e; the assurance of professional merit, and of work
well done, if scantily recognized. Poor and beloved sails and
spars--_la joie de la manoeuvre_, to use the sympathetic phrase of a
French officer of that day--gone ye are with that past of which I have
been speaking, and of which ye were a goodly symbol; but like other
symptoms of the times, had we listened aright, we should have heard
the stern rebuke: Up and depart hence; this is not the place of your
rest.

The result of all this had been a body of officers, and of men-of-war
seamen, strong in professional sentiment, and admirably qualified in
the main for the duties of a calling which in many of its leading
characteristics was rapidly becoming obsolete. There was the spirit of
youth, but the body of age. As a class, officers and men were well up
in the use of such instruments as the country gave them; but the
profession did not wield the corporate influence necessary to extort
better instruments, and impotence to remedy produced acquiescence in,
perhaps, more properly, submission to, an arrest of progress, the
evils of which were clearly seen. Yet the salt was still there, nor
had it lost its savor. The military professions are discouraged, even
enjoined, against that combined independent action for the remedy of
grievances which is the safeguard of civil liberty, but tends to sap
the unquestioning obedience essential to unity of action under a
single will--at once the virtue and the menace of a standing army.
Naval officers had neither the privilege nor the habits which would
promote united effort for betterment; but when individuals among them
are found, like Farragut, Dupont, Porter, Dahlgren--to mention only a
few names that became conspicuous in the War of Secession--there will
be found also in civil and political life men who will become the
channels through which the needs of the service will receive
expression and ultimately obtain relief. The process is overslow for
perfect adequacy, but it exists. It may be asked, Was not the Navy
Department constituted for this special purpose? Possibly; but
experience has shown that sometimes it is effective, and sometimes it
is not. There is in it no provision for a continuous policy. No
administrative period of our naval history since 1812 has been more
disastrously stagnant and inefficient than that which followed closely
the War of Secession, with its extraordinary, and in the main
well-directed, administrative ene