ike a kraken huge and black,
She crushed our ribs in her iron grasp!
Down went the Cumberland all a wrack,
With a sudden shudder of death,
And the cannon's breath
For her dying gasp.

Next morn, as the sun rose over the bay,
Still floated our flag at the mainmast-head.
Lord, how beautiful was thy day!
Every waft of the air
Was a whisper of prayer,
Or a dirge for the dead.

Ho! brave hearts that went down in the seas!
Ye are at peace in the troubled stream.
Ho! brave land! with hearts like these,
Thy flag, that is rent in twain,
Shall be one again,
And without a seam!

THE FOSSIL MAN.

The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been: to
be found in the register of God, not in the records of men. The number
of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The Night of Time far
surpasseth the Day, and who knoweth the Equinox?--Sir THOMAS BROWNE.

What a mysterious and subtile pleasure there is in groping back through
the early twilight of human history! The mind thirsts and longs so to
know the Beginning: who and what manner of men those were who laid
the first foundations of all that is now upon the earth: of what
intellectual power, of what degree of civilization, of what race and
country. We wonder how the fathers of mankind lived, what habitations
they dwelt in, what instruments or tools they employed, what crops they
tilled, what garments they wore. We catch eagerly at any traces that may
remain of their faiths and beliefs and superstitions; and we fancy, as
we gain a clearer insight into them, that we are approaching more nearly
to the mysterious Source of all life in the soul. The germ, to our
limited comprehension, seems nearer the Creator than the perfected
growth. Then the great problem of _Origin_ forever attracts us on,--the
multitudinous and intricate questions relating to "the ordained becoming
of beings": how the Creating Power has worked, whether through an almost
endless chain of gradual and advantageous changes, or by some sudden and
miraculous _ictus_, placing at once a completed body on the earth, as
an abode and instrument for a developed soul,--all these remote and
difficult questions lead us on. And yet the search for human origins, or
the earliest historic and scientific evidences of man on the earth, is
but a groping in the dark.

We turn to the Hebrew and the inspired records; but we soon discover,
that, though containing a