immense flotilla of armed men. Gen. Grant elated with the prospect telegraphs that "in a few more days Richmond will be hemmed in, and its fate sealed." Portentous shadows, therefore, exclaim Federal advocates are beginning to stretch themselves over the above city. A great carnival is approaching, in which the angel of death is to cut down Lee and his scarred and sun-tanned veterans, or they are to be formed into a line to await the executive clemency at Washington with halters around their necks for defending their rights of self government which they had been taught to believe encircled their fires, altars, and homes. How fearful the destiny that now seems poised over them in the darkening air around Richmond, the scales of which our Northern invaders claim are to decide the future of the vast continent of America in their own favour. Amidst the rejoicings, however, created by Gen. Grant's telegram in the North, a warning voice is heard, which shewed that Southern sympathizers clung to hope against hope, as they proclaimed comfort for the South.

A HISTORICAL PARALLEL.

The New York Daily News thus cautions those ardent men among the Federals who suppose that the end of the rebellion has come :

The opposing armies of the South and of the North are now manoeuvring on classic ground; and although the analogies of the past prove

nothing, they are sufficiently impressive to be worth recalling. The irregular triangle of South Carolina, from the Savannah River to the Northern boundary, long ago was watered with blood and trodden by aried feet. A "rebel" army was once hemmed in close to the mountain range, cut off from every seaport, and yet came off victorious. Let us, bearing in mind the relative positions and probable strategy of the adverse forces now, briefly retrace the past. At the end of 1778, Savannah was taken by the British almost without a struggle. In March, 1779, Augusta was captured, and not very long afterwards Charleston, which had successfully resisted assault and siege, was surrendered to Sir Henry Clinton. In succession fell Wilmington and Newbern, and later still, Richmond; so that literally not a foothold on the coast was in the possession of the "rebels" of those days.

Then began the triumphant march of Cornwallis, almost on the track which Sherman is now pursuing. He advanced on Camden, and defeated the "rebels" under Gates. They fled in disorder to North Carolina, as far as Hillsborough; and a recent historian thus describes the desperate state of things; "The three most Southern States," says Mr Hildreth, "had not a single battalion in the field, nor were the next three better provided. The Virginia line had been mostly captured at Charleston, or dispersed in subsequent engagements. The same was the case with North Carolina regiments. The recent battle of Camden

had reduced the Maryland line to a single regiment, the Delaware line to a single company." Then it was that General Greene was put in command, his right hand man and main reliance being Henry Lee of Virginia, Washington's friend and Robert E. Lee's illustrious father. And what did such men say and think? of despair. The same serene faith shone in their words as now brightens in the heroic language of the Confederate leaders. But we repeat, it was a day of sharp trial. "Unless this army," wrote General Greene, "is better supported than I see any prospect of, the country is lost beyond redemption, for it is impossible to struggle much longer under present difficulties." "If the French," he said again, "cannot afford assistance to the Southern States, in my opinion there will be no opposition this side Virginia; and I expect the enemy will possess all the lower country., We must take possession and fight on the rivers above." Thus desperate was this "rebel" cause in May, 1781. Then came the reflux of the tide. The assailing army advanced as far as Salisbury in North Carolina-one hundred and fifty miles further north than Sherman is now. Lord Rawdon and Tarleton were raiding in the rear. Richmond was given up to Arnold. But the energy of a brave people was aroused in the defence of home even in the moment of discomfiture and dismay. A great flank movement was conceived and executed. The lines of

It was an hour of gloom but not

the invader were threatened both in front and laterally, and the battles of Ninety-six and King's Mountain, the Gowpens, Guildford, and Eutaw were fought and won. South Carolina was abandoned to the rebels, and Cornwallis, crossing to the sea at Wilmington, and then fighting his way by another route to the James, met his doom, and the war ended. These are impressive incidents of ancient days, on which in the flush of apparent success it may be well to meditate.

COAST ATTACKS, AND BLOCKADE.

The blockade by our "Great Armada" so called, has almost shut out the Southern States from the outside world, and must have sadly interfered with their luxuries and necessaries. Our Northern people bitterly complained when the British government recognised the belligerent rights of the South. It, however, could not have performed an act of greater or more signal service to the Federal government, because as Lord Russell in a speech made in the British House of Commons, March 23rd 1865, said, "If we had not acknowledged those rights, the government of the United States would have had no right to interfere with neutral commerce to the ports of the Southern States." In such a case there would have been no "Cotton Famine," or desolate British homes in Lancashire; and the Southern people would not have been so embarassed in their

efforts to raise the means to defend themselves from their invaders. The advantages to England and to the Confederacy of the Southern States, therefore, would have been manifold by the non-recognition of the Southern States as belligerents; although they had a claim not only for belligerent rights, but for recognition as sovereign states, entitled to be free and independent nations. It would have been far better for the South to have been treated as pirates, than to have been subject to the rigours of an illegal blockade. This has been a terrific instrument in the hands of the North with which to punish the South; and, indirectly, England. Next to the establishment of the blockade, naval attacks were planned on the James river, at Newbern, Charleston, Wilmington, Mobile, Savannah, New Orleans, Galveston and other places.

New Orleans was captured at an early period of the war by Admiral Farragut, and placed under the governorship of General Butler, whom Professor Goldwin Smith calls "his model of a revolutionary chief," and afterwards of General Banks-men who, like many others to whom we have referred, will occupy an odious page in the melancholy annals of the war for walking straight on in their wild way unrestrained in their passions for revenge or plunder. Already Butler has been dismissed, not for insulting "ladies as women of the town" not for acquiring sudden wealth in connexion with his extraordinary "trade permits," or "tickets of leave,"