therefore, the calibre I have indicated is all-sufficient; but if a gun is wanted for shooting up to one thousand yards, the shot should be a full ounce weight. These are points which each man must determine for himself, and, having done so, let him go to any gun-maker of established reputation, and, before giving his order, let him study and compare the different forms of stocks, till he finds what is required for his peculiar physical conformation,-and giving directions accordingly, he will probably secure a weapon whose merits he will not fully appreciate till he has attained a degree of skill which is the result only of long-continued practice.

But never buy a gun, and least of all a rifle, without trying it; and do not be satisfied with a trial in a shop or shooting gallery, but take it into the field; and if you distrust yourself, get some one in whom you have confidence to try it for you. Choose a perfectly calm day. Have a rest prepared on which not only the gun may be laid, but a support may also be had for the elbows, the shooter being seated. By this means, and with the aid of globe- and peek-sights, (which should always be used in trying a gun,) it may as certainly be held in the same position at every shot as if it were clamped in a machine. For your target take a sheet of cartridge-paper and draw on it a circle of a foot, and, inside of that, another of four inches in diameter. Paint the space between the rings black, and you will then have a black ring four inches wide surrounding a white four-inch bull's-eye, against which your globe-sight will be much more distinctly seen than if it were black. Place the target so that when shooting you may have the sun on your back. On a very bright day, brown paper is better for a target than white. Begin shooting at one hundred yards and fire ten shots, with an exact aim at the bull's-eye, wiping out the gun after each shot. Do not look to see where you hit, till you have fired your string of ten shots; for, if you do, you will be tempted to alter your aim and make allowance for the variation, whereas your object now is not to hit the bull's-eye, but to prove the shooting of the gun; and if you find, when you get through, that all the shots are close together, you may be sure the gun shoots well, though they may be at considerable distance from the bull's-eye. That would only prove that the line of sight was not coincident with the line of fire, which can be easily rectified by moving the forward sight to the right or left, according as the variation was on the one side or the other. Having fired your string of ten shots, take a pair of dividers, and, with a radius equal to half the distance between the two hits most distant from each other, describe a circle cutting through the centre of each of those hits. From the centre of this circle measure the distance to each of the hits, add these distances together and divide the sum by ten, and you have the average variation, which ought not to be over two inches at the utmost, and if the gun is what it ought to be, and fired by a good marksman, would probably be much less. This is a sufficient test of the precision for that distance, and the same method may be adopted for longer ranges. But if the gun shoots well at one hundred yards, its capacity for a longer range may be proved by its penetrating power. Provide a number of pieces of seasoned white-pine board, one inch thick and say two feet long by sixteen inches wide. These are to be secured parallel to each other and one inch apart by strips nailed firmly to their sides, and must be so placed that when shot at the balls may strike fairly at a right angle to their face. Try a number of shots at the distance of one hundred yards, and note carefully how many boards are penetrated at each shot. The elongated shots are sometimes turned in passing through a board so as to strike the next one sideways, which of course increases the resistance very greatly, and such shots should not be counted; but if you find generally that the penetration of those which strike fairly is not over six inches, you may rest assured the gun cannot be relied on, except in a dead calm, for more than two hundred yards, and with anything of a breeze you will make no good shooting even at that distance. Nine inches of penetration is equal to six hundred yards, and twelve inches is good for a thousand.

A striking proof of the prevailing ignorance of scientific principles in rifle-shooting is afforded by the fact that it is still a very common practice to vary the charge of powder according to the distance to be shot. The fact is, that beyond a certain point any increase of the initial velocity of the ball is unfavorable both to range and precision, owing to the ascertained law that the ratio of increase of atmospheric resistance is four times that of the velocity, so that, after the point is reached at which they balance each other, any additional propulsive power is injurious. The proper charge of powder for any rifle is about one-seventh the weight of the ball, and the only means which should ever be adopted for increasing the range is the elevating sight.

In conclusion, I would impress upon the young rifleman the importance of always keeping his weapon in perfect order. If you have never looked through the barrel of a rifle, you can have no conception what a beautifully finished instrument it is; and when you learn that the accuracy of its shooting may be affected by a variation of the thousandth part of an inch on its interior surface, you may appreciate the necessity of guarding against the intrusion of even a speck of rust. Never suffer your rifle to be laid aside after use till it has been thoroughly cleaned,-the barrel wiped first with a wet rag, (cotton-flannel is best,) then rubbed dry, then well oiled, and then again wiped with a dry rag. In England this work may be left to a servant, but with us the servants are so rare to whom such work can be intrusted that the only safe course is to see to it yourself; and if you have a true sportsman's love for a gun, you will not find the duty a disagreeable one.

* * * * *

THE PRESIDENT'S PROCLAMATION.

