The most cursory inspection of this volume must put to shame those Washington news-mongers, who from March to December pictured the Secretary as locked up in his office, in order to merely shun office-seekers, or as idling his time at reviews and sham-fights.  The collection demonstrates, that his logic, persuasion, and rhetorical excellence have in diplomatic composition maintained their previous excellences in other public utterances; and that his physical capacity for labor, and his mental sympathy with any post of duty, have been as effective, surrounded by the dogs of war, as they were when tasked amid the peaceful herds of men.  The maxim, inter arma silent leges, is suspended by the edicts of diplomacy!

Mr. Seward entered the State Department March the fifth (according to reliable Washington gossip), before breakfast, and was instantly at work.  He found upon his table, with the ink scarcely dry, the draft of a (February 28th) circular from his predecessor, Mr. Black (now U.S.  Supreme Court reporter), addressed to all the ministers of the United States.  That circular very briefly recited the leading facts of the disunion movement, and instructed the ministers to employ all means to prevent a recognition of the confederate States.  The document in question is dated at the very time when President Lincoln was perfecting his inaugural; and why its imperative and necessary commands were delayed until that late hour, is something for Mr. Buchanan to explain in that volume of memoirs which he is said to be preparing at the falling House of Lancaster.

From the dates of Mr. Seward’s circulars, it is evident that he devoted small time to official ‘house-warming’ or ‘cleaning up.’  Some time, no doubt, was passed in consulting the indexes to the foreign affairs of the past eventful four months, and in making himself master of the situation.  His first act is to transmit to all the (Buchanan) subordinates abroad copies of the President’s Message, accompanying it with a score of terse and sparkling paragraphs regarding the rebellion; yet, in those few paragraphs, demonstrating the illusory and ephemeral advantages which foreign nations would derive from any connection they might form with any ’dissatisfied or discontented portion, State, or section of the Union.’  In this connection, he refers to the ‘governments’ of J. Davis, Esq., as ’those States of this Union in whose name a provisional government has been announced;’—­which is the happiest description yet in print.

There is apparently a fortnight’s interregnum, during which a procession of would-be consuls and ministers marches from the State Department to the Senate chamber to receive the accolade of diplomacy.  The Minister to Prussia, Mr. Judd, first finds gazette, and on March 22d the Secretary prepares for him instructions suitable to the crisis.  There are ‘stars’ affixed to the published extracts, showing coetera desunt, matters of secret moment perchance!