stores in the rear whilst he was blindly feeling for them in front. As the real power of an army rests upon its ability in marching well, the Confederates make up for their deficiency in numbers by rapidity of movement.

The much-admired M'Clellan is slowness and caution incarnate; vigour and promptness of action are undreamed of in his philosophy; and from the first he has not only evinced a want of confidence in his troops, but, from a desire of leaving nothing to chance, he has not succeeded in anything. At the opening of his peninsula campaign, when he had more than a hundred thousand men under him, he allowed himself to be so deceived by General Magruder near Yorktown that he actually opened trenches, erected batteries, and placed a number of ten-inch mortars in position to attack a weak unfinished line of open and continuous intrenchments, about five miles in extent, and defended only by 8000 Confederates. How can any soldier call such a man a great general?

In talking of the several Federal generals, the soldiers of the South invariably give the palm to M'Clellan. They consider him inferior to their own leader, and destitute of enterprise, but all declare him to be the only man in the Northern army who is capable of organising it, and allow that for such work his mind is admirably adapted. I have spoken to many persons who knew him intimately, some of them having been class-fellows of his at West Point, and others associated with him in public life for years. All spoke of him with respect. He was a gentleman, they said, and for that reason superior to the host of newspaper editors and swindling lawyers who had been given generals' commissions by Mr Lincoln. they were sorely puzzled by his despatches regarding his operations before and immediately subsequent to the battle of Antietam, in all of which facts were perverted, and the number of the enemy ex

But

aggerated to a degree that precluded the possibility of acquitting him on the plea of misconception. Indeed, those who had known him well refused to believe the authenticity of these despatches, and declared that they were always cooked up by Mr Staunton and General Halleck in Washington.

Generals Banks and Pope are invariably spoken of with rancour and dislike. The former has been accused of the grossest intermeddling with private property. General Pope's orders to his army upon the opening of his disastrous campaign, were of a nature to exasperate all Southerners, and certainly tended to extinguish any smouldering embers of brotherly feeling which might still exist in their breasts. Indeed, I imagine that, had the Confederates taken himself as well as his camp equipage and clothing by the fortune of war, he would have received no very gentle treatment at their hands; nor could the most lenient say that his conduct was such as to merit it.

The debt incurred by the Confederate Government since its establishment, amounts to about $400,000,000, or £80,000,000, little if anything more than a fifth of the sum now owed by the Northerners. To what amount these figures may be increased, if the war should unfortunately last for another twelve months, it is impossible to say. There is no personal sacrifice that the people of the South are not prepared to make rather than again trust their independence, private fortunes, and liberty, to a paper constitution, guaranteed only by the oaths of such men as Sumner and Lincoln, both doubly forsworn. There are no terms upon which they would re-enter the Union, as the present Washington administration has shown them how inefficient an oath is to bind such men to abide by any agreement. All of them upon entering office swore to observe the articles of the constitution, and all have violated them in the most flagrant manner. Personal

liberty, freedom of speech, an independent press, and the glorious principle contained in the Habeas Corpus Act, have not only been trampled under foot by these tyrants, but the populace has looked on approvingly. The South will not give in, but its Government is prepared to treat. To have its independence acknowledged, and to allow the border States to express their own wishes freely as to the side they wish to adhere to, is all the South demands. The only manner in which this could be carried out, would be by the withdrawal of both armies from the border States, which would give their people an opportunity of freely expressing the sentiments of the majority. Although the North might be willing at some future period, or even at the present time, to open negotiations, and even to carry out those measures as regards Kentucky and Tennessee, it will never consent to extend the same principle to Maryland; and under these circumstances, the South will not negotiate. I do not think that the Confederate statesmen are in the least anxious for the adherence of Maryland to their Republic. Indeed, as regards Virginia, such is the rivalry between these two States-one being anxious to maintain the trade of Baltimore and make it the great exporting city for the South, whilst the other, wishing to obtain the advantages accruing from having such a port within itself, is desirous of making Norfolk the great emporium of trade-that the "Old Dominion," as Virginia is called, would prefer being the frontier province, and have the Potomac for a line of demarcation.

