fighting a battle, when even victory might have been fatal to his purpose; that Continental expeditions fitted out for the purpose of restoring the Stuarts to the British throne were more than once ruined by the occurrence of tempests; that the defeat of our army at Germantown was in part due to the existence of a fog; that a severe storm prevented General Howe from assailing the American position on Dorchester Heights, and so enabled Washington to make that position too strong to be attacked with hope of success, whereby Boston was freed from the enemy’s presence; that a heavy fall of rain, by rendering the River Catawba unfordable, put a stop, for a few days, to those movements by which Lord Cornwallis intended to destroy the army of General Morgan, and obtain compensation for Tarleton’s defeat at the Cowpens; that an autumnal tempest compelled the same British commander to abandon a project of retreat from Yorktown, which good military critics have thought well conceived, and promising success; that the severity of the winter of 1813 interfered effectively with the measures which Napoleon had formed with the view of restoring his affairs, so sadly compromised by his failure in Russia; that the “misty, chilly, and insalubrious” weather of Louisiana, and its mud, had a marked effect on Sir Edward Pakenham’s army, and helped us to victory over one of the finest forces ever sent by Europe to the West; that in 1828 the Russians lost myriads of men and horses, in the Danubian country and its vicinity, through heavy rains and hard frosts; that the November hurricane of 1854 all but paralyzed the allied forces in the Crimea;—­and many similar things that establish the helplessness of men in arms when the weather is adverse to them.  But enough has been said to convince even the most skeptical that our Potomac Army did not stand alone in being forced to stand still before the dictation of the elements.  Our armies, indeed, have suffered less from the weather than it might reasonably have been expected they would suffer, having simply been delayed at some points by the occurrence of winds and thaws; and over all such obstacles they are destined ultimately to triumph, as the Union itself will bid defiance to what Bacon calls “the waves and weathers of time.”

* * * * *

LINES

WRITTEN UNDER A PORTRAIT OF THEODORE WINTHROP.

  O Knightly soldier bravely dead! 
  O poet-soul too early sped! 
  O life so pure!  O life so brief! 
  Our hearts are moved with deeper grief,
  As, dwelling on thy gentle face,
  Its twilight smile, its tender grace,
  We fill the shadowy years to be
  With what had been thy destiny. 
  And still, amid our sorrow’s pain,
  We feel the loss is yet our gain;
  For through the death we know the life,
  Its gold in thought, its steel in strife,—­
  And so with reverent kiss we say
  Adieu!  O Bayard of our day!