A second Daniel come to judgment.
In Mohammedan countries idiots and madmen are treated with superstitions veneration, and their incoherent ravings regarded as the genuine outpourings of inspiration.--It must be under the influence of some such superstition, we presume, that our volatile friends, the Yankees, enter upon record "such a deal of skimble-skamble stuff" as we have lately been presented with under the name of conversations with Lieutenant. General Winfield (or Wingfield) Scott, insisting at the same time, upon the title of its author, to be placed, like Saul, among the prophets. What other title the distinguished utterer can have to that lofty eminence it is difficult to imagine. Most certainly, whatever it may be, it is not of that character described by Cicero, which consists in foretelling the future by judging from the past; for the country probably never produced a man who has risen so high, with so little pretensions to those qualifications which are understood to be requisite to the formation of a character for statesmanship. His whole history bears evidence to the truth of this statement. He was brought forward more than once as a candidate for the Presidency while the Union was still intact, and of all his sayings, doings, and writings upon these occasions, but one is remembered; and as the casual sayings of a great man are the incidents which are most of all supposed to afford the key to his real character, Scott will go down to posterity in company with that memorable dictum of his: "You have caught me, my friends, with my breeches down." "Know thyself," saith the Grecian sage, and the saying is as immortal as the man. " I am never so little alone as when alone," said Scipio Apricanus, and it is the only genuine utterance of so great a man that has reached posterity. "Give me men, and I will have money; give me money, and I will have men," said Julius Cæsar, drawing his own portrait in this single dash of the pencil, with a skill, fidelity, and boldness which all the thousand volumes whereof he has been the subject are unable to match.-- "If I had a rebellious province which I wished to punish in a manner particularly severe I would put a philosopher over it as Governor," said Frederick the Great, in that sneering spirit so characteristic of everything he did or said. "From the sublime to the ridiculous there is but one step," said Napoleon, with that keen perception of what is genuine and what is hollow, which distinguished him above all other men.-- "No man was ever the better for advice," said Wellington, in whose character a strong will and an absolute self-reliance were conspicuous traits. By strokes like these, great men draw their own characters with a fidelity which sets the labors of the biographer at defiance, and there are few great men whose conversations have been preserved that have not left some such sketch of their minds.--No one has drawn himself with more fidelity than Scott, and we have the picture in the words which we have recorded above. "I have been caught with my — down!" --There it is. The man absolutely steps out of the canvas, and stands in flesh and blood before us, full of life, full of reality, full of emptiness, vulgarity, and self conceit.Such as he wrote himself down on this occasion, has Scott been through his whole life. A few acts of frantic valor in the war of 1812 obtained for him a reputation far above his merits, but by no means such as his vanity taught him to believe himself entitled. He was mortified beyond expression when he visited Paris, while it was occupied by the troops of the allied Sovereigns in 1815, to find that he, and the obscure skirmishes in which he had been engaged, had never been heard of amidst the convulsions that had shaken the world to its centre. He had hoped, no doubt, that he would occupy a distinguished place among the Wellington, and Bluchers, and Schwartzenbergs, and Platoffs of the day, and anticipated an honored reception at the tables of Emperors, Kings, and Archdukes. From that day to the Mexican war, save a disgraceful fail are in Florida, where he seems to have been outgeneraled by Osceola and his half-naked savages, we know not what be did to sustain his bloated reputation. We all know that at the opening of that war he declined having anything to do with it, believing that it must inevitably fail. But no sooner had Gen. Taylor electrified the land by his victories than, finding that it was easier to beat the Mexicans than he thought, he hastened to rob him as far as he could of his hard-earned laurels. Never was praise more disproportion to performance than it was in the case of his Mexican campaign. Gen. Taylor had already beaten the Mexican troops until he had destroyed the better part of them, when he came in to gather the spoils of another man's victories. Far be it from us to underrate the valor of our soldiers on that occasion. But they were greatly an overmatch for the Mexicans in every respect except numbers, and both Sam Houston and Gen. Taylor had already shown that our soldiers could beat them with any odds. They were not only a degenerate race, but they had been cowed by repeated defeat before Scott had anything to do with them. This campaign, notwithstanding, gave him a brilliant reputation, which existed entire until the first battle of Manassas pricked the public, and it burst, never to be restored.
Scott has now taken up the trade of a prophet, with what pretensions, let his antecedents declare. Some Yankee has lately been to consult the Oracle, who has established his tripod at Delmonico's, and of course records his sayings. The war is not to end this year, but still it is not to be a seven years war! Quite oracular this, and very much in character. We console ourselves with the recollection that he promised to take his fourth of July dinner in this city, in 1861, and with the hope that as he failed then, he may fail now. Notwithstanding failure, however, he is still confident, for your regular oracle gathers strength always from defeat. He is sure the Union will be restored, and that it will be more glorious than ever. He objects to the violence of Butler and other miscreants, not because they may not be all right, but because they alienate the Southern people. He would hang only a few.--Jeff Davis among them no doubt, for did not Jeff overhaul his accounts and prove him a defaulter, and does not Scott boast of his long memory?
P. S.--We forgot to record among Scott's sayings the "hasty plate of soup," and the "fire in the rear." They are both characteristic.
