without any high artistic merit, have a coarse truth that will make them
of worth to the future student of these times. They are all the better
that Mr. Russell was unable, from the nature of the case, to elaborate
and _Timesify_ them.

The first half of the book is both the most interesting and the most
valuable,--the second half being so largely made up of personal
grievances (which, if Mr. Russell had not the dignity to despise them,
he might at least have been wise enough to be silent about) as to be
tedious in comparison. We regret that Mr. Russell should have been
subjected to so many personal indignities for having written what we
believe to have been as impartial an account of what he saw of the
panic-rout which followed the Battle of Manassas as any one could have
written under the same conditions,--though we doubt if the correspondent
of a French newspaper would come off much better, under like
circumstances, in England. It is not beyond the memory of man that the
Duke of Wellington himself was pelted in London. But we are surprised
that Mr. Russell should have so far misapprehended his position, should
have so readily learned to look upon himself as an ambassador, (we
believe the "Times" is not yet recognized by our Government as anything
more than a belligerent power,) as to consider it a hardship that he was
not allowed to accompany General McClellan's army to the Peninsula.
He seems to have thought that every thing happens in America, as La
Rochefoucauld said of France. We are sorry that he was not permitted
to go, for he would have helped us to some clearer understanding of a
campaign about whose conduct and results there seems to be plenty of
passionate misjudgment and very little real knowledge. But when should
we hear the last of the vulgar presumption of an American reporter who
should try to hitch himself in the same way to the staff of a British
army?

Mr. Russell's testimony to the ill effects of slavery is as emphatic, if
not so circumstantial, as that of Mr. Olmsted. It is of the more weight
as coming from a man who saw the system under its least repulsive
aspect. His report also of what he heard from some of the chief plotters
in the Secession conspiracy as to their plans and theories is very
instructive, and deserves special attention now that their allies in the
Free States are beginning to raise their heads again. We have always
believed, and our impression is strengthened by Mr. Russell's