regoing--650th paragraph, 1,825 regulations--a regulation
prohibiting officers of the army from detailing in private letters
or reports the movements of the army, which the general in chief is
resolved to enforce so far as it may be in his power. As yet but two
echoes from home of the brilliant operations of our army in this
basin have reached us--the first in a New Orleans and the second
through a Tampico newspaper.

"It requires not a little charity to believe that the principal
heroes of the scandalous letters alluded to did not write them, or
especially procure them to be written; and the intelligent can be at
no loss in conjecturing the authors, chiefs, partisans, and pet
familiars. To the honor of the service, the disease--pruriency of
fame not earned--can not have seized upon half a dozen officers
present, all of whom, it is believed, belonged to the same two
coteries.

"False credit may no doubt be attained at hand by such despicable
self-puffings and malignant exclusion of others, but at the expense
of the just esteem and consideration of all honorable officers who
love their country, their profession, and the truth of history. The
indignation of the great number of the latter class can not fail in
the end to bring down the conceited and envious to their proper
level."

The day after the publication of the above General Orders General
Worth forwarded to army headquarters a communication in which he
said:

"I learn with much astonishment that the prevailing opinion in this
army points the imputation of 'scandalous' contained in the third, and
the invocation of the 'indignation of the great number' in the fourth
paragraph of Orders No. 349, printed and issued yesterday, to myself
as one of the officers alluded to. Although I can not suppose those
opinions to be correctly formed, nevertheless, regarding the high
source from which such imputations flow, so seriously affecting the
qualities of a gentleman, the character and usefulness of him at whom
they may be aimed, I feel it incumbent on me to ask, as I do now most
respectfully, of the frankness and justice of the commander in chief,
whether in any sense or degree he condescended to apply, or designed
to have applied, the epithets contained in that order to myself, and
consequently whether the general military opinion or sentiment in that
matter has taken a right or intended direction. I trust I shall be
pardoned fo