Again, the stimulus which this contest has applied to warlike invention has already placed us in that respect far ahead of the most warlike nation on earth. France has hitherto been known as the great originator in all military science: probably she will yet, for many years, retain the palm in the province of tactics and executive skill. But as an originator and perfecter of the engines and defences of war, America has already robbed her of her crown, and stands to-day unsurpassed. No greater proof is needed of our superiority in this respect than the fact that in two short years of civil strife we have revolutionized the whole art of war as it has existed for ages, rendering absurd the maxims and useless the experience of the olden days, while filling their places with systems and theories whose practical results are so clear as to overwhelmingly sustain the new order of things, and compel not only the admiration but the support and adoption of the onlooking world. The antiquated weapons of warfare are harmless to-day, and their places are supplied by new and more destructive engines, which Europe must perforce adopt in self-defence, and thus bow to the genius of American invention, whereby the old is so entirely and radically supplanted by the new, that the Napoleons and Wellingtons of a past age would be but tyros in our battles of to-day. The lesson of the Monitors is not the only one Europe has learned from us within the last two years. And we have more to teach her yet, more marvels yet to be evolved from that inexhaustible mine of invention--the Yankee brain. For as long as the war shall last, furnishing not only a promise of a golden harvest in the future, but a present and substantial support to inventive genius, at the same time that a new stimulus is being constantly supplied by the events and experience of each succeeding day, the work will go on, and weapon after weapon, engine after engine, will be thrown into the world's great market, constantly approaching nearer to the perfection of destructive power. And as there is no poison without its antidote, so the originating faculties of the American mind will be as fully exerted in the creation of defences against those very engines of destruction. Armed thus at all points, and containing within ourselves not only a source of future supply, but even the very fount of originating faculty in this speciality, we shall be a power with which it is dangerous to trifle--a power with which others will not care to come in collision in any other form than that of an overwhelming combination, which, thank God! has become in these days one of the impossibilities of political manoeuvring. Nor will they be anxious, on any slight provocation, to again arouse that inventive faculty which furnishes us with material of war far in advance of the rest of the world. We have within ourselves every element of strength, every quality necessary to inspire and compel respect from all nations.