splayed. In cabinet and camp, in army and navy, in the editorial chair
and in the halls of eloquence, the men from whom least was expected have
done most, and those upon whom the greatest expectations had been
founded have only given another proof of the fallacy of all human
calculations. All has been change, all has been transition, in the
estimation men have held of themselves, and the light in which they
presented themselves to each other.

Opinions of duties and recognitions of necessities have known a change
not less remarkable. What yesterday we believed to be fallacy, to-day we
know to be truth. What seemed the fixed and immutable purpose of God
only a few short months ago, we have already discovered to have been
founded only in human passion or ambition. What seemed eternal has
passed away, and what appeared to be evanescent has assumed stability.
The storm has been raging around us, and doing its work not the less
destructively because we failed to perceive that we were passing through
any thing more threatening than a summer shower. While we have stood
upon the bank of the swelling river, and pointed to some structure of
old rising on the bank, declaring that not a stone could be moved until
the very heavens should fall, little by little the foundations have been
undermined, and the full crash of its falling has first awoke us from
our security. That without which we said that the nation could not live,
has fallen and been destroyed; and yet the nation does not die, but
gives promise of a better and more enduring life. What we cherished we
have lost; what we did not ask or expect has come to us; the effete old
is passing away, and out of the ashes of its decay is springing forth
the young and vigorous new. Change, transition, every where and in all
things: how can society fail to be disrupted, and who can speak, write,
or think with the calm decorum of by-gone days?

All this is obtrusively philosophical, of course, and correspondingly
out of place. But it may serve as a sort of forlorn hope--mental food
for powder--while the narrative reserve is brought forward; and there is
a dim impression on the mind of the writer that it may be found to have
some connection with that which is necessarily to follow.

So let the odd jumble be prepared, perhaps with ingredients as
incongruous as those which at present compose what we used to call the
republic, and as unevenly distributed as have been honors and emoluments