signed to the command in Mexico, and were feeling so "interested" for his "success and glory," did you know that it was intended, and did you intend, that he should be superseded at the earliest day possible? Did General Scott understand from you explicitly, that he was sent to Mexico in good faith, to execute, at his own discretion, his own plan of reducing Vera Cruz and San Juan d'Ulloa, and then marching on the Mexican capital? If so, was there at the time, a syllable of honest truth in the assurances thus given him? If Mr. Benton's plan was preferred by you, who proposed to let "the idle and solitary Castle of San Juan of Ulloa" alone, were you then particularly "interested' to have General Scott reduce it? How, in this particular, did your feelings "harmonize with the full and fair discharge of your duty" to General Scott? If General Scott wanted certain large transport vessels from the north, and wanted one hundred and forty surf boats, and a large siege train, when Mr. Benton did not want any of them, and you preferred Mr. Benton's plan of operations to General Scott's, how did it "harmonize with the full and fair discharge of your duty" to General Scott, to furnish him with these useless supplies? Did you inform General Scott, in any way, or at any time, of the plot, or design, to supersede him in the command? Was it honest to send him off in ignorance of it? If this design, known to you at the time, did not command your approval, did it ever occur to you to express, or feel, any indignation at being made the chief instrument in playing off so gross a cheat, such a piece of dastardly treachery, on General Scott-in whose "success and glory" you were so deeply "interested?" Did you remonstrate-did you threaten to throw up your office?

We think, when the Secretary shall have answered these significant questions, and some others like them, which will be found in the mind of every intelligent person who understands the facts of the case, and shall have answered them satisfactorily, that it will be quite time enough then for him to expect to be heard with favor, or even with patience, by an enlightened country, either in an attempted vindication of the conduct of the Executive Government towards General Scott, as the Com

mander of our forces in the field, or in bringing criminating or scandalous charges against the military conduct and operations of that eminent soldier.

Our remaining space does not allow us to notice, as we could wish to do, the Secretary's manifesto of the 21st of April. From the opening paragraph in it, to the closing sentence, facts are either misstated, misapplied, or perverted; false imputations are made, false premises laid down, and false inferences drawn. All the materials for a full exposition of this extraordinary paper, though well known to the Secretary, are not yet at our command. In the mean time, little more can be necessary, than to let that document be read in the light of the plain relation of facts which we have now laid before our readers. Only let it be remembered that General Scott was sent to Mexico, with a scheme already laid and matured, by the Executive Government, for betraying and superseding him; and "the neglects, the disappointments, injuries and rebukes," charged to have been inflicted on him, will be seen to be only the natural and necessary sequents of that original policy of imposition and fraud. It is not our purpose-and we are sure it was never General Scott's-to hold the War Department responsible for any failures merely accidental or unavoidable. Such must always occur. Only let the Department show what failures did occur in this way.

The Executive Government did not desire or mean to furnish General Scott, or allow him to supply himself, with a chief of staff in the department of Orders and Correspondence, such as he asked for and was entitled to have, and who should be at once an accomplished officer, a confidential friend, and a practiced writer. They preferred to compel him, as far as they could, to write everything himself. amidst the distractions of his campaign, and thus take the chance of catching him on the hip with some "hasty" letter. Here is the true reason, petty and contemptible as it may seem, why they refused to give him an Assistant Adjutantgeneral-whether major or captain-as he had asked them to do. They refused him such an officer, though there was a vacancy-unless he would take one of their choice, and not of his own. Taylor

missary had not received a dollar of money since they landed at Vera Cruz. Four months' pay was due the soldiers. The army was destitute of necessary clothing, and even the new troops arrived as destitute as the rest. A thousand hands had

to be employed on the spot in making shoes and pantaloons, out of the worst materials, to cover the nakedness of the troops!

But if the Executive Government did not send to General Scott troops, and money, and necessary supplies, there was one thing they did send him-they sent him Mr. Trist. On the 12th of April they received the intelligence of the fall of Vera Cruz and the Castle, and on the 14th Mr. Trist was dispatched with a missive to General Scott, declaring their expectation that Mexico would now "be disposed to offer fair terms of accommodation," and that Mr. Trist was sent forward to "be in readiness to receive any proposals which the enemy may see fit to make for the restoration of peace." Instead of reinforcements, they sent an agent to receive the submission of the enemy-and such an agent! It was not a national Commission, composed of such men as Crittenden and Benton, or Mangum and Calhoun, but it was Mr. Nicholas P. Trist, a clerk in the State Department, and selected seemingly because he was known to entertain at that time a petty spite and enmity to General Scott, who was sent on this errand, as a "confidential agent" of the Government, to the head-quarters of that Commander. General Scott could not be intrusted with this authority, to receive proposals from the enemy, and make a preliminary treaty of peace, under instructions, though this very power was to have been conferred on Mr. Benton, if he had taken the field as Lieutenant-general. It was too important a service to be intrusted to General Scott, though not too important to be committed to Mr. Nicholas P. Trist.

