tions and uses; is not necessarily a blank in one's life. We may learn noble virtues in prison, for it is a severe school where we are taught to moderate our desires and to confront misfortunes with that defiant patience, which more than all constitutes the force of character and tests the man.

"To suffer, as to do, our strength is equal."

There is compensation, too, in the reflection that my imprisonment is in the name of my country, and that what I suffer is a sacrifice for it. It is true we all of us must contribute to the cause of our country in some form or other-and how little have I ever contributed to it, that I should begrudge this suffering in its name, and how many more deserving than myself, with mutilated limbs, or broken hearts, have yet virtue to thank God that they have been able thus to testify their principles! These are salutary thoughts, which should chasten my pride and impatience, and teach me how little and unworthy I am, to resent the fortune which has made me a prisoner.

Fourth of July.-Captain Murden, of South Carolina, a fellow prisoner, has celebrated the day by the following lines, entitled "The Confederate Oath," which we have all “taken.” It is given as a specimen of the Fort Warren Muse, and as a sentiment appropriate to the day we celebrate:

Aye, raise aloft that gory pall

Of Freedom's bleeding corse,
While craven minions, shouting all,

Its infamy indorse.

Gape, cannon, your infernal throats,
Belch at the despot's word,
While Liberty's expiring notes
Are in thine echoes heard.

Blow winds, from these accursed walls,
And to the world proclaim

How wronged, insulted, Freedom calls
To stay the branding shame.

Tell of the rights our fathers' claimed,
And claiming, dared maintain,
Tell of the deeds in history famed,

Which broke the tyrant's chain.

Then, tell again, how Avarice sapped
The fame to Freedom reared:
How Lust, in false religion wrapped,
To boasting minds appeared.
And let thy breath the poison bear
Of Puritanic guile,

And in thy voice let nations hear
The howlings of the vile.

Aye, hoist that foul, dishonored flag,
While truckling millions bow,
And kiss the rod, the chain, and gag,
Upheld in terror now.

And we, who see, and hear, and feel,
That mockery of this day,
Shall we, in servile cringing, kneel,
And own the despots' sway?
No, by the rights our sires won,
No, by the rights we claim,
No, while our wrathful blood may run,
No, in our country's name,

No, by our fields of wasted grain,
No, by our smoking walls,
No, by the Vandal-trodden plain,

Our sack'd and ruined halls!

Bring from cach corner of the land

The demon's waste and wreck,

Bring murderous axe, and smoking brand, The hateful pile to deck.

Then think upon the widow's wail,

Think of the maiden's tear,

Think of each wrong the Southern gale

Brings to your sickened ear:

Then by each smoke; then by each thrust

Which caused one anguished thrill;

Then by each deed of hate and lust,

Each heart recorded ill:

Then swear while life's red current flows, While flint can yield the spark,

While arm can nerve for vengeful blows,

Or bullet reach its mark,

New England's lust, New England's greed, Need seek no Southern sky,

While powder burns, or knife can bleed,

Who seeks our soil must die!

CHAPTER VI.

JOURNAL NOTES CONTINUED.-Life in the Casemates.-Some of the Secrets of Foreign "Neutrality."-Southern "Aristocracy."-My Boston Benefactress.-Lin

colniana.-Massachusetts "Chivalry."

'JULY 5.-We have quite a mixed lot of prisoners here. The officers and crews of the Atlanta and Tacony are confined here, and to Captain Webb of the first, and Lieutenant Reed of the latter, I am particularly indebted for much entertainment and kindness. To tell the truth, it is not often you hear intelligent conversation among associates in a prison, or obtain any experience of small courtesies; selfishness, stupidity, vacancy of mind, are most frequently the results of the harsh and scanty life within the casemates, unless one should happen to have been bred a gentleman, for truly no man is "born" such.

But I have been most fortunate in my mess, and I have yet to notice any instance of bickering or of selfish overreaching among us. Yet we have plenty of pleasant controversy. My good friend, Marrs (engineer of the ill-fated Cuba), keeps us all alive with his constant intention of "raising h−1": a vague threat which I have never yet seen him put into practical execution, for he really has an amiable and generous sentiment for everything but the Yankee. Captain Black reads the newspaper aloud every night, and Marrs punctuates with sententious exclamations. Then we have the invariable quarrel of each night about shutting windows and putting out the lights, two proceedings which always give rise to differences of opinion. Marrs must have everything read of the "d-d Yankees," or must have Captain Murden recite his composition of patriotic poetry for the day, before he can compose himself to sleep, which he at last does with objurgations not to be mentioned to ears polite.

July 6.-There are various devices here to induce prisoners to swallow the oath of Yankee allegiance. The most infamous is that practised upon the foreigners, who have been taken on privateers or running the blockade, and who, through the offices of their consuls in New York and Boston, have been offered their release on condition of taking the Yankee oath of allegiance, and clinching it by enlistment in the Yankee army

or navy.

In fact, there appear to be none of the rights of alienage recognized in Yankee jurisdiction. One must "holler" for the Union under all circumstances. In connection with these compulsory tests applied to foreigners, who are in the unfortunate category of blockade-runners, &c., I may supply the following paragraph, which I read some days ago in a letter from Washington, published in a New York paper:

"It appears that the rebel authorities again allow aliens to pass through their lines, as quite a large number of these refugees have reached this city within the past few days. To-day eighteen presented themselves at the provost-marshal's office, and took the oath of allegiance."

So, these men, whose neutral rights had been respected in the Confederacy, find, on reaching Washington, that it is necessary or convenient for them to take the Yankee oath of allegiance. It would seem, indeed, that the Yankees have assumed the task of annexing all nations to their political formulas, overriding all the predilections of foreigners and controlling the sympathies of the world. The arbiters of civilization, the bullies of all Christendom, the coxcombs of creation, they demand everything to give way as Mr. Lincoln "runs his machine" and dispenses the wisdom and bounty of "the best government the world ever saw."

July 7.-We had quite a discussion in our mess to-day. One of the company remarked that in South Carolina a mechanic was not respected as he should be. I took occasion to advance some peculiar opinions of my own: That the democracy at the North was an utterly false one, being an insolent assertion of

equality, a sort of "d-n you, I am as good as you are,” which placed two classes in society in an exasperated and bitter contest that was constantly going on in Yankeedom beneath the outward semblances of its social laws; that this insolent democracy was especially the product of free schools, that educated the population just to the point of irreverence and egotism; that in the South there was to be found the most perfect democracy in the world; that there was a voluntary and tacit acknowledgment of distinctions in Southern society (hence the conservatism of this part of America), and that, this difference once implied, the intercourse between the different classes was unrestricted and genial, with a pleasant admission of equality in all respects where equality was to be properly admitted. These propositions might be expanded into illustration and argument enough to make a book. But surely any one who knows anything of the South must have observed the easy and pleasant intercourse between its social classes, in which the humblest is treated with polite respect, so much in contrast to those insulting assumptions on the one hand and browbeating on the other, which make up Yankee society. Where a laboring man would, in the North, be stopped at the door of the rich by a servant and held at arm's length in any intercourse the patron might find necessary with him, in the South he might be asked to dinner-certainly, would be treated with much more real respect than by the aristocratic Yankee with whom he contests the claim of equality and fraternity.

July 8.-I have received to-day a gratifying letter from my lady friend in Boston. She writes:

"Remember that you are to count us among your friends; and what is the use of friends, if you will not give them the privilege of ministering to you in prison. Send to us for any thing you need. We are of the practical style, and our fingers and feet, as well as our heads and hearts, are at your service."

Such testimonies of sympathy illuminate the prison, and make us think more kindly of the world outside.