The general instructions of Her Majesty's Government preclude my interfering without special orders from them, in behalf of American citizens captured on board British vessels, seized for breach of blockade; and as Her Majesty's Government have not, on the present occasion, ordered me to interfere in your behalf, it is, of course, my duty to abstain from doing so.

EDWARD A. POLLARD, Esq., Fort Warren, Boston.

LYONS.

FORT WARREN, BOSTON HARBOR, July 22, 1864. LORD LYONS, Envoy Extraordinary for Her Britannic Majesty, near Washington, D. C.:

MY LORD: I thank you for your courtesy in replying to my different letters. I have, of course, no further claim to make upon it in that regard. But it is not improper that I should express a respectful dissent from the conclusion you have reached, and inform you that whenever released from prison, I shall prefer to the Home Government of Her Majesty a formal claim for indemnity for a damaging and cruel imprisonment, to which I consider I have been subjected by the failure to obtain that protection under a neutral flag, which was due to me under the law of nations and that of humanity.

I cannot concede, what is certainly a novel and inhuman doctrine in international law, that a passenger on a British vessel which has broken the blockade, is so tainted in the breach of blockade that he may be taken on the high seas, under the neutral flag, as human prize by his enemy. If, as I am left to understand, my Lord, this is the position of your Government, it follows that it assents to a system of Kidnapping under its flag on the high seas, and establishes against itself an astounding PRECEDENT. For if I, a passenger, was a legal prize on the Greyhound, then the British passenger in the same circumstances is equally so, being no more protected by the British flag on the high seas than I should be, myself; and if, in these same circumstances, the Englishman does not share my fate, but is absolved by diplomatic intercession, this is the

favor of the Yankee Government, which may at any time be withdrawn.

At one time your Lordship wrote me that you had requested my release. At another time, you write you cannot interfere in my behalf in any manner whatever. I am left to imagine that there is no other cause for this contradiction than that I am a citizen of a friendless and persecuted Government, towards which, yours, my Lord, professes neutrality, but, I must say, practices uniform disfavor.

Whenever restored to liberty I shall have full opportuntity to testify to the damage of my imprisonment, as measure of the indemnity I shall claim from the British Government. But your Lordship will already perceive from the enclosed copy of my letter to the Secretary of the United States Navy, which has never been answered or noticed by him, that I have in vain entreated a parole on account of my health, in circumstances which appeal not only to sentiments of pity, but to the lowest senses of humanity.

I trust that your Lordship will find nothing in what I have written inconsistent with the high and courteous consideration due personally to yourself, or improper to be communicated, as I desire, to your Government in the interests of justice and humanity. I have the honor, &c.,

Your obedient servant,

EDW'D A. POLLARD.

July 21.-It appears from Yankee newspapers which have got into the casemates, that there has been undertaken at Niagara Falls a peace negotiation after the style of Brandreth's pills advertisements; in which Horace Greeley is intermediary of the Confederates, George N. Saunders, their fugleman—a flippant telegram of the latter to James Gordon Bennett, com mencing the proceedings. It is to be hoped there is nothing in all this: that the Confederate Government has not for the fourth time in this war, when there is already a standing tender of peace and an abundant definition of its terms in the official acts and expressions of Congress and the Executive, sought the back-door of Washington, and put itself in a position to be snubbed and cuffed out of countenance by the master of the "White House." But we shall see how much of au

thority there is in these proceedings, and how much of the selfexhibition of notoriety-hunters and adventurers. In the mean time our little circle here entertains itself with the credulity of the Yankee newspapers, and their remarkable fecundity in making the wish father to the thought. An intelligent friend in Boston writes me this evening, in dead earnest, "terms of peace are passing over the wires," and concludes with a flourish of piety and a fervent thanksgiving for the happy news.

July 22.—We were permitted for the first time this morning to walk a short distance on the island. I was touched to see the grave of a Confederate prisoner beneath the ramparts.

