The Saturday Review, in the course of its pungent criticism
on the martial odes now so popular in America, is guilty of a grave mis- statement of fact. It speaks of Mr. Ellsworth as "killed at Alex- andria while looting or loafing in a tavern apart from his regiment." Colonel Ellsworth was killed in discharge of his duty, when demand- ing arms in a Baltimore hotel that had hung out the Confederate flag. The answer to his demand was, " Come and take them"—and then the death-blow. Our contemporary's wit does not need the aid of reckless and dishonest aspersions like these, which will give need- less pain to the family of a soldier who died as a soldier should. We do not, of course, suppose that the misrepresentation was intentional, but the Saturday Review has not been the least able or the least efficient of those many censors of reckless charges, whom careers like Mr. Bright's have called forth.