Washington city, with its Capitol

and other public buildings, upon which Americans are wont to pride themselves, is really one of the most serious obstacles to any amicable settlement of frontier; for, as I have before said, although the South is not over anxious for Maryland, yet as she is to a great extent Southern in feeling, and a slaveowning State, Mr Davis's ministry are determined that her oppressed people shall have the liberty of making their own choice between North and South. The Northerners conceive that with the loss of the capital of the once United States, they would lose so much prestige, that they are determined not to submit to it on any account. They therefore fully intend to continue this fratricidal struggle, during which not only millions of money have been already expended, but thousands of valuable lives lost. It seems to be the unanimous opinion of all in the South that nothing but foreign mediation in the form of a determined intervention by the great European Powers can ever end the war; and it is evident, although they may not like to confess it, that the eyes of every Southerner are still turned to England. The next meeting of Parliament, however, will show what the feelings of our people are with regard to the matter, and whether those who hold the reins of Government will consider that the time has come for putting an end to the most inhuman struggle that ever disgraced a great nation, such as the Republic of the United States once was, though now it is merely the military despotism of a portion of the States striving under the dictatorship of an insignificant lawyer to crush out the freedom of the rest.

A LITTLE While ago, as I was walking down Parliament Street, I suddenly found myself face to face with a man who, in the days of my early youth, had inspired me with a warm regard and a lively admiration. Though he was some years older than myself, we had been for a short time very intimate; but after we had once separated, I saw no more of him till thus, towards the evening of life, we two, who had parted company in its morn, recognised each other at the first glance; and, after exclaiming, "Is it you?" halted mute, like men to whom some startling news is abruptly told. The past, as when we last separated, the present as we now met, brought before us in the extreme of contrast; the long, gradual, stealthy interval between the dates annulled; so that, in uttering those words, "Is it you?" each saw himself as he was in youth, and simultaneously felt the change time had wrought in his own life by reading the work of time in the face of the other. But such reflection was, as it were, the flash of the moment, and with the next moment it passed away. As I was then hurrying down to the House of Commons, somewhat fearful lest I should not be in time to vote on a question worn so threadbare that it was not likely the patience of members would allow it to be long rediscussed, my old acquaintance kindly turned back from his own way to accommodate himself to mine; and, when we parted at the doors of Westminster Hall, much to my surprise he had invited me

to visit him in the country, and, perhaps still more to his surprise, I had accepted the invitation.

Sir Percival Tracey (so let me call the person I have just introduced to the reader) was one of those men to whom Nature gives letters of recommendation to Posterity, which, from some chance or another, never reach their destination.

It has been said by a man of a genius and a renown so great as to render his saying the more remarkable, that if we could become thoroughly acquainted with the biography of any one who has achieved fame, we should find that he had met with some person to fame unknown, whose intellect had impressed him more than that of any of the celebrated competitors with whom it had been his lot to strive. He whom I call Percival Tracey might serve to illustrate whatever truth may be found in that bold assertion. At the time of life in which I had been among his familiar associates, I can remember no one of the same years who has since become distinguished, so strongly impressing the men who were distinguished then with respect for his superior capacities, and a faith in his ultimate renown. Yet, if I disclose his real name, in him this later generation would only recognise one of those wealthy and well-born gentlemen of whom little or nothing is known to the public, except that they are wellborn and wealthy.

Deprived of both parents in early childhood, Percival Tracey

was left to the guardianship of his maternal uncle, the Duke of Sent to a public school, illustrious less for learned boys than famous men, he there acquired one of those brilliant reputations which light up the after-paths of ambition; for it is a wondrous advantage to candidates for power and renown to enter on the arena of life with the esprit de corps of coevals already enlisted in their favour; an advantage so great, that I venture to doubt whether any system of wholly private education, however theoretically admirable, can compensate to an able and ambitious man, whom such education had formed, for the loneliness in which, at the onset of his career, he stands among his own generation-no_young hands thrilling to applaud, no young voices whispering "he was one of Us!" all disposed to cavil at the claims of a stranger whose talents revive no recollections of early promisewhose successes recall no sympa thies of boyish friendship-whose honours, if his labours win them, will add no name to the Libro d'oro of the never-forgotten School!

Cambridge was the university selected for the completion of Tracey's academical studies, whether from family associations or by his own desire. On leaving school, somewhere about the age of sixteen, he was accordingly placed in the house of a tutor, who had acquired the highest mathematical honours which the University of Cambridge can confer. There he contracted a taste, and developed an aptitude, for the Positive Sciences, which might have enabled him to confirm at college the reputation he had gained at school. But just as he was about to commence his first term at Trinity, he was attacked by a fever, in reality caused by a rash feat in swimming, but which his guardian insisted on imputing to an over-fatigue in study. The Duke of — was in his own way an exceedingly clever man-a man of the world-into which world he had entered as an aspir

