Now, too, we have a chance to test the sagacity of our friends, and to get at their principles of judgment.  Perhaps most of us will agree that our faith in domestic prophets has been diminished by the experience of the last six months.  We had the notable predictions attributed to the Secretary of State, which so unpleasantly refused to fulfil themselves.  We were infested at one time with a set of ominous-looking seers, who shook their heads and muttered obscurely about some mighty preparations that were making to substitute the rule of the minority for that of the majority.  Organizations were darkly hinted at; some thought our armories would be seized; and there are not wanting ancient women in the neighboring University town who consider that the country was saved by the intrepid band of students who stood guard, night after night, over the G.R. cannon and the pile of balls in the Cambridge Arsenal.

As a general rule, it is safe to say that the best prophecies are those which the sages remember after the event prophesied of has come to pass, and remind us that they have made long ago.  Those 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