well-considered measures, not
inconsistent with the natural laws governing the case, whose final
operation it was wholly impossible to prevent.

But this system of gradual amelioration, and peaceful development of
ends that must come, did not satisfy the ambition of the conspirators.
They saw their last opportunity for a successful rebellion, and they
determined not to let it pass unimproved. The vast power of the slave
interest; the passions easily to be excited by it; the encouraging
delusions clustering around it; and the fearful apprehensions growing
out of its darker aspects, all contributed to make it the very
instrument for accomplishing the long-cherished design.

Slavery has been the chief means of bringing about the rebellion. It is
the lever, resting upon the fulcrum of State sovereignty, by which the
conspirators have been able, temporarily, to force one section of the
Union from its legitimate connections. Thus used for this unhallowed
purpose, and become tainted with treason and crimsoned with the blood of
slaughtered citizens, slavery necessarily subjects itself to all the
fearful contingencies and responsibilities of the rebellion. Whether the
confederate cause shall succeed or fail, the slave institution, thus
fatally involved in it, cannot long survive. In either event, its doom
is fixed. Like one of those reptiles, which, in the supreme act of
hostility, extinguish their own lives inflicting a mortal wound upon
their victims, slavery, roused to the final paroxysm of its hate and
rage, injects all its venom into the veins of the Union, exhausts itself
in the effort, and inevitably dies.

WORD-MURDER.

The time has come when we must have an entirely new lot
of superlatives--intensifiers of meaning--verifiers of
earnestness--asserters of exactness, etc., etc. The old ones are as dead
as herrings; killed off, too, as herrings are, by being taken from their
natural element. What between passionate men and affected women, all the
old stand-bys are used up, and the only practical question is, Where are
the substitutes to come from? Who shall be trusted to invent them? Not
the linguists: they would make them too long and slim. Not the mob: they
would make them too short and stout.

There are plenty of words made; but in these times they are all nouns,
and what we want are adverbs--'words that qualify verbs, participles,
adjectives, and other adverbs.' We could get along well enough with the
old