selfish, and the counterfeits.

_July 27._--_Philadelphia._ Flags in all the streets, volunteers
parading and drilling. Prosperity, activity and devotion permeate
the country. So at least I am led to believe. All this is so
refreshing, after witnessing in Washington such strenuous efforts
how not to do it.

Bad news. I learn that Gilmore is repulsed. When the _forlorn hope_
entered Fort Wagner, no support promptly came, and the heroes, black
and white, were massacred or expelled. Gilmore ought to have been
more cautious, and not to have undertaken an operation which was on
its outside stamped with impossibility. Perhaps Gilmore obeyed
peremptory orders. Who gave them?

Lee's army escapes through Chester Gap, and thus we have not cut the
rebels from Richmond, and now they are ahead of us. Again
out-manoeuvred! and _nobody's fault_, only the campaign prolonged
_ad infinitum_. Perhaps it is in the programme!

_July 28._--_Philadelphia._ The petty, narrow, school conceit
imbibed in the West Point nursery, is the stumbling-block barring
everywhere the expansion of a healthy and vigorous activity. I
listened to the heaviest absurdities and fogyism on military affairs
_oracularly_ preached by one of the great West Pointers on duty
here.

_July 31._--_Long Branch._ Away from personal contact, even from the
view of politicians, of plotters, of lickspittles. How refreshing,
how invigorating, how soothing!

Mr. Seward, with a due tail, visits Fortress Monroe. What for?
Is it to organize some underground road to reunion on the
Mercier-Seward-Richmond programme?

One well-informed writes me that the last programme of Lincoln,
Halleck and Meade is, that the army of the Potomac is to keep Lee at
bay, but not to attack. If true, how well designed to give time to
Lee to do what he likes, to reorganize, to send away his troops
where he may please, to call them back--in one word to be fully at
his ease on our account. Will this country ever escape the tutorship
of sham science?

_July 31._--_Long Branch._ Seward's concession policy towards France
bears fruit in Mexico. Of course the _Decembriseur_ outwitted the
Weed-Albany-Auburn politician statesman. But it is not the ignorant
foreign policy which strengthened and strengthens the French policy
in Mexico. It is the blunders, the tergiversations, the gropings,
and the crimes of our internal domestic policy, which, protracting
the war, allows the French conspirator to murder the