General Sickles was in his forty-first year when he was wounded at Gettysburg, and General Reno was thirty-seven when he died so bravely at South Mountain.  General Pemberton lost Vicksburg at forty-five.  General T.W.  Sherman is forty-six, and General W. T. Sherman forty-four.  General McClellan was in his thirty-fifth year when he assumed command at Washington in 1861.  General Lyon had not completed the first month of his forty-third year when he fell at Wilson’s Creek.  General McDowell was in his forty-third year when he failed at Bull Run, in consequence of the coming up of General Joe Johnston, who was fifty-one.  General Keyes is fifty-three, General Kelley fifty-seven, General King forty, and General Pope forty-one.  General A.S.  Johnston was fifty-nine when he was killed at Shiloh.  General Halleck is forty-eight.  General Longstreet is forty.  The best of the Southern cavalry-leaders was General Ashby, who was killed at thirty-eight.  General Stuart is twenty-nine.  On our side, General Stanley is thirty, General Pleasonton forty, and General Averell about thirty.  General Phelps is fifty-one, General Polk fifty-eight, General S. Cooper sixty-eight, General J. Cooper fifty-four, and General Blunt thirty-eight.  The list might be much extended, but very few young men would be found in it,—­or very few old men, either.  The best of our leaders are men who have either passed beyond middle life, or who may be said to be in the enjoyment of that stage of existence.  It is so, too, with the Rebels.  If the war does not afford many facts in support of the position that old generals are very useful, neither does it afford many to be quoted by those who hold that the history of heroism is the history of youth.

* * * * *

The wreck of Rivermouth.[E]

[1657.]

  Rivermouth Rocks are fair to see,
    By dawn or sunset shone across,
  When the ebb of the sea has left them free
    To dry their fringes of gold-green moss: 
  For there the river comes winding down
  From salt sea-meadows and uplands brown,
  And waves on the outer rocks afoam
  Shout to its waters, “Welcome home!”

  And fair are the sunny isles in view
    East of the grisly Head of the Boar,
  And Agamenticus lifts its blue
    Disk of a cloud the woodlands o’er;
  And southerly, when the tide is down,
  ’Twixt white sea-waves and sand-hills brown,
  The beach-birds dance and the gray gulls wheel
  Over a floor of burnished steel.

  Once, in the old Colonial days,
    Two hundred years ago and more,
  A boat sailed down through the winding ways
    Of Hampton river to that low shore,
  Full of a goodly company
  Sailing out on the summer sea,
  Veering to catch the land-breeze light,
  With the Boar to left and the Rocks to right.