slavery. All such form a class of superficial
politicians, of compromisers with their creed, and are corrupters of
others.

How ardently I would prefer not to so often accuse others; but more
than forty years of revolutionary and public life and experience have
taught me to discriminate between deep convictions and assumed
ones--to highly venerate the first, and to keep aloof from the second.
Gold is gold, and pinchbeck is pinchbeck, in character as in metal.

McClellan acts as if he had taken the oath to some hidden and veiled
deity or combination, by all means not to ascertain anything about the
condition of the enemy. Any European if not American old woman in
pants long ago would have pierced the veil by a strong reconnoissance
on Centreville. Here "all quiet on the Potomac." And I hear generals,
West Pointers, justifying this colossal offence against common sense,
and against the rudiments of military tactics, and even science. Oh,
noble, but awfully dealt with, American people!

At times Mr. Seward talks and acts as if he lacked altogether the
perception of the terrible earnestness of the struggle, of the dangers
and responsibilities of his political position, as well now before the
people as hereafter before history. Often I can scarcely resist
answering him, Beware, beware!

Lincoln belittles himself more and more. Whatever he does is done
under the pressure of events, under the pressure of the public
opinion. These agencies push Lincoln and slowly move him,
notwithstanding his reluctant heaviness and his resistance. And he a
standard-bearer of this noble people!

Those mercenary, ignorant, despicable scribblers of the London Times,
of the Tory Herald, of the Saturday Review, and of the police papers
in Paris, as the Constitutionnel, the Pays, the Patrie, all of them
lie with unparalleled facility. Any one knows that those hungry
quill-heroes can be got for a good dinner and a _douceur_.

I am sorry that the Americans ascribe to Louis Napoleon and to the
French people the hostility to human rights as shown by those
_echappes des bagnes de la litterature_. Louis Napoleon and the French
people have nothing in common with those literary blacklegs.

The _Journal des Debats_, the _Opinion Nationale_, the _Presse_, the
_Siecle_, etc., constitute the true and honest organs of opinion in
France. In the same way A. de Gasparin speaks for the French people
with more authority than does Michel Chevalier, who knows m