y!

I have scribbled my story with a thousand men stirring about me. If any
of my sentences miss their aim, accuse my comrades and the bewilderment
of this martial crowd. For here are four or five thousand others on the
same business as ourselves, and drums are beating, guns are clanking,
companies are tramping, all the while. Our friends of the Eighth,
Massachusetts are quartered under the dome, and cheer us whenever we
pass.

Desks marked John Covode, John Cochran, and Anson Burlingame, have
allowed me to use them as I wrote.

ARMY-HYMN.

"Old Hundred."

O Lord of Hosts! Almighty King!
Behold the sacrifice we bring!
To every arm Thy strength impart,
Thy spirit shed through every heart!

Wake in our breasts the living fires,
The holy faith that warmed our sires;
Thy hand hath made our Nation free;
To die for her is serving Thee.

Be Thou a pillared flame to show
The midnight snare, the silent foe;
And when the battle thunders loud,
Still guide us in its moving cloud.

God of all Nations! Sovereign Lord!
In Thy dread name we draw the sword,
We lift the starry flag on high
That fills with light our stormy sky.

From treason's rent, from murder's stain
Guard Thou its folds till Peace shall reign,--
Till fort and field, till shore and sea
Join our loud anthem, PRAISE TO THEE!

* * * * *

THE PICKENS-AND-STEALIN'S REBELLION.

Had any one ventured to prophesy on the Fourth of March that the
immediate prospect of Civil War would be hailed by the people of the
Free States with a unanimous shout of enthusiasm, he would have been
thought a madman. Yet the prophecy would have been verified by what we
now see and hear in every city, town, and hamlet from Maine to Kansas.
With the advantage of three months' active connivance in the cabinet of
Mr. Buchanan, with an empty treasury at Washington, and that reluctance
to assume responsibility and to inaugurate a decided policy, the common
vice of our politicians, who endeavor to divine and to follow popular
sentiment rather than to lead it, it seemed as if Disunion were
inevitable, and the only open question were the line of separation. So
assured seemed the event, that English journalists moralized gravely on
the inherent weakness of Democracy. While the leaders of the Southern
Rebellion did not dare to expose their treason to the risk of a popular
vote in any one of the seceding