service for the war, etc.

Like other ills, feeble health has its compensations, especially for
those who unite restless vanity and ambition to a feminine desire for
sympathy. It has been much the habit of Mr. Stephens to date
controversial epistles from "a sick chamber," as do ladies in a delicate
situation. A diplomatist of the last century, the Chevalier D'Eon, by
usurping the privileges of the opposite sex, inspired grave doubts
concerning his own.]

CHAPTER IV.

OPENING OF THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN.

Pursuing "the even tenor of his way," Johnston rapidly increased the
efficiency of his army. Furloughed men returned in large numbers before
their leaves had terminated, many bringing new recruits with them.
Divisions were formed, and officers selected to command them. Some
islands of dry land appeared amid the sea of mud, when the movement of
the Federal forces in our front changed the theatre of war and opened
the important campaign of 1862.

When overtaken by unexpected calamity African tribes destroy the fetich
previously worshiped, and with much noise seek some new idol in which
they can incarnate their vanities and hopes. Stunned by the rout at
Manassas, the North pulled down an old veteran, Scott, and his
lieutenant, McDowell, and set up McClellan, who caught the public eye at
the moment by reason of some minor successes in Western Virginia, where
the Confederate General, Robert Garnett, was killed. It is but fair to
admit that the South had not emulated the wisdom of Solomon nor the
modesty of Godolphin. The capture of Fort Sumter, with its garrison of
less than a hundred men, was hardly Gibraltar; yet it would put the
grandiloquent hidalgoes of Spain on their mettle to make more clatter
over the downfall of the cross of St. George from that historic rock.
McClellan was the young Napoleon, the very god of war in his latest
avatar. While this was absurd, and in the end injurious to McClellan, it
was of service to his Government; for it strengthened his loins to the
task before him--a task demanding the highest order of ability and the
influence of a demigod. A great war was to be carried on, and a great
army, the most complex of machines, was necessary.

The cardinal principles on which the art of war is based are few and
unchangeable, resembling in this the code of morality; but their
application varies as the theatre of the war, the genius and temper of
the people engaged, and the kind of arms emp