mission had founded in several cities soldiers' homes,establishments where soldiers on their way to the army or to their homes were lodged and fed gratuitously; the Commission distributed, through the medium of the surgeons of the army, in the camps and hospitals, blankets, stockings, flannels, preserved vegetables, wine, fruit, books, and in short everything that could add to the comfort of the soldier. Boxes arrived daily from all parts of the Union, containing the most varied objects: from Maine to Minnesota, from Boston to St. Louis, there is not a village that has not sent its offering; but it is from Massachusetts that the most precious and abundant aid had come. Not only has this little State given largely both in money and in garments, &c.; she has sent surgeons, nurses, and schoolmistresses. The Rev. Thomas Starr King, the Unitarian clergyman of San Francisco, whose patriotic eloquence was so influential in California, and who obtained from this State the sum of $300,000 for the Sanitary Commissions of Washington and St. Louis, was from Boston. Dr. Elliot, the Unitarian clergyman of St. Louis, who with Mr. Yeatman of Tennessee, an ex-slaveholder, was the soul of the Commission at St. Louis, was also from New England. I saw one of his nieces, who had just arrived in St. Louis to take charge of a school of coloured children, passing, at the age of twenty, all day long among the benches of a schoolroom. A democrat angrily exclaimed before me one day, 'This war is the conquest of America by Massachusetts.' He was right, but it was not a conquest by the sword.

When I left Missouri, all was still confused and

uncertain; a short time after my departure, Price was beaten by the rude troops of Kansas, reinforced by a few Federal troops and by Stoneman's cavalry. At the first repulse the army of invasion, demoralised by its own excesses, melted away; and General Price carried with him but a few scattered remnants to the solitude of the interior of the continent. His second call upon the inhabitants of Missouri had been as vain as the first. He had come, he said, in his proclamations, to deliver them from the tyranny of Mr. Lincoln, and to give them a last chance to rise up against the government of Washington; but his only recruits were robbers and ruffians. General Rosencranz, in spite of the weakness he had shown, still kept his command till the presidential election of the 4th of November, after which it was taken from him. Missouri gave her vote for Mr. Lincoln; and at the same time her electors chose their governor, the members of a new legislature, and those of a convention charged with remodelling the State Constitution from the ranks of the most radical fraction of the republican party. The terrible lessons of civil war had not been lost on the inhabitants of this unfortunate province, ravaged in every direction by civil war, and twice condemned to all the horrors of invasion. The new Convention bravely began its work. It would not allow a single day of existence to the fatal institution justly considered as the cause of the war, and it effaced from the Constitution every word which could recall it.

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CHAPTER X.

THE MIDDLE STATES-CINCINNATI-PHILADELPHIA.

IN Missouri I had witnessed in all their bitterness the political passions which had compromised the cause of the Union. In the Middle States, which I visited next, I observed American society under its calmer aspects. It was towards Cincinnati that I turned my steps after leaving St. Louis. I crossed the river early in the morning, in the ferry-boat, to take the railroad upon the left bank. The city was enveloped in a light mist which slept upon the river. Seen through this veil the white steamers resembled vast piles of cotton. From St. Louis to Vincennes we crossed the Southern part of the State of Illinois: this region, entirely peopled by Southern emigrants, Missourians or Kentuckians, is familiarly called Egypt; it is the black spot of Illinois, the land of ignorance, barbarism, and poverty. We crossed beautiful forests, where the trees of the South already mingle with those of the North. I never before saw anywhere so many different species confounded in such picturesque disorder. From time to time we caught a glimpse through the thick trees of a woodcutter's cottage, or a poor farmhouse surrounded by rich fields. At every station stood idle groups waiting for the newspapers. Stop

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ping at one of them, I left the train for a moment, and heard a violent discussion between a Union man and some democrats, who addressed him in threatening tones; judging from the ferocious looks of the interlocutors, one would guess that it was not far, in this country, from words to actions. If Lincoln is named,' cried one of them with frightful oaths, we shall see a change here.' The train went on again in the midst of a long cloud of sparks, and followed its course straight through a forest of black oaks, elms, maples, acacias, cherry-trees, walnuts, and birches; the dead trunks were covered with vines already turned a deep red and yellow. Vincennes, on the Wabash, one of the numerous branches of the Ohio river, is one of the old establishments of the French Canadians, and is now the seat of a Catholic bishopric. In any other country the Wabash would be considered a great river; in America it is not even mentioned. After Vincennes we are in Indiana. The country still retains the same characteristics. We see only log-houses in the forest clearings: a few trunks of trees, the interstices between them being filled up with mud and clay, a rude chimney built of rough ill-joined stones or of wood plastered with mud, one window and one low door, compose the log-house. Upon the mound formed by the accumulated mass of refuse, wood, stalks, and dead leaves, the pigs wander at liberty; sometimes a half-naked child with long fair hair comes to the door and watches the train of cars. Heavy German waggons circulate through the muddy streets of the villages. At almost every station I see the blue

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cloaks of the Federal soldiers, who have fastened their horses to the wooden fences. After a whole day passed in the splendid forests of Indiana, we reach the Ohio, or the Belle Rivière, and the railroad follows its winding banks from Aurora to Cincinnati.

Cincinnati is the most populous and the most important city of the beautiful valley of the Ohio. It has been a flourishing city for many years, but the war has given a new impulsion to its principal commerce, which is the sale and salting of pork. Chicago is already beginning, as I have before said, to dispute with Cincinnati the name of Porkopolis, under which it has long been familiarly designated. There is an immense activity in the street and on the quay; the two gigantic piles of a suspension bridge are already rising on either side of the river, and soon the railway trains will pass above the vessels and steamboats. On all sides rise immense constructions where the most various materials are employed the silurian limestones which glitter in the sun, the greenish sands of the carboniferous soil which present the delicate shade of the Swiss molasse.' The architects have given free course to their fancy, and the style of the houses cannot be accused of monotony, though we may not always admire the design and proportions. All styles are mingled, or rather, in the midst of these Moorish, Gothic, Italian, and French forms, all style is lost. The environs are charming. By the steep and narrow streets of the suburbs I reached the summit of Mount Auburn, a hill which commands the city on the north. The slopes on the Cincinnati side are