Such was the esteem in which the Cabinet of Washington held either the practical qualities evinced in this essay, or the diplomatic services veiled under the asterisks, that they were considered to entitle him, on his return to America, to the position of a Brigadier-General. In the records of the war we cannot, however, find that Brigadier Cassius Marcellus ever performed any military achievement worthy either of the foe of Cæsar or the foe of Hannibal. He seems to have worn his warlike honours with remarkable meekness, and never to have done anything to fulfil his own aspiration that “liberty and union may be for ever inseparable,” by taking the smallest step towards the subjugation of the enemy. Under these circumstances Mr Seward, finding his military so inferior to his diplomatic talents, seems to have thought that the Brigadier who had failed to bid defiance to the South would find a more appropriate field of action in resuming his employment of gratifying the Emperor of Russia with other defiances of “old John Bull”—and accordingly we learn that the eminent statesman either is, or is to be, once more Minister to St Petersburg, and may possibly be at this moment engaged in his favourite occupations of shaking the hand of the Emperor, and shaking his own hand at the British monarchy. If it be so, we may perhaps hope to read, in another state paper, of his second reception at the Court of Russia—which, judging from the familiar cordiality displayed in the first, may, if the Czar should again deign to express himself in the American language, open something in this way,—“Wal, Cassius M. Clay, how air you, old hoss? Do you feel pretty brisk and spry, sir? How is it you ha’n’t chawed up them rebels yet, lock, stock, and gun-barrel, hook and line, bob and sinker? What do you think of _our_ insurrection to Poland, sir?”