alked about, we doubt whether there
are many more miserable men in the world than President Abraham Lincoln.
The bitter, bitter tears which Louis XVI. ... shed because of his own
unfitness have been chronicled; but he, knowing his incompetence, was
born to the estate of king; the American President wriggled himself
forward into notoriety." "To an American, all the world seemed bound up
in his Boston or Philadelphia.... He could whip John Bull, and John Bull
could whip all the world. As, since that, he has been 'whipped into a
cocked hat' by his own relations, we hope some of the conceit has been
taken out of him." Yes, unhappy that we are, the secret is at last
revealed. We carry bowie-knives in our breast-pockets (venturing to
discard for once, under the protection of our Transatlantic Mentor, the
usual term of _bosom-pocket_). We dine off the stands of fowl. We have
come out poorly under trial, our finances are deranged, our country
bankrupt, our confidence in Government lost, and we have no loyalty,
because there is nothing to be loyal to. We are tossing on a sea of
anarchy, we are rushing on to ruin, we have been braggart in peace and
cowardly in war, and are at this moment whipped by our own relations
into such a cocked hat as was never before seen. We do not credit the
order to stop recruiting, and we have no belief in the evacuation of
Richmond. We are confident that Sherman is gasping in the last ditch,
that Jefferson Davis is dictator at Washington, and that General Grant
is flying in his wife's gown before the victorious legions of Lee.

In his preface, the writer of this book repels the charge of being like
Thackeray and Dickens. We can assure him, that, with an American public,
he may spare himself that trouble. He is not in the smallest danger of
being mistaken for either of those eminent writers. He is so entirely
unlike them that we do not for a moment suspect him of having attempted
to imitate them. We do not even reckon him their disciple, nor Bacon's,
nor Montaigne's, nor Steele's, nor any other's whose plan he professes
himself to have adopted; for a disciple is a learner, which the Gentle
Man seems never capable of becoming. Good and bad alike, he is a feeble
and confused echo of all men's notions, but the steadfast adherent of
none. The snob's soul within him bows down to the authority of great
men, yet he produces their great thoughts in disjointed and distorted
shape. He does not scruple to sneer w