They are deficient in buoyancy and speed. In truth they are nothing more than floating batteries, useful in the defence of harbors or the attack of forts. The melancholy end of the Monitor shows too plainly that vessels of her character cannot be safely trusted to the fury of the open sea. They may do well in favorable weather, or may escape on a single expedition; but a repetition of long voyages will be almost certain to result in their loss. We want lighter and swifter vessels to be equally formidable in ordnance, and alike invulnerable to the attacks of any adversary. To combine all these requisites is not beyond the ingenuity of American constructors. Most assuredly such vessels will soon make their appearance on the ocean. Some new arrangement of the propelling apparatus, and lighter and more powerful machinery, will accomplish this important end. And then, too, with greatly increased speed, and with a construction suitable to the new function, the principle of the ram will be perfected; so that the projectile thrown by the most powerful ordnance now existing or even conceived will be insignificant compared with the momentum of a large steamer, going at the rate of thirty or forty miles an hour, and herself becoming the direct instrument of destruction to her adversary. Ordnance may possibly be devised which will throw shot or shell weighing each a thousand pounds; but by the new principle, which is evidently growing in practicability and favor, the weight of thousands of tons will be precipitated against vessels of war, and naval combats will become a conflict of gigantic forces, in comparison with which the discharge of guns and the momentum of cannon balls will be little more than the bursting of bubbles.