Thus much at present. Where this war is to carry us, what shall be its effect on us as a people, what great changes are in progress, and what may result from them, we will discuss at the proper time, in a future number. IS PROGRESS A TRUTH? 'Human nature has been the same in all ages.' 'Men are pretty much the same wherever you find them.' If there be anything in this world from which it would be desirable to see men delivered, it is from a certain small, cheap wisdom which expresses itself in general verdicts on all humanity, and enables the fribbler or dolt who can not see beyond his nose to give an offhand summary of the infinite. There is 'an aping of the devil' in this flippant assumption of our immutability, which strangely combines the pitiful and painful. Oh! if the _ne plus ultra_ which antique Ignorance complacently inscribes on the gates of its world should ever be worn away, let it be replaced by this owlish _credo_ in the unchangeableness of man. The refutation of these sayings has been the history of humanity, and yet no argument on political or social topics fails to contain them in one form or another. Even now, in the tremendous debate maintained by common logic and 'fist law' between our North and South, we find them enunciated with a clearness and precision unequaled in any state paper, unless we except that in which William the Conqueror coolly styled himself king 'by the right of the sword.' Science, which modestly announces itself as incomplete the nearer it approaches completion, has been assumed to be perfect by those most ignorant of it, in order that its mere observations as to climate and races may be found to prove that as man is, so he was in all ages, and so must be, 'forever and forever as we rove.' Races now vanished in the twilight of time have been boldly declared to be the prototypes of others, now themselves changing into new forms, and we, unconsciously, like the old Hebrew in Heine's Italy, repeat curses over the ancient graves of long-departed foes--ignorant that those curses were long since fulfilled by the unconquerable and terrible laws which ever hurry us onward and upward, from everlasting to everlasting, from the first Darkness to the infinite word of Light.