where, and must be atoned for.

It is, however, interesting to remark, that in this, as in so many other
matters, science is very rapidly changing the character of warfare. In a
few years the war-navies of the world will consist almost exclusively of
iron-mail steamers, since no other vessel can resist their attacks. Yet
these steamers, though far more expensive than the old wooden hulks--so
expensive that the 'Warrior' alone caused an outcry in England as a
national burden--can readily sink one another in a few minutes by the
use of the prow, or by returning to the primitive cock-fighting fashion
in vogue among the iron-beaked galleys of earliest antiquity.

Will it pay, under such extraordinary conditions of naval warfare, to
fight at all? will probably be the next question, asked. When a few
minutes may witness the literal sinking of a few millions of dollars,
tax-paying people will begin to stand aghast. The very idea of England
and America playing a game of war with such checks, is as terrible as it
is startling; it is like the suggestion to fight out a duel with
columbiads, or as the two Kentucky engineers are said to have done, with
full-steamed locomotives in collision. No patriotism, no wealth, no
sacrifice, can endure such drafts as the loss of iron-clad navies would
involve. War would eat itself up.

Possibly genius may contrive vulcanized gutta-percha or other resistant
steamers which can neither be billed nor gaffed, shot nor slashed into
sinking--vessels beyond all capacity for bathos, and no more to be
persuaded into going under than was the black Baptist convert of David
Crockett's story. What would naval battles amount to between such
invulnerables? The Roman mythology had a fable of a hare which had
received from the gods the gift that it was never to be caught, while at
the same time there was a hound which was destined to catch every thing
he pursued. One day the hound began to chase the hare; Jupiter settled
the question by changing them both to stone. Paradoxes can only be
solved by annihilation. When war becomes, by the aid of science,
all-destructive, yet all-resistant, it must perish. History shows a
gradual decrease of deaths in proportion to improvements in destruction
of life. It is gratifying to reflect, that this war, by developing the
full capacities of iron-plated vessels, has made a most important
advance toward the impossibility of warfare.

It is amusing to see how decisively, yet w