In manners and habits, as well as in modesty and sternness, General Buell is not unlike Thomas, possessing the same dignity of deportment, and reservedness and imperturbability so characteristic of the latter officer. He possessed, too, the same regular habits of business, and is a model of reticence and secrecy. He is, if any thing, too cold in demonstration, and won in consequence, while in the army, a reputation for gruffness which he did not deserve. He smiled as seldom as Thomas. One morning, during a recess of the court which was examining into his conduct at Nashville in December, 1862, he grew unusually lively in a playful controversy with a young daughter of General Rousseau, and perpetrated several rather comical jokes. Miss Rousseau, utterly astonished at this unexpected liveliness on the general's part, expressed her surprise by exclaiming, "Why, General Buell, I never knew you to laugh aloud before." "Ah! my child," replied the general, suddenly growing serious, "you never knew me when I felt free to laugh as now." Although very small of stature, General Buell possesses almost Herculean strength, and frequently has been known to lift his wife, a lady of at least 140 pounds' weight, at arm's length, and stand her on a mantle-shelf nearly as high as himself. His frame, compactly built, is all muscle and sinew. When Buell was relieved by Rosecrans, the army threw up its hat in delight, and the country re-echoed their bravos of approval. Never was joy so inappropriate--never was there a change of commanders so injudicious, and it required only a year of time, but, alas! many a human life, to prove how criminal it was. Politics nor war ever thrust upon the nation a more incompetent leader than William Starke Rosecrans. He had not one of the attributes of generalship. He was neither a strategist nor a tactician, and all he knew of the art of war were its tricks--the tricks that every Indian and all uncivilized nations most excel in. He inspired dread in his enemies only by his reputation for trickery, and was known throughout the camps of the foe as "that wily Dutchman, Rosecrans." He was eminently fitted by nature and education to be the provost-marshal and chief of spies to a great army like that which he commanded, but nothing more. Nature unfitted him for the task of directing a great army by making him extremely nervous. His nervousness, unlike that of Sherman, was a weakness. His excitability rendered it not only impossible for him to execute, but it made him incoherent, and he could not direct others. I have known him, when merely directing an orderly to carry a dispatch from one point to another, grow so excited, vehement, and incoherent as to utterly confound the messenger. In great danger as in small things, this nervousness incapacitated him from the intelligible direction of his officers or effective execution of his plans. He possessed no control over himself, and consequently was not capable of directing others.