se who are rash
enough to predict publicly beforehand commonly give us what they hope,
or what they fear, or some conclusion from an abstraction of their own,
or some guess founded on private information not half so good as what
everybody gets who reads the papers,--_never_ by any possibility a word
that we can depend on, simply because there are cob-webs of contingency
between every to-day and to-morrow that no field-glass can penetrate
when fifty of them lie woven one over another. Prophesy as much as you
like, but always _hedge_. Say that you think the rebels are weaker than
is commonly supposed, but, on the other hand, that they may prove to be
even stronger than is anticipated. Say what you like,--only don't be too
peremptory and dogmatic; we _know_ that wiser men than you have been
notoriously deceived in their predictions in this very matter.

_Ibis et redibis nunquam in bello peribis._

Let that be your model; and remember, on peril of your reputation as a
prophet, not to put a stop before or after the _nunquam_.

There are two or three facts connected with _time_, besides that already
referred to, which strike us very forcibly in their relation to the
great events passing around us. We spoke of the long period seeming to
have elapsed since this war began. The buds were then swelling which
held the leaves that are still green. It seems as old as Time himself.
We cannot fail to observe how the mind brings together the scenes of
to-day and those of the old Revolution. We shut up eighty years into
each other like the joints of a pocket-telescope. When the young men
from Middlesex dropped in Baltimore the other day, it seemed to bring
Lexington and the other Nineteenth of April close to us. War has always
been the mint in which the world's history has been coined, and now
every day or week or month has a new medal for us. It was Warren that
the first impression bore in the last great coinage; if it is Ellsworth
now, the new face hardly seems fresher than the old. All battle-fields
are alike in their main features. The young fellows who fell in our
earlier struggle seemed like old men to us until within these few
months; now we remember they were like these fiery youth we are cheering
as they go to the fight; it seems as if the grass of our bloody
hill-side was crimsoned but yesterday, and the cannon-ball imbedded in
the church-tower would feel warm, if we laid our hand upon it.

Nay, in this our quickened life