In so many arid forms which States incrust themselves with, once in a century, if so often, a poetic act and record occur. These are the jets of thought into affairs, when, roused by danger or inspired by genius, the political leaders of the day break the else insurmountable routine of class and local legislation, and take a step forward in the direction of catholic and universal interests. Every step in the history of political liberty is a sally of the human mind into the untried future, and has the interest of genius, and is fruitful in heroic anecdotes. Liberty is a slow fruit. It comes, like religion, for short periods, and in rare conditions, as if awaiting a culture of the race which shall make it organic and permanent. Such moments of expansion in modern history were the Confession of Augsburg, the plantation of America, the English Commonwealth of 1648, the Declaration of American Independence in 1776, the British emancipation of slaves in the West Indies, the passage of the Reform Bill, the repeal of the Corn-Laws, the Magnetic Ocean-Telegraph, though yet imperfect, the passage of the Homestead Bill in the last Congress, and now, eminently, President Lincoln's Proclamation on the twenty-second of September. These are acts of great scope, working on a long future, and on permanent interests, and honoring alike those who initiate and those who receive them. These measures provoke no noisy joy, but are received into a sympathy so deep as to apprise us that mankind are greater and better than we know. At such times it appears as if a new public were created to greet the new event. It is as when an orator, having ended the compliments and pleasantries with which he conciliated attention, and having run over the superficial fitness and commodities of the measure he urges, suddenly, lending himself to some happy inspiration, announces with vibrating voice the grand human principles involved,-the bravoes and wits who greeted him loudly thus far are surprised and overawed: a new audience is found in the heart of the assembly,-an audience hitherto passive and unconcerned, now at last so searched and kindled that they come forward, every one a representative of mankind, standing for all nationalities.

The extreme moderation with which the President advanced to his design,-his long-avowed expectant policy, as if he chose to be strictly the executive of the best public sentiment of the country, waiting only till it should be unmistakably pronounced,-so fair a mind that none ever listened so patiently to such extreme varieties of opinion,-so reticent that his decision has taken all parties by surprise, whilst yet it is the just sequel of his prior acts,-the firm tone in which he announces it, without inflation or surplusage,-all these have bespoken such favor to the act, that, great as the popularity of the President has been, we are beginning to think that we have underestimated the capacity and virtue which the Divine Providence has made an instrument of benefit so vast. He has been permitted to do more for America than any other American man. He is well entitled to the most indulgent construction. Forget all that we thought shortcomings, every mistake, every delay. In the extreme embarrassments of his part, call these endurance, wisdom, magnanimity, illuminated, as they now are, by this dazzling success.

When we consider the immense opposition that has been neutralized or converted by the progress of the war, (for it is not long since the President anticipated the resignation of a large number of officers in the army, and the secession of three States, on the promulgation of this policy,)-when we see how the great stake which foreign nations hold in our affairs has recently brought every European power as a client into this court, and it became every day more apparent what gigantic and what remote interests were to be affected by the decision of the President,-one can hardly say the deliberation was too long. Against all timorous counsels he had the courage to seize the moment; and such was his position, and such the felicity attending the action, that he has replaced Government in the good graces of mankind. "Better is virtue in the sovereign than plenty in the season," say the Chinese. 'Tis wonderful what power is, and how ill it is used, and how its ill use makes life mean, and the sunshine dark. Life in America had lost much of its attraction in the later years. The virtues of a good magistrate undo a world of mischief, and, because Nature works with rectitude, seem vastly more potent than the acts of bad governors, which are ever tempered by the good-nature in the people, and the incessant resistance which fraud and violence encounter.

The acts of good governors work at a geometrical ratio, as one midsummer day seems to repair the damage of a year of war.

A day which most of us dared not hope to see, an event worth the dreadful war, worth its costs and uncertainties, seems now to be close before us. October, November, December will have passed over beating hearts and plotting brains: then the hour will strike, and all men of African descent who have faculty enough to find their way to our lines are assured of the protection of American law.

It is by no means necessary that this measure should be suddenly marked by any signal results on the negroes or on the Rebel masters. The force of the act is that it commits the country to this justice,-that it compels the innumerable officers, civil, military, naval, of the Republic to range themselves on the line of this equity. It draws the fashion to this side. It is not a measure that admits of being taken back. Done, it cannot be undone by a new Administration. For slavery overpowers the disgust of the moral sentiment only through immemorial usage. It cannot be introduced as an improvement of the nineteenth century. This act makes that the lives of our heroes have not been sacrificed in vain. It makes a victory of our defeats. Our hurts are healed; the health of the nation is repaired. With a victory like this, we can stand many disasters. It does not promise the redemption of the black race: that lies not with us: but it relieves it of our opposition. The President by this act has paroled all the slaves in America; they will no more fight against us; and it relieves our race once for all of its crime and false position. The first condition of success is secured in putting ourselves right. We have recovered ourselves from our false position, and planted ourselves on a law of Nature.

