assimilation of the reintegrated portions of the South with our Northern and the truly American character and sentiment, would still, therefore, deserve to be reckoned upon the side of seeming or obvious success. But on the other hand, let us consider, for a moment, the other alternative--that of apparent disaster, incurred from the war, not so much in the light of overwhelming military defeats, which need hardly now to be seriously apprehended, as from financial exhaustion and other secondary causes introduced into the working of our national and social life through the operation and influence of the war. Mr. Cobden, undoubtedly a friend of our nation, and a shrewd observer of the world's affairs on the basis of experience, or a knowledge of the past, warns us to look forward to a period of almost utter prostration after the war shall have terminated, and to a train of serious consequences from the terrific strain put by it upon our energies and resources. Forebodings of a similar kind haunt the imaginations of many of our own citizens. The history of past wars and their results justify the anticipation. Perchance all this may prove an unnecessary fear. It may happen that the almost boundless recuperative energies of this young American civilization of ours may be destined to astonish our enemies, our friends, and ourselves, as much as the extent of our resources for action have already done--that the strain put upon us, instead of enfeebling us in the least, has been merely a healthy exercise for the growing muscles and thews of a young giant just now ripening into a first manhood, and never heretofore called upon for any adequate exertion to display his strength. We once heard an enthusiastic and progressive orator, referring to the marvels of modern development, utter, with a sublime and audacious eloquence, the startling assertion that '_Experience is a fool._' There is a sense, no doubt, in which the sentiment is true. Neither the growth, nor the inherent power, nor the elasticity of the rebound from seeming exhaustion, nor the immense acceleration of the rapidity of the future career of the American people, is to be safely measured by a reference to what has occurred with former nationalities, in other and different times. Our experience of the future, whatever it may be, will be, no doubt, essentially different from any of the past.