Poor VICTOR trembled with fear and pain,
  When he found his entreaties were all in vain,
    And the key was lost forever. 
  Alas, alas for the counsel scorned;
  For the jewels hid and the freedom mourned. 
    And the faith returning never! 
  For link after link of the adamant chain
  Mounted endless guard over heart and brain.

* * * * *

The London Times of Dec. 12 contained the following:—­

Blind indeed must be the fury of the Americans if they can voluntarily superadd a war with this country to their present overwhelming embarrassments.  It is clear, notwithstanding the sanguine spirit in which small successes are regarded, that the Federal Government is making no material progress in the war.

That is to say, ’We have you at disadvantage.  Now is our time to strike.  A year ago we might have been afraid, but not now.’  When John Bull is next cited as the standard authority for fair play, let his very manly vaunts at this time be quoted in illustration!

Up through the misty medium of ‘News from the South’ have struggled of late divers rumors to the effect that the triumphant HOLLINS, of Steam Ram and Greytown memory, has been somewhat shorn of his ‘lorrels.’  How his stock fell below par is solemnly narrated in the second and following instalment of our’ Chronicles:’—­

  CHRONICLES OF SECESSIA.

BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.

There was a man and his name was HOLLINS.

He was of those that go down to the sea in ships, and sometimes across the bay in very different conveyances.

Bold of speech, with a face like unto a brazen idol of Gath, and a voice even as a bull of Bashan; a man such as Gog and Magog, and ever agog for to be praised of men, or any other man.

Now this HOLLINS was greatly esteemed of the South, howbeit he was held of but little worth in the North, since they who made songs and jokes for the papers had aforetime laughed him to scorn.

For it had come to pass that sundry niggers, the children of Ham, with others of the heathen, walking in darkness, had built unto themselves shanties of sticks and mud, and dwellings of palm-leaves, and given unto the place a name; even Greytown called they it;

And, waxing saucy, had reviled the powers that be, and chosen unto themselves a king, wearing pantaloons.

And HOLLINS said unto himself, ’Lo! here is glory!

’Verily here be niggers who are not men of war, strength is not in them, and their habitations are as naught.’

So he went against them with cannon and sailors, men of war and horse-marines, and made war upon the children of Ham,

Bombarding their town from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same—­there was not left one old woman there, no, not one.