On our return to the casemates I found in the morning mail a comforting and sweet letter from my lady friend in Boston. I cannot forbear making an extract from it, as an evidence of the kind and Christian spirit of this excellent person:

"I can well understand all you must suffer of anxiety, and I sympathize most deeply with you. It is hard to bring one's reason and philosophy to the rescue, under circumstances of such peculiar trial. But, my dear friend, when these fail, faith comes in, and your heart will be lifted out of the depths, and comforted in the assurance that joy will surely come after a night of darkness and desolation. In quietness and confidence shall be your strength; and, if I ask you to trust, I am sure you will bear with me, and not think I am preaching to you. If I cared less, I would not say this to you. But it saddens me to know that you are suffering from a miserable feeling of illness and depression; and in my longing to do or say something to comfort you, I may run-as women are apt to do-into what you would not be blamed for considering pious platitudes."

"I hope you will like and find readable 'Prescott's Life.' I have not read it yet, but promise myself that pleasure. If you will give the volume we send a place in your library, it will hereafter recall to you a passage in your life, which you may then not be entirely unwilling to remember. For this reason, I trust you will not consider it a burden, that I ask you not to return it. Remember if you think of any thing you would like, you are to write at once to No. - for it. May God bless you, dear friend."

CHAPTER X.

JOURNAL NOTES CONTINUED.-A Yankee's Confession: Confederate Civilization.A "Map of Busy Life" in Boston.Sickness and Reflections in Prison: Female Philosophy on the War.

...

JULY 25.-The Boston Traveller says: "It would only be as the vanquished that we could consent to Southern ‘independence.' For observe what that 'independence' would mean. It would mean our abdication of the position of the American nation. Let but the Southern Confederacy be acknowledged by us, and it would succeed immediately to the place formerly held by the United States, in the estimation of the world. It would become the first power in North America, and, if Maximilian should there succeed, Mexico would have the second place, while ours should be the third."

The Yankee is right. We Confederates are not only fighting in this war for independence, but for the front rank in the civilization of this continent, and for a destiny of power as well as of liberty. Such considerations ennoble the contest. Such prizes should stimulate our exertions.

But, apart from this reflection, there is an important truth involved in the declaration quoted above, which the Boston editor unconsciously admits and does not develope. It is that the South represents in this contest the better part of American civilization, represents superior ideas, represents what is most valuable in the traditions of the past, for it is only by such titles she could succeed "to the place formerly held by the United States."

And here opens an infinite field of interest to the intelligent inquirer. A comparison: on the one side, the North-its false and phosphorescent civilization-showy free schools, the nests of every social pestilence-material gauds—a society rotten with insolent agrarianism called "democracy;" on the the other side, the South-its virtuous simplicity-the extraordinary intelligence of a people educated, not so much by

books, as by free institutions and by a peculiarly free interchange of mind between all classes of society-a popular innocence of mad reforms, "isms," morbid appetites, unnatural vices, and other products of New England free schools—and, most conspicuous of all, a true and noble democracy; of which it may be said that, though the white laboring men of the South defers to those who are his superiors (not indeed in rights, but in the various particulars of society), no one more quickly or effectually than he resents the insult or contumely of power. Here are heads of reflection for a volume; and somebody should write it, to show the world how little it knows of the Confederacy, and how much it has been deluded by the lies, the boasts, the Thrasonical literature, and Puritanical pretence of the Yankee.

July 28.

“What is it, but a map of busy life.”—CowPER.

I have been interested to-day in a specimen of Yankee literature, "for the home-circle;" the Boston Saturday Evening Gazette, an excellent specimen of that New England family literature which crops out in hebdomadals, illustrated papers, and other tokens of literary civilization.

With the usual amount of maudlin stories and poetry and reading matter for the home-circle, the Saturday Evening Gazette furnishes its readers with a double-rate advertisement, in editorial type, on the terrors of masturbation. This advertisement of a Boston quack is entitled "an essay," and placed in a conspicuous part of the paper, where it is impossible for the eye to avoid the nasty mess of literature and obscenity.

Let us look at the editorial columns. First we have the report of a sermon of a Boston clergyman, who edifies us with this discovery in the history and politics of America:

"The war of 1812 was an aggressive war, commenced in opposition to the wisdom of our best and wisest statesmen, to help Napoleon Bonaparte, the bulwark of despotism on the continent, and to destroy England, the last refuge in the whole world for the oppressed."

Following this instructive sermon are editorial "puffs" of