"If that fail,

The pillared firmament is rottenness,

And earth's base built on stubble."

The Government has assured itself of the best constituency in the world: every spark of intellect, every virtuous feeling, every religious heart, every man of honor, every poet, every philosopher, the generosity of the cities, the health of the country, the strong arms of the mechanics, the endurance of farmers, the passionate conscience of women, the sympathy of distant nations,-all rally to its support. Of course, we are assuming the firmness of the policy thus declared. It must not be a paper proclamation. We confide that Mr. Lincoln is in earnest, and, as he has been slow in making up his mind, has resisted the importunacy of parties and of events to the latest moment, he will be as absolute in his adhesion. Not only will he repeat and follow up his stroke, but the nation will add its irresistible strength. If the ruler has duties, so has the citizen. In times like these, when the nation is imperilled, what man can, without shame, receive good news from day to day, without giving good news of himself? What right has any one to read in the journals tidings of victories, if he has not bought them by his own valor, treasure, personal sacrifice, or by service as good in his own department? With this blot removed from our national honor, this heavy load lifted off the national heart, we shall not fear henceforward to show our faces among mankind. We shall cease to be hypocrites and pretenders, but what we have styled our free institutions will be such.

In the light of this event the public distress begins to be removed. What if the brokers' quotations show our stocks discredited, and the gold dollar costs one hundred and twenty-seven cents? These tables are fallacious. Every acre in the Free States gained substantial value on the twenty-second of September. The cause of disunion and war has been reached, and begun to be removed. Every man's house-lot and garden are relieved of the malaria which the purest winds and the strongest sunshine could not penetrate and purge. The territory of the Union shines to-day with a lustre which every European emigrant can discern from far: a sign of inmost security and permanence. Is it feared that taxes will check immigration? That depends on what the taxes are spent for. If they go to fill up this yawning Dismal Swamp, which engulfed armies and populations, and created plague, and neutralized hitherto all the vast capabilities of this continent,-then this taxation, which makes the land wholesome and habitable, and will draw all men unto it, is the best investment in which property-holder ever lodged his earnings.

Whilst we have pointed out the opportuneness of the Proclamation, it remains to be said that the President had no choice. He might look wistfully for what variety of courses lay open to him: every line but one was closed up with fire. This one, too, bristled with danger, but through it was the sole safety. The measure he has adopted was imperative. It is wonderful to see the unseasonable senility of what is called the Peace party, through all its masks, blinding their eyes to the main feature of the war, namely, its inevitableness. The war existed long before the cannonade of Sumter, and could not be postponed. It might have begun otherwise or elsewhere, but war was in the minds and bones of the combatants, it was written on the iron leaf, and you might as easily dodge gravitation. If we had consented to a peaceable secession of the Rebels, the divided sentiment of the Border States made peaceable secession impossible, the insatiable temper of the South made it impossible, and the slaves on the border, wherever the border might be, were an incessant fuel to rekindle the fire. Give the Confederacy New Orleans, Charleston, and Richmond, and they would have demanded St. Louis and Baltimore. Give them these, and they would have insisted on Washington. Give them Washington, and they would have assumed the army and navy, and, through these, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. It looks as if the battle-field would have been at least as large in that event as it is now. The war was formidable, but could not be avoided. The war was and is an immense mischief, but brought with it the immense benefit of drawing a line, and rallying the Free States to fix it impassably,-preventing the whole force of Southern connection and influence throughout the North from distracting every city with endless confusion, detaching that force and reducing it to handfuls, and, in the progress of hostilities, disinfecting us of our habitual proclivity, through the affection of trade, and the traditions of the Democratic party, to follow Southern leading.

These necessities which have dictated the conduct of the Federal Government are overlooked, especially by our foreign critics. The popular statement of the opponents of the war abroad is the impossibility of our success. "If you could add," say they, "to your strength the whole army of England, of France, and of Austria, you could not coerce eight millions of people to come under this Government against their will." This is an odd thing for an Englishman, a Frenchman, or an Austrian to say, who remembers the Europe of the last seventy years,-the condition of Italy, until 1859,-of Poland, since 1793,-of France, of French Algiers,-of British Ireland, and British India. But, granting the truth, rightly read, of the historical aphorism, that "the people always conquer," it is to be noted, that, in the Southern States, the tenure of land, and the local laws, with slavery, give the social system not a democratic, but an aristocratic complexion; and those States have shown every year a more hostile and aggressive temper, until the instinct of self-preservation forced us into the war. And the aim of the war on our part is indicated by the aim of the President's Proclamation, namely, to break up the false combination of Southern society, to destroy the piratic feature in it which makes it our enemy only as it is the enemy of the human race, and so allow its reconstruction on a just and healthful basis. Then new affinities will act, the old repulsions will cease, and, the cause of war being removed, Nature and trade may be trusted to establish a lasting peace.

