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We trust that when Peace shall return to this belligerent land, and our Universities and Colleges are again in operation, there will be established in each of them a new department, --the School of Silence. In its Professor's chair should be installed, grave and reflective, a Socrates,--if such can now be found,--not destitute himself of the capacity of eloquence, but chastened in oratorical fervor by the domestic declamation of Xanthippe. At the feet of this Professor should be laid the golden statue of Georgia, inventor of extemporaneous eloquence and founder of the school described by Plato as "word weavers." With his foot on this prostrate statue should our Professor sit, and bid his pupils look and shudder at the ruin which gales of speech, let loose by a rhetorical Æolus, have brought upon an afflicted land. Then, in due course of time, another generation will arise, which will appreciate, at the proper value, those representative bodies which, in times like these, discourse for months upon wind instruments, whilst that man of action, General Lee, in vain points out the only means and hope of their salvation.

One of the greatest charms of Spring is, that it puts an end to deliberative bodies, as it is one of the consolations of Fall that it puts an end to the kindred bore and annoyance of mosquitoes.--The land is wearied and disgusted with debates, addresses and high-sounding resolutions. The passage and enactment, four months ago, of any law, putting into the field all able-bodied men, the representatives included, would have done for the physical and moral strength of the Confederacy more than four months of continuous eloquence. It is vain now to deplore the past, but we may at least invoke the representatives of the people to spare the world any further inflection of speeches which do not answer the arguments of Grant and Sherman, and of appeals which are not distinguished by the Demosthenian attribute of action. We do not observe that Sherman was anywhere stopped in his march by the one thousand rounds of oratorical Parrott guns which governors and other public speakers let off at his advancing columns. Unless the representatives of the people take the field themselves, and secure a position so close to the enemy that the can hear what they say, we have no hopes that he will put his fingers in his ears and run for his life.

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