wastefulness in some States, while in others people may be dying for the want of it.  The Secessionists are now situated as most peoples used to be, before good roads became common.  The South is becoming reduced to that state which was known to some parts of England before that country had made for itself the best roads of Christendom, and when there would be starvation in one parish, while perhaps in the next the fruits of the earth were rotting on its surface, because there were no means of getting them to market.  With a currency so debased that no man will willingly take it, while all men readily take Union greenbacks,—­with railways either worn out or held by foes,—­with but one harbor this side of the Mississippi that is not closely shut up, and that harbor in course of becoming closed completely,—­with their rivers furnishing means for attack, instead of lines of defence,—­with their territory and numbers daily decreasing,—­with defeat overtaking their armies on almost every field,—­with the expressed determination of the North to prosecute the war, be the consequences what they may,—­with the constant increase of Union numbers,—­and with the steady refusal of foreign powers to recognize the Confederacy, or to afford it any countenance or open assistance,—­the Rebels must be infatuated, and determined to provoke destruction, if they do not soon make overtures for peace.

It is all very well for the “chivalrous classes” at the South, whoever they may happen to be, to talk about “dying in the last ditch,” and of imitating the action of Pelayo and his friends; but common folk like to die in their beds, and to receive the inevitable visitant with decorum, to an exhibition of which ditches are decidedly unfavorable.  As to Pelayo, he lived in an age in which there were neither railways nor rifled cannon, neither steamships nor Parrott guns, neither Monitors nor greenbacks,—­else he and his would either have been routed out of the Asturian Mountains, or have been compelled to remain there forever.  The conditions of modern life and society are highly unfavorable to those heroic modes of resistance and existence in which alone gentlemen of Pelayo’s pursuits can hope to flourish.  We Saracens of the North would ask nothing better than to have Pelayo Davis lead all his valiant ragamuffins into the strongest range of mountains that could be found in all Secessia, there to establish the new Kingdom of Gijon.  We should deserve the worst that could befall us, if we failed to vindicate the common American idea, that this country is no place for lovers of crowns and kingdoms.