We think we cannot overstate the wisdom and benefit of this act of the Government. The malignant cry of the Secession press within the Free States, and the recent action of the Confederate Congress, are decisive as to its efficiency and correctness of aim. Not less so is the silent joy which has greeted it in all generous hearts, and the new hope it has breathed into the world.

It was well to delay the steamers at the wharves, until this edict could be put on board. It will be an insurance to the ship as it goes plunging through the sea with glad tidings to all people. Happy are the young who find the pestilence cleansed out of the earth, leaving open to them an honest career. Happy the old, who see Nature purified before they depart. Do not let the dying die: hold them back to this world, until you have charged their ear and heart with this message to other spiritual societies, announcing the melioration of our planet.

"Incertainties now crown themselves assured,

And Peace proclaims olives of endless age."

Meantime that ill-fated, much-injured race which the Proclamation respects will lose somewhat of the dejection sculptured for ages in their bronzed countenance, uttered in the wailing of their plaintive music,-a race naturally benevolent, joyous, docile, industrious, and whose very miseries sprang from their great talent for usefulness, which, in a more moral age, will not only defend their independence, but will give them a rank among nations.

* * * * *

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

History of Friedrich the Second, called Frederick the Great. By THOMAS CARLYLE. In Four Volumes. Vol. III. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1862.

Although History flows in a channel never quite literally dry, and for certain purposes a continuous chronicle of its current is desirable, it is only in rare reaches, wherein it meets formidable obstacles to progress, that it becomes grand and impressive; and even in such cases the interest deepens immeasurably, when some master-spirit arises to direct its energies. The period of Frederick the Great was not one of these remarkable passages. It was marked, however, with the signs that precede such. Europe lay weltering and tossing in seemingly aimless agitation, yet in real birth-throes; and the issue was momentous and memorable, namely: The People. From the hour in which they emerged from the darkness of the French Revolution, they have so absorbed attention that men have had little opportunity to look into the causes which forced them to the front, and made wiser leadership thenceforth indispensable to peaceful rule. The field, too, was repulsive with the appearance of nearly a waste place, save only that Frederick the Second won the surname of "Great" by his action thereon. And it may be justly averred that only to reveal his life, and perhaps that of one other, was it worthy of resuscitation. To do this was an appalling labor, for the skeleton thereof was scattered through the crypts of many kingdoms; yet, by the commanding genius of Mr. Carlyle, bone hath not only come to his bone, but they have been clothed with flesh and blood, so that the captains of the age, and, moreover, the masses, as they appeared in their blind tusslings, are restored to sight with the freshness and fulness of Nature. Although this historical review is strictly illustrative, it is altogether incomparable for vividness and originality of presentation. The treatment of official personages is startlingly new. All ceremony toward them gives place to a fearful familiarity, as of one who not only sees through and through them, but oversees. Grave Emptiness and strutting Vanity, found in high places, are mocked with immortal mimicry. Indeed, those of the "wind-bag" species generally, wherever they appear in important affairs, are so admirably exposed, that we see how they inevitably lead States to disaster and leave them ruins, while their pompous and feeble methods of doing it are so put as to call forth the contemptuous smiles, yea, the derisive laughter, of all coming generations. In fine, the alternate light and shade, which so change the aspect and make the mood of human nature, were never so touched in before; and therefore it is the saddest and the merriest story ever told.

