e article is noble and friendly, as is all which up
to this day has been done by Alexander II. Mr. Stoeckl, the Russian
minister here, considerably contributes that such sound and friendly
views on the condition of our affairs are entertained by the Russian
Cabinet.

_September 11._--Imbeciles agitate the question of mediation. European
cabinets will not offer it now, and nobody, not even the rebels, would
accept. No possible terms and basis exist for any mediation. A Solomon
could not find them out. If Jackson and Lee were to shell Washington,
then only the foreign ministers may be requested to step in and to
settle the terms of a capitulation or of an evacuation. The foreign
ministers here could act as mediators only if asked; not otherwise. I
am sure it will come out that the invasion of Maryland by the rebels
is made under the pressure exercised in Richmond by the Maryland
chivalry in the service of the rebellion. These runaways probably
promised an insurrection in Maryland, provided a rebel force crosses
the Potomac. (Wrote it to England.)

All around helplessness and confusion. Conscientiously I make all
possible efforts to record what I believe to be true, and then truth
will take care of herself.

After the study of the campaigns of Frederick II., above all, after
the study of those marvellous campaigns, combinations, manoeuvres of
Napoleon, to witness every day the combinations of McClellan is more
disgusting, more nauseous for the mind, than can be for the stomach
the strongest dose of emetic.

The last catastrophe at Bull Run and at Manassas has a slight
resemblance with the catastrophe at Waterloo. The conduct of the
mutinous generals here is similar to the conduct of some of the French
generals during the battle of Ligny and Quatre-Bras. But here was
mutiny, and there demoralization produced by general and deeply rooted
and fatally unavoidable causes. The demoralization of the French
generals came at the end of a terrible epoch of struggles and
sacrifices, of material exhaustion, when the faith in the destinies of
Napoleon was extinct; here mutiny and demoralization seize upon the
newly-born era.

_September 13._--What a good-natured people are the Americans! A
regiment of Pennsylvania infantry quartered for the night on the
sidewalk of the streets; officers, of course, absent; the poor
soldiers stretched on the stones, when so many empty large buildings,
when the empty (intellectually and materially