was

ing cadet, before, by the death of his elder brother, he had become a contented duke. His Grace no Goth; he held booklearning in the greatest possible respect. But while he allowed that book-learning lifted up into station the poor and the humbly born, he had a vague notion that book-learning tends to divert from their proper sphere of action the wealthy and the highborn: and in Percival Tracey he hoped to find the zealous champion, and perhaps ultimately the redoubted chief, of that party for which his Grace felt a patriot's preference. Hailing, therefore, in Percival's unlucky fever, an excuse for distracting him from unhealthful studies, the Duke, instead of immuring his brilliant ward in the cloisters of a college, sent him forth to perform what was anciently called "The Grand Tour," and in polite acquaintance with courts and capitals, learn by how little knowledge mankind are governed. At the end of three years Percival Tracey returned to England, and entered London society as a young man in possession of vast estates entirely at his own disposal, and with the command of a considerable capital accumulated by the savings of a long minority. He was the representative of a family which, in point of antiquity, of illustrious connections, and the political influence derived from territorial possessions, might vie with the noblest in England. The advantages he took from Nature were as brilliant as those he had received from Fortune. His frame, at once light and vigorous, was the faithful index of a constitution capable of enduring any of those fatigues, more exhausting than bodily labour, by which study or ambition tasks the resources of life. He was sufficiently good-looking to be generally considered handsome; but not so outrageously good-looking as to acquire that kind of reputation for beauty which elevates the rank of a woman, but disparages that of a man. For I presume

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an

that any woman, however sensible, would be rather admired for her outward attractions than her intellectual powers; and I am sure that no sensible man, who possesses that pride which Milton calls honest haughtiness," would not feel very much ashamed of such a reputation. In fact, if Percival Tracey was handsome, it was not from mere regularity of feature, nor lustre of colouring, but from an expression of countenance which seemed to take sweetness from the amenities of his heart, and nobleness from the dignity of his mind. In his prodigal culture, graceful accomplishments felicitously combined with severer studies; so that the one seemed as naturally to grow up amidst the other as the corn-flowers grow amidst the corn. He excelled in all the bodily sports and exercises which young Englishmen of his rank esteem as manly, to a degree which won their pardon for his display of those elegant ornaments of character which they are apt to neglect as effeminate. Endowed with a vivid sense of beauty, and an exquisite felicity of taste, he was more than an amateur of the Fine Arts, more than a connoisseur; he was an artist. Professional painters discovered amazing beauties in his paintings-had he himself been a professional painter, they would doubtless have paid him the higher compliment of discovering amazing faults. He was an excellent linguist; and wrote or spoke most of the polite languages in Europe with the correctness and fluency of an educated native. Yet with all this surface of graceful accomplishment no one ever called him superficial. On the contrary, it was the habit of his mind to search into the depth of things. Hence his confirmed attachment to the Positive Sciences; and I believe, indeed, the only MSS. he was ever induced to publish (and those anonymously) were some papers in a scientific journal, which were held, at the time, to throw much light upon a very abstruse subject, and

spoken of highly by professed philosophers. But his authorship was undetected, and the papers themselves, in the rapid progress of scientific discovery, have no doubt been long since forgotten. Hence, too, the tendency of his faculties was not towards the creative, but towards the critical directions of intellect. He had sufficient warmth of imagination to appreciate the works on which imagination bestows a life more lasting than the real, yet that appreciation did not lead him to imitate, but rather to analyse, what he admired. Fond of metaphysics, he prized most that kind of poetry in which metaphysical speculation lights up unsuspected beauties, or from which it derives familiar illustrations of recondite truths. Thus in his talk, though it had the easy charm of a man of the world, there was a certain subtlety, sometimes a certain depth, of reasoning, which, supported by large stores of comprehensive information, imposed upon his listeners, and brought into bolder relief the vantage-ground for political station which his talents and his knowledge took from the dignity of his birth and the opulence of his fortune. In short, at the date I now refer to, the practised observers of the time, and the acknowledged authorities in opinion, glancing over the foremost figures in the young generation, pointed to Percival Tracey and said, "See the Coming Man!"

Secretly, as I learned more intimately, and yet more admiringly, to know the object of a prediction which all appearances might justify

I doubted whether the prediction would be realised. The main reason of my doubt was this: because even then, in the prime of his dazzling youth, Percival Tracey lacked that enthusiasm without which even a great intellect is seldom impelled into the doing of great things.

Perhaps from one of the very excellencies of his mental organisation he was indifferent to ambition, and not covetous of fame. All that