In bold and splendid contrast with this picture of national life flow the life and fortunes of Frederick. If the qualities of his progenitors prophesied this right royal course, his portrait, by Pesne, shows him to have been conceived in some happy moment when Nature was in her most generous mood. What finish of form and feature! and what apparent power to win! Yet in what serene depths it rests, to be aroused only by some superb challenger! No strength of thought or stress of situation seems to have had power to line the curves of beauty. Observe, too, the full-blown mouth, which never saw cause to set itself in order to form or fortify a purpose. When it is remembered that in opening manhood this prince was long imprisoned under sentence of death for attempting to escape from paternal tyranny, and that his friend actually died on the gallows merely for generous complicity in this offence against the state of a king, and that neither of the terrible facts left permanent trace on his countenance or cloud on his spirit, it should create no surprise that nothing but the march of time was ever visible there. Though trained in such a school, and in the twenty-eighth year of his age when he reached the throne, he yet gave a whole and a full heart to his subjects, and sought to guide them solely for their good. From this purpose he never swerved; and though his somewhat too trustful methods were rapidly changed by stern experience, his people felt more and more the consummate wisdom of his guidance, and they became unconquerable by that truth and that faith. Almost on the first day of his reign, he invited Voltaire, the greatest of literary heroes, the most adroit and successful assaulter of king-craft and priest-craft that ever lived, to his capital and to his palace; and in a most friendly spirit consulted him on the advancement of art and letters, exhausted him by the touchstone of superior capacity, and even fathomed him by a glance so keen and so covert that it always took, but never gave, and then complimented him home in so masterly a manner that he was lured into the fond belief that he had found a disciple. A mind so capacious and so reticent is always an enigma to near observers. Hence it is that the transcendently great may be more truly known to after-ages than to any contemporary. By the patient research and profound insight of Mr. Carlyle, Frederick the Great is thus rising into clear and perennial light. What deserts of dust he wrought in, and what a jungle of false growths he had to clear away, Dryasdust and Smelfungus mournfully hint and indignantly moralize,-under such significant names does this new Rhadamanthus reveal the real sins of mankind, and deliver them over to the judgment of their peers. Frederick, indeed, is among them, but not of them. The way in which he is made to come forth from the mountains of smoke and cinders remaining of his times is absolutely marvellous. As some mighty and mysterious necromancer quickens the morbid imagination to supernatural sight, and for a brief moment reveals through rolling mist and portentous cloud the perfect likeness of the one longed for by the rapt gazer, so Frederick is restored in this biography for the perpetual consolation and admiration of all coming heroes. In comprehension and judgment of the actions and hearts of men, and in vividness of writing, not that which shook the soul of Belshazzar in the midst of his revellers was more powerful, or more sure of approval and fulfilment. It is not only one of the greatest of histories and of biographies, but nothing in literature, from any other pen, bears any likeness to it. It is truly a solitary work,-the effort of a vast and lonely nature to find a meet companion among the departed.

1. The Rejected Stone; or, Insurrection vs. Resurrection in America. By a Native of Virginia. Second Edition. Boston: Walker, Wise, & Co. 1862.

2. The Golden Hour. By MONCURE D. CONWAY, Author of "The Rejected Stone." Impera parendo. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1862.

Seldom have political writings found such accomplices in events as these, whose final criticism appears in the great Proclamation of the President. Two campaigns have been the bloody partisans of this earnest pen: the impending one will cheerfully undertake its final vindication. Not because these two little books stand sole and pre?minent, the isolated prophecies of an all but rejected truth, nor because they have created the opinion out of which the President gathers breath for his glorious words. Mr. Conway would hardly claim more, we think, than to have spoken frankly what the people felt, the same people which hailed the early emancipationing instinct of General Fremont. We see the fine sense of Mr. Emerson in his advice to hitch our wagon to a star, but there must be a well-seasoned vehicle, with a cunning driver to thrust his pin through the coupling, one not apt to jump out when the axles begin to smoke.

At the first overt act of this great Rebellion, anti-slavery men perceived the absurdity of resisting a symptom instead of attacking the disease. They proclaimed the old-fashioned truth, that an eruption can be rubbed back again into the system, not only without rubbing out its cause, but at the greatest hazard to the system, which is loudly announcing its difficulty in this cutaneous fashion. But Northern politicians saw that the inflammatory blotches made the face of the country ugly and repulsive: their costliest preparations have been well rubbed in ever since, without even yet reducing the rebellious red; on the contrary, it flamed out more vigorously than ever. Their old practice was not abandoned, the medicines only were changed. The wash of compromise was replaced by the bath of blood. And into that dreadful color the tears and agony of a million souls have been distilled, as if they would make a mixture powerful enough to draw out all our trouble by the pores. The very skin of the Rebellion chafed and burned more fiercely with all this quackery.

If Slavery is our disease, the Abolition of Slavery is our remedy. Our bayonets only cupped and scored the patient, our war-measures in and out of Congress only worked dynamically against other war-measures far more dogged and desperate than our own. The sentence of Emancipation is the specific whose operation will be vital, by effecting an alteration in the system, and soon annihilating that condition of the blood which feeds our fevers and rushes in disgusting blotches to the face. "No,"-a Northern minority still says,-"every fever has its term; only watch your self-limiting disease, keep the patient from getting too much hurt during his delirium, and he will be on 'Change before long."

No doubt of that. He loves to be on 'Change; of all the places in the country, out of his own patriarchal neighborhoods, not even Saratoga and Newport were ever so exhilarating to him as Wall Street and State Street, and he longs to be well enough to infest his whilom haunts. Slavery is a self-limited disease, for it suffers nothing but itself to impose its limits. In that sense the North would soon have his old crony on the pavement again, with one yellow finger in his button-hole, and another nervously playing at a trigger behind the back. For the North was paying roundly in men and dollars to renew that pleasurable intercourse, to get the dear old soul out again as little dilapidated as possible, with as much of the old immunities and elasticities preserved as an attack so violent would allow.

