liticians who have been most bitter in their denunciation of
"geographical parties." Here comes a little Western lawyer, with
unlimited resources of slang and slender capital of ideas, barely
redeemed from being an absolute blackguard by the humanizing influences
of a New England college, but showing fewer and fewer symptoms of
civilization as he forgets the lessons of his collegiate life; and _he_
delights an audience of New York "roughs," adopted citizens of Celtic
extraction, and lager-loving Germans, (do not cocks always crow longest
and loudest on a dung-hill?) by the novel information, that "Puritanism
is a reptile" and the cause of all our troubles, and that we shall never
fulfil our national destiny until Puritanism has been crushed. Let us
not elevate this nauseating nonsense into importance by attempting a
reply. Such men must be left to follow out their inevitable instincts.
They are not worth the trouble necessary to civilize them. Mr. Rarey
succeeded in taming a zebra from the London Zooelogical Gardens; but
a single lesson could not permanently reclaim the beast, and it soon
relapsed into its native and normal ferocity. One experiment sufficed
to show the power of the artist; no possible increase of value in the
educated animal would have justified a prolonged and perfect training.

You ask if we have gained any advantages commensurate with our efforts,
or with the high-sounding phrase of our declared purpose. Let us look at
this a moment. Suppose we begin with a glance at the other side of
the picture. Has all the boasting, have all the promises, been on the
Federal side? Did we hear nothing of the Confederate flag floating over
Faneuil Hall?--nothing of Washington falling into the hands of the
enemy?--nothing of a festive winter in Philadelphia and a
general distribution of spoils in New York?--nothing of foreign
intervention?--nothing of the cowardice of Northern Mudsills and
the omnipotence of King Cotton? Decidedly, the Rebels began with a
sufficiently startling programme. Let us see how far they have carried
it out. As they were clearly the assailants, we have an undoubted right
to ask what they have accomplished _aggressively_. We say, then, that,
excepting in the case of one brief raid, the soil of a single Free State
has never been polluted by the hostile tread of an invading force; that
every battle-field has been within the limits of States claimed as
Confederate; that, while the war has desolate