ed, and it is no less a pity that thousands of young men should
be destroyed or mutilated, and that hundreds of thousands of their
relatives should mourn because of war; but so long as war is possible,
and possible it ever will be, until the amalgamation of the different
species of the different nations, of the different tribes, and of the
different tongues who inhabit the earth takes place, at the millennium;
soon after which this great globe itself is to be dissolved with
fervent heat, and all its magnificent palaces, gorgeous temples, and
stupendous towers are to pass away for ever, will there be a waste and
destruction of life and property at which extreme civilisation
shudders. Educated men will doubtless mourn the loss of fine libraries
and of grand cathedrals. English taste doubtless regrets that churches,
the remains of which are yet so striking, should have been destroyed by
indiscriminating fanaticism, but the man of sense will recollect the
idolatry that has passed away with them, as with the Parthenon, and he
will weigh the gain to a people with the loss sustained by merely men
of taste. And, beyond question, men of peace can paint the horrors of
war vividly, and deny its necessity, but the man of ordinary
understanding will not scruple to say that as war in the elements is
sometimes necessary for a healthy atmosphere, so war among men is
needful for the preservation of even a shadow of liberty to the
individual, and that injury to public buildings, to trade and commerce,
must result from it, for a time.

Immediately after the capture of Washington, Captain Gordon, in the
frigate _Seahorse_, accompanied by the brig _Euryalus_, and several
bomb-vessels, entered the Potomac. Without much difficulty he overcame
the intricacies of the passage leading by that river to the metropolis,
and on the evening of the 27th, the expedition arrived abreast of Fort
Washington. The Fort which had been constructed so as to command the
river was immediately bombarded, and the powder magazine having
exploded, the place was abandoned, and with all its guns, taken
possession of by the British. Proceeding next to Alexandria, the
bomb-vessels assumed a position which effectually commanded the
shipping in the port, and the enemy were compelled to capitulate, when
two and twenty vessels, including several armed schooners, fell into
the hands of the British, and were brought away in triumph. There was
some difficulty, however, in bring