The President said to the deputation of Quakers, "Where the Constitution cannot yet go, a proclamation cannot." This was accepted by a portion of the North as another compact expression of Presidential wisdom. It was the common sense, curtly and neatly put, upon which our armies waited, and for whose cold and bleached utterances our glorious young men were sent home from Washington by rail in coffins, red receipts of Slavery to acknowledge Northern indecision. It was the kind of common sense which, after every family-tomb has got its tenant, and wives, mothers, sisters tears to be their bread and meat continually, would have jogged on 'Change snugly some fine morning arm in arm with the murderer of their noble dead.

For, though neither the Constitution nor a proclamation can quite yet go down practically into Slavery, Slavery might come up here to find the Constitution in its old place at the Potomac ferry, and without a toll or pike to heed.

It seemed so sensible to say, that, where one document cannot go, another cannot! And yet it depends upon what is in the document. If the Constitution could go South now, it would be the last thing we should want to send, at this stage of the national malady. It contains the immunity out of which the malady has flamed. Its very neutrality is the best protection which a conquered South could have, and a moral triumph that would richly compensate it for a military defeat. Would it not have been quite as sagacious, and equally aphoristic, if the President had said, "Where a proclamation cannot go, the Constitution never can again"? He has said it! And if the proclamation goes first, the Constitution will follow to bless and to save.

Both of these little books of Mr. Conway are devoted to showing the necessity for a proclamation of emancipation, as simple justice, as military policy, as mercy to the South, to put us right at home and abroad, to destroy at once the cause of the Republic's shame and sorrow. He combats various objections: such as that a proclamation of that nature would send home instantly the pro-slavery officers and men who are now fighting merely to enhance their own importance or to restore the state of things before the war: that a proclamation of emancipation, finding its way, as it surely would, to the heart of every slave, would breed insurrections and all the horrors of a servile war: that such a document would not be worth the paper which it blotted, until the military power of the South was definitively broken: that it would convert the Border States into active foes, and make them rush by natural proclivity into the bosom of Secession. Mr. Conway disposes well of a great deal of trash which even good Republican papers, upon which we have hitherto relied, but can do so no longer, have vented under all these heads of objections.

He writes with such enthusiasm, and is so plainly a dear lover and worshipper of the justice which can alone exalt this nation, that we are carried clear over the wretched half-republicanism which has been trying all the year to say eminently sound and unexceptionable things, we forget the deceit and expediency whose leaded columns have been more formidable than those which rolled the tide of war back again to the Potomac. Great is the animating power of faith, when faithfully brought home to the universal instinct for righteousness. Mr. Conway was born and bred among slaveholders, knows them and their institution, knows the slave, and his moral condition, and his expectations: so that these inspiriting prophecies of his are more than those of a lively and talented pamphleteer.

His earnest purpose in writing lifts us pretty well over some things in his style which seem to us discordant with his glorious theme. He has a way, as good as the President's, to whom much of his matter is addressed, of making his apologues and stories tell; they are apt, and give the reader the sensation of being clinched. One feels like a nail when it catches the board. But sometimes the transition to a grotesque allusion from a fine touch of fancy or from the inbred religiousness of the subject is abrupt. Jean Paul may offer you, in his most glowing page, a quid of tobacco, if he pleases; the shock is picturesque, and sometimes lets in a deep analogy. But the hour in which Mr. Conway writes, the height of faith from which his pen stoops to the mortal page, the unspeakable solemnity of the theme, which our volunteers are rudely striving to trace upon their country's bosom with their blood, and our women are steeping in their tears, ought to drive all flippancy shuddering from the lines in which sarcasm itself should be measured and awful as the deaths which gird us round.

But the two volumes are full of power and feeling. They are written so that all may read. Their effect is popular, without stooping deliberately to become so. They are among the brightest and simplest pages which this exciting period has produced. It would be a great mistake to gauge their effect by what they bring to pass in the minds of cabinet-officers, editors, and party-leaders: for they put into plain, stout language the growing instinct of the people to get at the cause of the war which lays them waste.

Some of the most effective pages in these volumes are those which lament the dread alternative of war, and which show that emancipation would be merciful to all classes at the South. It is no paradox that to free the slaves to-morrow would restore health to the South and regenerate its people.

