Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (This file was produced from images generously made available by Cornell University Digital Collections.) THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY: DEVOTED TO LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY. VOL. IV.--AUGUST, 1863.--No. II. OUR FUTURE. In these exciting times, when our country is enduring the throes of political convulsion, and every time-honored institution, every well-regulated law of society seems tottering from the broad foundation of the past, how few are there who ask themselves the question, What is to be our future? For the past two years we have lived in a state of extraordinary and unnatural excitement, beside which the jog-trot existence of the former days, with all its periodical excitements, its hebdomadal heavings of the waves of society, pales into insignificance. Like the grave, with its eternal 'Give! give!' our appetites, stimulated to a morbid degree by their daily food of marvels, cry constantly for more; and a lull of but a few brief months in the storm whose angry pinions are constantly bringing new wonders to our view, begets an almost insupportable _ennui_ in the public mind, and a restlessness among the masses, such as our history has never before shown. Nor will the craving be satiated so long as the war shall last; for the stirring events, following so closely upon each other, and filling every hour of our national life, will keep up the unnatural excitement, even as the stimulating effect of alcoholic drinks is prolonged by repeated draughts. Only when the source is entirely cut off will the stimulus pass away; and then, when peace is established, and we drop again into the ruts and grooves of the olden days, the reaction will set in, and happy shall we be if it is not followed by a political _delirium tremens_.