be a villain, but that he is certainly not a fool.
Nobody doubts that he has military or civil aspirations for the future,
and, for such ends, if for nothing else, wishes the approbation of his
loyal countrymen. Now Mr. Dicey testifies to "the almost morbid
sentiment of Americans in the Free States with regard to women": he
tells us that "it renders them ridiculously susceptible to female
influences"; also, that this same "sentiment" among us "protects women
from the natural consequences of their own misconduct." These
characteristics of his countrymen are just as familiar to General Butler
as they are patent to Mr. Dicey; and we hold it to be simply incredible
that one who is at least a very shrewd politician used language which
_he intended_ should convey a meaning that must necessarily consign his
future career to privacy and infamy. It is perhaps not wonderful that
men who have deluged their country in blood, to propagate a system which
consigns unborn millions to enforced harlotry, should put an evil
interpretation upon the indignant stigma applied to _acts_ which, in
civilized States, come from one class of women, and are designed for one
purpose. Neither is it very astonishing that such persons as have been
employed to pump the New-York sewers into the _cloaca maxima_ which sets
towards us from Printing-House Square should share the sensitive
chastity of the slave-masters whose work they are put to do. But it is
passing strange that a gentleman so fair and reasonable as Mr. Dicey,
one so appreciative of the moral tone which Northern society demands of
its representatives, should join in an accusation whose absurdity is
only lost in its infinite offence.

There are small inaccuracies, as well as occasional instances of
carelessness or repetition, in these volumes, which, had circumstances
allowed time for revision, might have been avoided. It would require the
"Pathfinder" himself to discover "Fremont Street" in the city where we
write; the "Courier" is _not_ "the most largely circulated of any Boston
paper"; and our Ex-Mayor "Whiteman" requires no fanciful orthography to
free his name from the obloquy of an over-devotion to the interests of
colored citizens. These are local illustrations of mistakes which are
excusable in view of the commendable expedition with which the work was
issued,--for, in the late crisis of our affairs, an Englishman who had
any good words to give us fulfilled the proverb by giving twice