of artillery waggons upon every bridge, and the long lines of glittering bayonets which reflect the waters of the Potomac, proclaim that the Rubicon is passed, and the sacred soil invaded, forthwith, in his first message, he informs Congress, that "he has invoked the War power," and calls for four hundred thousand men and four hundred millions of dollars, that "the conflict may be short and decisive," and when it passes the Non-Intercourse Act, the Confiscation Act, the Suspension of the Habeas Corpus, they are forthwith approved, for in determining that the Government was endowed, in time of War, with unabridged belligerent rights, he had settled a principle which underlies all these controverted measures.

In the seven months which follow, he evinces an administrative vigor that would have satisfied Napoleon the Great, but it was all alas! counteracted, by a military imbecility in his Generals that was fairly sublime. It is the era of almost unrelieyed disaster, commencing with the ineffaceable disgrace of Bull Run and terminating only with the capture of Fort Donelson, which first introduced to the country an immortal name, and initiated a career which has steadily marched on from victory to victory, and from Alp to Alp, up to the crowning summit of military grandeur, where Ulysses S. Grant now stands unchallenged and secure.

How nobly the PRESIDENT bore himself, during this interval of darkness that could be felt, when bold men trembled at every click of the telegraph, let two tributes offered by unfriendly voices to his Stoicism attest: the first, is from no less a master of it than Napoleon the Third, who epigramatically says: "MR. LINCOLN's highest claim upon my admiration, is a Roman equanimity, which has been tried by both extremes of fortune and disturbed by neither;" the second, is from a hostile Englishman who says, that "tried by years of failure, without achieving one great success, he not only never yielded to despondency or anger, but what is most marvellous, continually grew in self-possession and magnanimity." I once myself ventured to ask the PRESIDENT, if he had ever despaired of the country? and he told me, that "when the Peninsular Campaign terminated suddenly at Harrison's Landing, I was as nearly inconsolable as I could be and live." In the same connection I inquired, if there had ever been a period in which he thought that better management, upon the part of his Commanding General, might have terminated the War? and he answered that there were three, that the first was at Malvern Hill, where McClellan failed to command an immediate advance upon Richmond, that the second was at Chancellorville, where Hooker failed to reinforce

Sedgwick, after hearing his cannon upon the extreme right, and that the third was after Lee's retreat from Gettysburg, when Meade failed to attack him in the bend of the Potomac. After this commentary I waited for an outburst of denunciation, for a criticism at least upon the delinquent officers, but I waited in vain; so far from a word of censure escaping his lips, he soon added, that his first remark might not appear uncharitable, "I do not know that I could have given different orders had I been with them myself; I have not fully made up my mind how I should behave, when minnie balls were whistling and these great oblong shells shrieking in my ear. I might run away." The interview, which I am recalling, was last summer, just after Gen. Fremont had declined to run against him for the Presidency. The magnificent Bible, which the negroes of Washington had just presented him, lay upon the table, and while we were both examining it, I recited the somewhat remarkable passage from the Chronicles; "Eastward were six Levites, northward four a day, southward four a day and towards Assuppim two and two, at Parbar westward, four at the causeway and two at Parbar." He immediately challenged me to find any such passage as that in his Bible. After I had pointed it out to him, and he was satisfied of its genuineness, he asked me if I

remembered the text which his friends had recently applied to Fremont, and instantly turned to a verse in the first of Samuel, put on his spectacles, and read in his slow, peculiar and waggish tone,-"And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented gathered themselves unto him; and he became a Captain over them and there were with him about four hundred men." I am here reminded of an impressive remark, which he made to me upon another occasion and which I shall never forget. He said, he had never united himself to any church, because he found difficulty in giving his assent, without mental reservation, to the long complicated statements of Christian doctrine, which characterize their Articles of belief and Confessions of Faith. "When any church,” he continued, "will inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification for membership the Saviour's condensed statement of the substance of both law and Gospel, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself,' that church will I join with all my heart and all my soul." The books which he chiefly read, in his leisure hours were, the Bible, Shakspeare, the peasant poet of Scotland, with whom his sympathies were very acute, and those peculiar off-shoots of American wit, of which Orpheus

C. Kerr, Artemas Ward, and Doesticks are types. I frequently saw all these books in his hands, during a voyage of three days upon the Potomac, when the party consisted only of the President and his family, the Secretary of War and his aid and myself.

The ten months which divide the fall of Fort Donelson, (February 16th, 1862,) from the battle of Fredericksburg, (December 13th, 1862,) constitute the depressing era of military uncertainty. Administrative ability, executive resolution and hardihood, were never more impressively displayed than during this disheartening period, but in spite of it, inconstant victory seems to vibrate between the hostile banners.

The encouraging results of Iuka and Corinth, and the opening of the Upper Mississippi, inspire the national heart with new confidence in the protection of Heaven and in the heroism of our western soldiers. Brave old Farragut earns the grade of Admniral, and the soubriquet of Salamander, by leading his thundering Armada, through the feu d'enfer, which belched from Fort Phillip on the right, and Fort Jackson on the left, and the martial and financial heart of rebellion in the Southwest, is palsied when the guns of his fleet sweep the streets of New Orleans, and the Tamer of Cities hangs up its scalp in his wigwam. War surges and resurges over the