vote. The elector himself must stand on an elevated
level before by his vote he raises one or several above that level.
When the people's vote confers the highest trust to one rather below
than in the level, and still less one above the level, then even the
most intelligent people in the world, being thus misdirected,
misconducted, confused, in a very short time become almost enervated,
and, so to speak, loses its self-possession, and its sense of duty and
of right becomes shaken, its intellectual light dimmed. _Exempla sunt
odiosa._

_June 14._--The cavalry expedition over the Rappahannock was to
arrest any further offensive movements of the rebels. But lo! the
rebel army, so to speak, spreads in all directions, and takes the
offensive. We do not even know positively where Lee is going, where
he will appear and strike. We are shaking in, and for, Washington.

"Weh, Messina! wehe, wehe, wehe!"

Mr. Lincoln is unshaken in his confidence in Hooker and Butterfield.

_June 15._--By a bold and rapid manoeuvre Lee has thrown his troops
over the valley, over the Potomac, into Maryland, and God alone
knows where Lee will stop. Lee's advance must have been already on
the Potomac when the slaughter of our cavalry over the Rappahannock
was planned at the various head-quarters. How splendidly Lee's
movements have been arrested by that demonstration! Lee is on the
Potomac, and it seems that his movements have been ignored. His
armies, to be sure, have not been surrounded by a cloud, as the
Jews were in their exodus from the land of bondage, but the cloud
was hanging over the head-quarters in the army and in Washington.

_June 16._--The North invaded--threatened, shaken to the marrow! The
audacity of the rebels is stimulated by our sluggishness. If the
accounts in the War Department are true, then from Fortress Monroe
to the Potomac, including Baltimore and Maryland, we have about two
hundred thousand men, and the rebels dare! O, the rebels! what a
desperate conception, what a lightning-like execution! Dutifully
re-echoing the words uttered by their masters, the partisans of the
Administration console themselves by saying that "this invasion of
the North will have the effect of stirring up the North from its
lethargy." O, you blasphemers! worse blasphemers than ever have been
stoned or burned alive! Is the North not pouring forth its blood and
its treasures, and are they not all squandered by counterfeits?

_June 16._--The d