And we are glad that Mr. Conway speaks so emphatically against that measure of colonization, whether the proposition be to deport the contrabands to Hayti, or to tote them away to Central America under the leadership of intelligent colored representatives of the North. All these are plans which look to the eventual removal of the only men at the South who know how to labor, and who are now the only representatives there of the country's industrial ideas. We pray you, Mr. President, to use the money voted for colonizing purposes to rid the country of the men in the Border and Cotton States who cannot or will not work, slave-owners and bushwhackers, who kill and harry, but who never did an honest stroke of work in their lives, and whom, with or without slavery, this Republic will have to support. Take some Pacific Island for a great Alms-House, and inaugurate an exodus of the genuine Southern pauper; he is only an incumbrance to the industrious and humble-minded blacks, from whose toil the country may draw the staples of free sugar and free cotton, raised upon the soil which is theirs by the holy prescription of blood and sorrow. "If it were not for your presence in the country," says the President to the colored men, "we should have no war!" If it were not for silverware and jewelry, no burglaries would be committed! Don't let us get rid of the villains, but of the victims; thereby villainy will cease!

Let Mr. Pomeroy be sent to annex some of the Paumotu or Tongan groups, where spontaneous bread-fruit would afford Mr. Floyd good plucking, and Messrs. Wigfall, Benjamin, and Prior could even have their chewing done by proxy, for the native pauper employs the old women to masticate his Ava into drink. There they might continue to take their food from other people's mouths, with the chance now and then of a strong anti-slavery clergyman well barbecued, a luxury for which they have howled for many a year. That is the place for your oligarchic pauper, where the elements themselves are field-hands, with Nature for overseer, manufactures superfluous and free-trade a blessing, and plenty of colored persons to raise the mischief with. That is the sole crop which they have raised at home. Let their propensities be transferred to a place unconnected with the politics or the privileges of a Christian Republic.

But let this great Republic drive into exile the wheat-growers of the West, the miners and iron-men of Pennsylvania, and the farmers of New England, as soon as these men who have created the cotton-crop which clothes a world, and who only wait for another stimulus to supersede the lash. Let them find it, as in Jamaica, in a plot of ground, their seed and tools, their hearth-side and marriage, their freedom, and the shelter of a country which wants to use the products of their hands.

If it be an object to stretch a great band of free tropical labor across Central America, to people those wastes with ideas which shall curb the southward lust of men, and nourish a grateful empire against the intrigues of European States, let that be done, if the colored American of the Border States is willing to advance the project. Let the project be clearly understood, and its prospective upholders frankly invited to become men, and aid their country's welfare. But never let colonization be opened like an artery, through whose "unkindest cut" some of the best blood of the country shall slip away and be lost forever. We want the cotton labor even more extensively diffused, to conquer John Bull with bales, as at New Orleans. Let no cotton-grower ever budge.

The Life and Letters of Washington Irving. By his Nephew, PIERRE M. IRVING. Vols. I and II. New York: G.P. Putnam.

If to be loved and admired by all, to have troops of personal friends, to enjoy a literary reputation wide in extent and high in degree, to be as little stung by envy and detraction as the lot of humanity will permit, to secure material prosperity with only occasional interruptions and intermissions, make up the elements of a happy life, then that of Washington Irving must be pronounced one of the most fortunate in the annals of literature. It is but repeating a trite remark to say that happiness depends more upon organization than upon circumstances, more upon what we are than upon what we have. Saint-Simon said of the Duke of Burgundy, father of Louis XV., that he was born terrible: it certainly may be said of Washington Irving that he was born happy. Some men are born unhappy: that is, they are born with elements of character, peculiarities of temperament, which generate discontent under all conditions of life. Their joints are not lubricated by oil, but fretted by sand. The contemporaries of Shakspeare, who for the most part had little comprehension of his unrivalled genius, expressed their sense of his personal qualities by the epithet gentle, which was generally applied to him,-a word which meant rather more then than it does now, comprising sweetness, courtesy, and kindliness. No one word could better designate the leading characteristics of Irving's nature and temperament. No man was ever more worthy to bear "the grand old name of gentleman," alike in the essentials of manliness, tenderness, and purity, and in the external accomplishment of manners so winning and cordial that they charmed alike men, women, and children. He had the delicacy of organization which is essential to literary genius, but it stopped short of sickliness or irritability. He was sensitive to beauty in all its forms, but was never made unhappy or annoyed by the shadows in the picture of life. He had a happy power of escaping from everything that was distasteful, uncomfortable, and unlovely, and dwelling in regions of sunshine and bloom. His temperament was not impassioned; and this, though it may have impaired somewhat the force of his genius, contributed much to his enjoyment of life. Considering that he was an American born, and that his youth and early manhood were passed in a period of bitter and virulent political strife, it is remarkable how free his writings are from the elements of conflict and opposition. He never put any vinegar into his ink. He seems to have been absolutely without the capacity of hating any living thing. He was a literary artist; and the productions of his pen address themselves to the universal and unpartisan sympathies of mankind as much as paintings or statues. His "Rip Van Winkle" and "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" are pictures, in which we find combined the handling of Teniers, the refinement of Stothard, and the coloring of Gainsborough.