The sequel of the infamous treatment of General Scott by the Executive Government has been answerable to its beginning and its progress. They have been utterly incapable of understanding, or rather, they

paign in the heart of an enemy's country. The Head of Discipline, he has found it impossible to maintain discipline on account of the ignorant, partial, and malicious interference of the political government at home. They have abetted and justified, against the Commander, the outrageous conduct of a fighting General, a gallant soldier enough, but notoriously the most factious and impatiently ambitious man of the army. Arrested by his Commander, the Executive interposes to restore this new political favorite to his command, without a trial, and even without inquiry; and not content with this, he affects to consider the very act of this officer, which was the ground of his arrest-an act of gross insult and outrage to his Commander, and of insubordination hardly short of mutiny-as a rightful and proper and formal exhibition of charges and specifications against his superior; and thereupon he proceeds, first, to dismiss General Scott from his high command, and thenthe punishment having first been inflicted

places him before a Court, picked and packed by the Executive,* for inquiry into the pretended charges against him! It should excite no surprise when we find the Executive, through his Secretary of War, intimating, what he dared not directly assert, that this dismissal of General Scott was only relieving him from command at his own request. Marlborough, after some successful battles, including that of Blenheim, was created a Duke, received vast estates as gifts from the nation, and had a magnificent palace built for him at the public expense. Wellington, at the close of his campaigns in Spain,

When charges were preferred against Colonel Harney, and it became the duty and the right of General Scott to detail a Court Martial for his trial, with characteristic delicacy and generosity, because there had been previously some personal difference between them, the General requested and directed Colonel Harney to select or name his own Court. Not to be outdone in generosity, the gallant Colonel declined to do so. They have been, we believe, Secretary, in their generosity, assign General Towson, the best of friends ever since. The President and and General Caleb Cushing, to be the triers of General Scout! Even the trial, in form, of General Pillow, is the trial of General Scott, and so intended, before such a Court.

was created a Duke, and the nation made him a present, in a single gift, of two millions of dollars. Scott, at the close of his campaign in Mexico, had, in his whole military career, rendered as much signal service, and gained as much glery for his country, by his mighty achievements in war, as Marlborough or Wellington had done for theirs, when they received the rewards we have mentioned; and he receives from his Government, as his reward,

a contemptuous dismissal from his command, and an arraignment before two tribunals-the one military and packed for the occasion, and the other popular-in both cases on charges equally false and frivolous, and also in both cases sought to be pushed against him with whatever vigor, ability, and influence the Executive Government can command for the purpose. But our space is exhausted, and we must conclude. D. D. B.

RESPECTING a book so original as this, and written with so much power of imagination, it is natural that there should be many opinions. Indeed, its power is so predominant that it is not easy after hasty reading to analyze one's impressions so as to speak of its merits and demerits with confidence. We have been taken and carried through a new region, a melancholy waste, with here and there patches of beauty; have been brought in contact with fierce passions, with extremes of love and hate, and with sorrow that none but those who have suffered can understand. This has not been accomplished with ease, but with an ill-mannered contempt for the decencies of language, and in a style which might resemble that of a Yorkshire farmer who should have endeavored to eradicate his provincialism by taking lessons of a London footman. We have had many sad bruises and tumbles in our journey, yet it was interesting, and at length we are safely arrived at a happy conclusion.

The first feeling with which we turn back

1846.

to recall the incidents passed through, is one of uneasiness and gloom; even the air of summer, so reviving to city dwellers, does not dispel it. To write or think about the tale, without being conscious of a phase of sadness, is impossible; which mood of the mind, if it appear to the reader, let him not attribute to an over susceptibility, unless he has read the book with no such impression himself.

We shall take for granted that a novel which has excited so unusual an attention, has been or will soon be in the hands of most of our readers of light literature, and shall therefore write rather from than upon it. We will not attempt an outline of the story; it is so void of events that an outline would be of small assistance to any who have not read it, and would only be tedious to those who have. It is a history of two families during two generations, and all transpires under their two roofs. The genealogy is a little perplexing, and as an assistance to the reader's recollection we give it in a note.†

If we did not know that this book has