he Confederate onset is acknowledged even here: on
several occasions it has been marked by a wild energy and recklessness
of life, worthy to be compared with the Highland charge, which swept
away dragoon and musketeer at Killiecrankie and Prestonpans.

I am not disposed to question the hardihood or endurance of the Yankee
militant; nor even to deny that a sense of patriotism may have much to
do with his dogged determination to persevere, now, even to the end: but
as for enthusiasm--you must look for it in the romances of war that
crowd the magazines, or in the letters of vividly imaginative
correspondents, or--anywhere but among the Federal rank and file. Such a
feeling is utterly foreign to the national character; nor have I seen a
trace of it in any one of the many soldiers with whom I have spoken of
the war. All the high-flown sentiment of the Times or Tribune will not
prevent the Yankee private from looking at his duty in a hard,
practical, business-like way; he is disposed to give his country its
money's worth, and does so, as a rule, very fairly; but military ardor
in the States is not exactly a consuming fire at this moment. The
hundred-dollar bounty has failed for some time to fill up the gaps made
by death or desertion: and the strong remedy of the Conscription Act
will not be employed a day too soon. Perhaps those who augur favorably
for Northern success expect that coerced levies will fight more fiercely
and endure more cheerfully than the mustered-out volunteers. _Qui vivra
verra._

It is simple justice, to allow that the native soldiers have borne
themselves, as a rule, better than the aliens. The Irish
Brigade--reduced to a skeleton, now, by the casualties of two years--has
performed good service under Meagher, who himself has done much to
redeem the ridicule incurred in early days; but the Germans have not
been distinguished either for discipline, or daring. The Eleventh
Division, whose shameful rout at Chancellorville is still in every one's
mouth, was almost exclusively a "Dutch" corps.

But other difficulties beset a Federal General, besides the
intractability of his armed material, and the jealousies of immediate
subordinates. The uncertainty of his position is in itself a snare. When
the chief is first appointed, no panegyric seems adequate to his past
merit, and the glories are limitless that he is certain to win. If he
should inaugurate his command with the shadow of a success, the
Government or