Fortunate in so many other things, Irving may also be pronounced fortunate in his biographer, whom he himself designated for the trust. His nephew has performed his labor of love in a manner which will satisfy all but those who read a book mainly for the purpose of finding fault with it. In his brief and tasteful preface he says: "In the delicate office of sifting, selecting, and arranging these different materials, extending through a period of nearly sixty years, it has been my aim to make the author, in every stage of his career, as far as possible, his own biographer, conscious that I shall in this way best fulfil the duty devolved upon me, and give to the world the truest picture of his life and character." To this purpose Mr. Pierre M. Irving has adhered with uniform consistency. He makes his uncle his own biographer. To borrow a happy illustration which we found in a newspaper a few days since, his own portion of the book is like the crystal of a watch, through which we see the hands upon the face as through transparent air. And luckily he found ample materials in his uncle's papers and records. Washington Irving was not bred to any profession, and had a fixed aversion, not characteristic of his countrymen, for regular business-occupation; his literary industry was fitful, and not continuous: but he seems to have been fond of the occupation of writing, and spent upon his diaries and in his correspondence a great many hours, which he could hardly have done, if he had been a lawyer, a doctor, or even a merchant, in active employment. His warm family-affections, too, his strong love for his brothers and sisters, from most of whom he was for many years separated, were a constant incitement to the writing of letters, those invisible wires that keep up the communication between parted hearts. For all these peculiarities of nature, for all these accidents of fortune, we have reason to be grateful, since from these his biographer has found ample materials for constructing the fabric of his life from the foundation.

Many of Irving's letters, especially in the second volume, are long and elaborate productions, which read like chapters from a book of travels, or like essays, and yet do not on that account lose the peculiar charm which we demand in such productions. They are perfectly natural in tone and feeling, though evidently written with some care. They are not in the least artificial, and yet not careless or hasty. They have all that easy and graceful flow, that transparent narrative, that unconscious charm, which we find in his published writings; and we not unfrequently discern gleams and touches of that exquisite humor which was the best gift bestowed upon his mind. Brief as our notice is, we cannot refrain from quoting in illustration of our remark a few sentences from a letter to Thomas Moore, written in 1824:-

"I went a few evenings since to see Kenney's new piece, 'The Alcaid.' It went off lamely, and the Alcaid is rather a bore, and comes near to be generally thought so. Poor Kenney came to my room next evening, and I could not have believed that one night could have ruined a man so completely. I swear to you I thought at first it was a flimsy suit of clothes had left some bedside and walked into my room without waiting for the owner to get up, or that it was one of those frames on which clothiers stretch coats at their shop-doors, until I perceived a thin face, sticking edgeways out of the collar of the coat like the axe in a bundle of fasces. He was so thin, and pale, and nervous, and exhausted,-he made a dozen difficulties in getting over a spot in the carpet, and never would have accomplished it, if he had not lifted himself over by the points of his shirt-collar."

The illustration we have Italicized is rather wit than humor; but be it as it may, it is capital; and the whole paragraph has that quaint and grotesque exaggeration which reminds us of the village-tailor in "The Sketch-Book," "who played on the clarionet, and seemed to have blown his face to a point," or of Mud Sam, who "knew all the fish in the river by their Christian names."

We think no one can read these volumes without having a higher impression of Washington Irving as a man. There was no inconsistency between the author and the man. The tenderness, the purity of feeling, the sensibility, which gave his works an entrance into so many hearts, had their source in his mind and character. It is a very truthful record that we have before us. The delineation is that of a man certainly not without touches of human infirmity, but as certainly largely endowed with virtues as well as with gifts and graces. It is very evident that it is a truthful biography, and that the hand of faithful affection has found nothing to suppress or conceal. When we have laid down the book, we feel that we know the man. And we can understand why it was that he was so loved. Enemies, it seems, he had, or at least ill-wishers; since we learn-and it is one of the indications of his soft and sensitive nature-that he was seriously annoyed by a persecutor who persistently inclosed and forwarded to him every scrap of unfavorable criticism he could find in the newspapers: but the feeling that inspired this piece of ill-nature must have been envy, and not hatred,-the bitterness which is awakened in some unhappy tempers by the success which they cannot themselves attain. No man less deserved to be hated than Irving, for no man was less willing himself to give heart-room to hatred.

We need hardly add that these volumes-of which the larger part is by Irving himself-are very entertaining, and that we read them from beginning to end with unflagging interest. Sketches of society and manners, personal anecdotes, descriptions of scenery, buildings, and works of art, give animation and variety to the narrative. The whole is suffused with a golden glow of cheerfulness, the effluence of a nature very happy, yet never needing the sting of riot or craving the flush of excess, and finding its happiness in those pure fountains that refresh, but not intoxicate.

The close of the second volume brings us down to the year 1832, and his cordial reception by his friends and countrymen after an absence of seventeen years; so that more good things are in store for us.