We have given the reader a clue to a little of the inefficiency of the Wilmington blockade. In our next paper, we shall endeavor to picture some of the effects of naval life on character, and the strange experiences one can have on shipboard, even in the monotony of life on a blockader. BUCKLE, DRAPER; CHURCH AND STATE. _FOURTH PAPER._ In the first paper of this series, reference was made to the Principles of _Unity_ and _Individuality_ as dominating over distinctive epochs of the world's progress; and certain characteristics of each epoch were pointed out which may be briefly recapitulated. Up to a period of time which is commonly said to commence with the publication of Lord Bacon's _Novum Organum_, the preponderating tendency in all the affairs of Society--in Government, in Religion, in Thought, in Practical Activities--was _convergent_ and toward Consolidation, Centralization, Order, or, in one word, _Unity_; with a minor reference only to Freedom, Independence, or Individuality. A change then took place, and the Tendency to Unity began to yield, as the _major_ or _chief_ tendency in society, to the opposite or divergent drift toward Disunity or Individuality, which gradually came to be pre-eminently active. The Spirit of Disintegration which thus arose, has exhibited and is still exhibiting itself in Religious affairs, by the destruction of the integrality of the Church, and its division into numerous sects; and in the State, by the Democratic principle of popular rule, as opposed to the Monarchical theory of the supremacy of one. We have now arrived, in the course of our development as a race, at the culminating point of the second Stage of Progress--the Era of _Individuality_. The predominant tendency of our time in things Religious, Governmental, Intellectual, and Practical, is toward the utter rejection of all clogs upon the personal freedom of Man or Woman. This is seen by the neglect into which institutions of all kinds tend to fall, and the disrespect in which they are held; in the movements for the abolition of Slavery and Serfdom; in the recognition of the people's right of rule, even in Monarchical countries; more radically in the Woman's Rights Crusade, and in the absolute rejection, by the School of Reformers known as Individualists, of all governmental authority other than that voluntarily accepted, as an infringement of the individual's inherent right of self-sovereignty.