Exit Hooker.
"Fighting Joe" has disappeared at last. He has gone the way of all Yankee Generals.-- He brings up the rear of that illustrious procession,--Scott, McDowell, McClellan, Pope, Burnside,--last and least, Hooker. The grim shades of the departed rise to welcome him to the infernal pit,--the Young Napoleon, probably in the advance, greeting Hooker with an iron grip of salutation, and a significant smile, suggestive of Congress committees, and bubble reputations built up by bluster and blowing, and burst at the cannon's month. Poor, dead Commanders in Chief of Doodledom,--there they lie all in a row,--six green graves, and greener occupants, festering in the winding sheet of their dead reputations. Tread lightly on their ashes, Major-General Meade, successor of Hooker, and, instead of imitating their vain glorious and hollow ways, bend thine ear with humility amongst the long grass that covers their creases, and-- ‘ "Hark from the tombs a doleful sound,Thinned ears attend the cry;
Then living man, come view the ground
Where thou must shortly lie"
’ What is to become of Maj Gen. Hooker alias "Fighting Joe," and Commander in Chief, "with the reins well in hand," of "the finest army on the planet, " it is impossible to predict. Whether, like Pope, he is to be sent to hunting Indians, or, like Burnside, to console himself for his inability to cope with armed men by persecuting and hanging the defenceless and non-combatant, remains to be seen. As for the luckless McClellan, there seems no prospect of resurrection. No emergency, however pressing, can induce the Gorilla to entrust "the reins" of the army to the retreating hero of the Chickahominy. In the meantime Lee, who has swallowed one Grand Army after another, is standing with open month at the gates of the enemy, asking for more. The unappeasable appetite of this man is frightful to all beholders. One Grand Army after another, with innumerable cannon, small arms, and other munitions of war, has gone down his insatiable throat and he is still unappeased, endeavoring to stay his stomach with fat valleys and Pennsylvania militia, until, in the choice vernacular of the Yankees, lie can "gobble down" another Grand Army. We are fearful that Meade will not organize his larder in time for the visitation of this ravenous Virginian and that he may find it necessary, in order to allay the pangs of hunger, to bolt Washington whole, and all its horrid contents.
