modern military book,-yourself only excepted." How many hours of intense, absorbed, brain-wearying application are implied in that simple but pregnant sentence !

There was something almost dreamlike and unreal about life in Washington for most men during those first three months of the new government. The very excitement and the tenseness of the strain in which men's minds were held removed the life they were living so far away from any life which any of them had ever before lived or thought of living.

The hazy atmosphere of semi-tragic unreality pervaded at last even the White House itself. The bright spring weather aided the effect of the increasing glitter of uniforms and flutter of flags and the all but ceaseless flow and crash of martial music from the noisy bands of the arriving regiments.

There had been no battle fought since Fort Sumter was bombarded, and there were not wanting false prophets of peace to chirrup gayly that there would be no actual bloodshed.

Through all this over-strained, unnatural, feverish, misty state of things came suddenly the tramp of the movement across the Potomac on the 24th of May. Virginia threw open her gates by a vote of her people, and the Union troops marched in: but precious blood was spilled upon the threshold.

The shot fired murderously by the Alexandria tavern-keeper struck a mark in the very household of the President. Colonel Ellsworth was but a boy of twenty-four, but he had won the admiration of the entire country by his genius and energy. He had journeyed to Washington with Mr. Lincoln, who had become warmly attached to him, and shortly afterwards appointed him a second-lieutenant in the regular army. The regiment he raised among the firemen of New York, under the call for volunteers, was considered second to none in its promise of usefulness under such a commander. He was a type and personal embodiment of the young manhood which was springing forward at the call of their country's peril. He

was, as such type and representative, to offer a bloody illustration of the true meaning of the summons.

The Sunday before the eventful day, Ellsworth was at the White House, less as a guest than as a well-loved member of the household. To the same place his body was borne after the murder, and the funeral ceremonies were held in the gaudy "East Room," sadly dressed and draped for the occasion.

That Mr. Lincoln grieved for his bright, genial, gifted young friend; that all the sorrow he expressed for him was real, requires no saying. Nevertheless, to him as to the people generally, the death of Ellsworth marked the end of a worn-out policy and the beginning of a new order of thoughts and feelings.

A splendid regiment of "Ellsworth Avengers," the 44th New York Volunteers, was speedily formed, but the blood upon the Virginia threshold did not call for human vengeance. It did but witness before God and men that the day of compromise, negotiation, dallying, delay, had passed, and that the day of wrath had come,-the day for which Mr. Lincoln had been buying ships and enlisting men without due form and warrant of statute law.

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE EUROPEAN QUESTION.

The Secretary of State-England and France-Privateers and Piracy-The New Navy-Whaling Schooners as War Vessels.

MR. LINCOLN's education for the duties he was now performing had been given him through long and painful processes by all of which he had faithfully profited, but his attainments were all in a peculiar manner limited by the boundaries of his own country. He spoke no other than the English tongue. He knew little of other nations beyond a moderate acquaintance with their geography and history and some stray ideas conveyed to him by such representatives as they had sent to America as emigrants. From these latter, indeed, he had learned all they had to teach, and such acquisitions were of value to him now; but all the emigrants had been men and women of "the people."

Of the governing castes and classes of Europe, and of European politics, the cesspool in which kings and their ministers dabbled and fished and groped for the prizes of war and diplomacy, he knew almost nothing and cared but little more.

He could but be aware that the great maritime nations of the Old World were watching with jealous eyes the growth of the new power in the West over which he had been called to rule, but he had great faith in the Atlantic Ocean and the supposable common-sense of European statesmen. So great was this faith of his that it came perilously near to leading him into an error. It would surely have done so but for the simple directness of the doctrine he at once formulated for the government of the foreign policy of the United States.

"This is our own affair," he said, in effect. "It is a family quarrel with which foreign nations have nothing to do, and they must let it alone."

The practical details of the processes by which that doctrine was to be communicated to European powers were left almost altogether to the care of Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State. They could not have been intrusted to a brain more capable or to a heart more utterly worthy of the momentous trust. There was little need for Mr. Lincoln to add the State Department to his other burdens while its management was under such an eye and hand as those of the practised New York statesman. Here, at least, there was something in the nature of complete relief, and the weary ruler accepted it as frankly as it was given. The friendship between him and his "minister of foreign affairs," from the very first, assumed a warm and personal character. The gossips who strove to give it any other significance, then or afterwards, did but testify their incapacity to understand the broad patriotism and generous mutual confidence of these two men.

In training, as in natural gifts, Mr. Seward was as unlike Mr. Lincoln as he well could be; but they had one thing in common and one tie of measureless brotherhood in their unselfish devotion to the performance of the great work which God had laid upon them. If, at first, they were a little slow, Mr. Seward somewhat the slower, in coming to a mutual understanding of each other's character, aim, and purpose, that was all the more surely attained in the course of joint toil and counsel and anxiety. Together, each in his appointed place, they labored in harmony to the end.

It was well known that one of the first acts of Mr. Davis, on assuming the reins of power, had been to dispatch emissaries to the more important courts of Europe, notably to those of England and France. Much preliminary work, of a preparatory kind, had before that time been accomplished by the unofficial agents of the intended rebellion. A strong feeling of

sympathy for the South had been most skillfully created. In Europe, as in America, the "War" had been in progress for months before Mr. Lincoln's inauguration. Up to the close of the Buchanan Administration the cause of the South had been vigorously served abroad, in not a few instances, by the official and accredited representatives of the National Government at Washington.

It was difficult, at first, for foreign diplomacy to find a place for the insertion of an entering wedge of interference. The stern directness of Mr. Lincoln's 'own policy was shortly to offer one, in such a shape as should present the most tempting bait and with it the most trying problem. As early as the 17th of April, 1861, three days after the surrender of Fort Sumter, Mr. Davis issued a proclamation offering "letters of marque and reprisal," under the seal of the Confederate States, to armed privateers of all nations.

It was truly a tempting offer to the supposable pirates of Europe, but it was rendered somewhat less so, in about fortyeight hours, by the counter-proclamation of President Lincoln. This document contained a deal of salutary warning and had a most beneficial effect. It notified the "privateers" invited by Mr. Davis that they would be "held amenable to the laws of the United States for the prevention and punishment of piracy."

This declaration was in strict accordance with the more recent utterances of the great commercial powers and with the treaties they had mutually entered into. At the same time a rigid blockade was declared of all the ports of the States then included in the Confederacy. Those of Virginia and North Carolina were added in due time.

The most vigorous efforts were made to render the blockade effective. Ships were fitted out and put to sea even more rapidly than regiments on land were raised and equipped. The new navy of the United States was in the active performance of its sudden duties before the first company of skirmishers marched across the Long Bridge.