antagonist with the handle) oddly confounds with the, "bloated
aristocracy;" whereas they are very commonly pallid, undervitalized, shy,
sensitive creatures, whose only birthright is an aptitude for
learning,--even these poor New England Brahmins of ours, subvirates of an
organizable base as they often are, count as full men, if their courage
is big enough for the uniform which hangs so loosely about their slender
figures.

A young man was drowned not very long ago in the river running under our
windows. A few days afterwards a field piece was dragged to the water's
edge, and fired many times over the river. We asked a bystander, who
looked like a fisherman, what that was for. It was to "break the gall,"
he said, and so bring the drowned person to the surface. A strange
physiological fancy and a very odd non sequitur; but that is not our
present point. A good many extraordinary objects do really come to the
surface when the great guns of war shake the waters, as when they roared
over Charleston harbor.

Treason came up, hideous, fit only to be huddled into its dishonorable
grave. But the wrecks of precious virtues, which had been covered with
the waves of prosperity, came up also. And all sorts of unexpected and
unheard-of things, which had lain unseen during our national life of
fourscore years, came up and are coming up daily, shaken from their bed
by the concussions of the artillery bellowing around us.

It is a shame to own it, but there were persons otherwise respectable not
unwilling to say that they believed the old valor of Revolutionary times
had died out from among us. They talked about our own Northern people as
the English in the last centuries used to talk about the
French,--Goldsmith's old soldier, it may be remembered, called one