Governor Vance has been very unpopular, and the people seem to take kindly enough to the idea that his authority will not be recognized. They say he was a Union man in feeling and conviction, but that Jeff. Davis, alarmed by the dissatisfaction in North Carolina, sent for him about the time of his last election, and persuaded him that he could be the next President of the Confederacy! The Presidential idea was as baneful in Rebeldom, as it has proved to so many Northern statesmen, and Vance was destroyed. * * * * * Every Northern man in Wilmington lives in the very best style the place affords, no matter how slender his visible resources. I was the guest of a civil officer whose salary can not be over two thousand dollars. His home was a spacious three-story double structure, that would have done no discredit to Fifth Avenue. You approach it through a profusion of the rarest shrubbery; it was in the most aristocratic quarter of the city, was elegantly furnished, and filled with servants—all on two thousand dollars a year, less the Government tax. But this is modest and moderate. The officer at least made the one house serve all his purposes. Another—a Colonel on duty here—is less easily satisfied. He has no family, but he finds one of the largest and best-furnished double houses in the town only sufficient for his bachelor wants, as a private residence. Another house, equally spacious and eligible, is required for the uses of his office! And, in general, our people seem to go upon the theory that, having conquered the country, they are entitled to the best it has, and in duty bound to use as much of it as possible. These houses are generally such as were shut up by their rich Rebel owners on the approach of our troops below the city. The proprietors have retired to adjacent country places, to be out of harm’s way till they see how Rebels are to be treated, and already they are making their calculations about returning in the fall, with a coolness almost disconcerting to their self-appointed tenants. Mrs. General Hawley tells a piquant story of a visit from the wife of a runaway Rebel, whose showy but uncomfortable house the General has seized for quarters and private residence. The lady made herself as agreeable as possible, spoke of the General’s occupancy and her own absence, much as people who had gone off to the sea-shore for the summer might speak of renting their town house till their return; intimating that she wouldn’t hurry the General commanding for the world, and hoped that he would remain with his family until it was entirely convenient to remove, but suggested that she and her husband thought they would probably return in a couple or three months, when, of course, they supposed their house would be ready for them! Confiscation seemed to have no terrors for her; or, if it had, they were dexterously concealed under an air of smiling and absolute assurance.