, and fancies that the more he
writes, the greater statesman he becomes.

At the beginning of this month, I wrote to the French minister, M.
Mercier, a friendly and respectful note, warning him against
meddling with politicians and busybodies. I told him that, before he
could even suspect it, such men would bring his name before the
public in a way neither pleasant nor profitable to him. M. Mercier
took it in good part, and cordially thanked me for my advice.

_Nov. 19._--Burnside means well, and has a good heart; but something
more is required to make a capable captain, more especially in such
times as those in which we are living. It is said that his staff is
well organized; God be praised for that, if it really is so. In that
case, Burnside will be the first among the loudly-lauded and
self-conceited West-Point men, forcibly to impress both the military
and the civilian mind in America, with a wholesome consciousness of
the paramount importance to an army of a thoroughly competent and
trustworthy staff.

The division of the army into three grand corps is good; it is at
once wise and well-timed, following the example set by Napoleon,
when he invaded Russia in 1812. If his subordinate generals will but
do well, I have entire confidence in Hooker. He is the man for the
time and for the place. As a fighting man, Sumner is fully and
unquestionably reliable; but I have my doubts about Franklin. He is
cold, calculating, and ambitious, and he has the especially bad
quality of being addicted to the alternate blowing of hot and cold.
Burnside did a good thing in confiding to General Siegel a separate
command.

The _New York Times_ begins to mend its bad ways; but how long will
it continue in the better path?

_Nov. 20._--England stirs up and backs up rebellion and disunion
here; but, in Europe, for the sake of the unity of barbarism,
Islamism, and Turkey, England throttles, and manacles, and lays
prostrate beneath the feet of the Osmanli, the Greeks, the Sclavi,
the heroic Montenegrins. England is the very incarnation of a
treachery and a perfidy previously unexampled in the history of the
world. The _Punica fides_, so fiercely denounced and so bitterly
satirized by the historians and poets of old Rome, was truthful if
compared to the _Fides Anglica_ of our own day.

_Nov. 22._--Our army seems to be massed so as to be able to wedge
itself in between Jackson in the valley and Lee at Gordonsville. By
a bold manoeuvre, e