“Lord knows,” protest the polliwogs, “We’re anxious to be grown-up frogs; But do not undertake the work Of Nature till she prove a shirk; ’T is not by jumps that she advances, But wins her way by circumstances:  Pray, wait awhile, until you know We’re so contrived as not to grow; Let Nature take her own direction, And she’ll absorb our imperfection; You mightn’t like ’em to appear with, But we must have the things to steer with.”

  “No,” piped the party of reform,
  “All great results are ta’en by storm;
  Fate holds her best gifts till we show
  We’ve strength to make her let them go: 
  No more reject the Age’s chrism,
  Your cues are an anachronism;
  No more the Future’s promise mock,
  But lay your tails upon the block,
  Thankful that we the means have voted
  To have you thus to frogs promoted.”

  The thing was done, the tails were cropped,
  And home each philotadpole hopped,
  In faith rewarded to exult,
  And wait the beautiful result. 
  Too soon it came; our pool, so long
  The theme of patriot bull-frogs’ song,
  Next day was reeking, fit to smother,
  With heads and tails that missed each other,—­
  Here snoutless tails, there tailless snouts: 
  The only gainers were the pouts.

  MORAL.

  From lower to the higher next,
  Not to the top, is Nature’s text;
  And embryo Good, to reach full stature,
  Absorbs the Evil in its nature.

I think that nothing will ever give permanent peace and security to this continent but the extirpation of Slavery therefrom, and that the occasion is nigh; but I would do nothing hastily or vindictively, nor presume to jog the elbow of Providence.  No desperate measures for me till we are sure that all others are hopeless,—­flectere si nequeo SUPEROS, Acheronta movebo.  To make Emancipation a reform instead of a revolution is worth a little patience, that we may have the Border States first, and then the non-slaveholders of the Cotton States with us in principle,—­a consummation that seems to me nearer than many imagine. Fiat justitia, ruat coelum, is not to be taken in a literal sense by statesmen, whose problem is to get justice done with as little jar as possible to existing order, which has at least so much of heaven in it that it is not chaos.  I rejoice in the President’s late Message, which at last proclaims the Government on the side of freedom, justice, and sound policy.

As I write, comes the news of our disaster at Hampton Roads.  I do not understand the supineness which, after fair warning, leaves wood to an unequal conflict with iron.  It is not enough merely to have the right on our side, if we stick to the old flint-lock of tradition.  I have observed in my parochial experience (haud ignarus mali) that the Devil is prompt to adopt the latest inventions of destructive warfare, and may thus take even such a three-decker as Bishop Butler at an advantage.  It is curious, that, as gunpowder made armour useless on shore, so armour is having its revenge by baffling its old enemy at sea,—­and that, while gunpowder robbed land-warfare of nearly all its picturesqueness to give even greater stateliness and sublimity to a sea-fight, armour bids fair to degrade the latter into a squabble between two iron-shelled turtles.