The daily dispatch. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1884, 1865-03-21
TUESDAY MORNING: MARCH 81, 1865.

Horace Walpole, in letter to Sir Ho.
race Mann, written during the Seven
Years War, expresses himself wcaried
with the slow process Of military events.
He says that no doubt the occurrences of
Caesars day seemed to drag themselves
along quite as tediously, although the
conquests of Caesar are proverbial for
their rapidity. We read the commenta.
ries, or the campaigns of Frederick, all
in the bulk. We do not go through the
tedious details Of military operations in
the newspapers, catching the news Of a
moment one day, and resting upon our
information thus picked up for several
others to como. The newspapers, and
the dispatches and bulletins of the gene
rails, only let lis see little at time. A
six months campaign gathered this way,
in detail, is wcarisome enough. We
must wait for the historian if we wish
to read operations in the mass.
In addition to other causes of uneasi-
ness, the great anxiety necessarily felt
by contcmporaries-especially by that
portion of them whose countrymen and
friends are engaged in the conflict-ren-
ders delay still more painful. Every
moment is protracted into an hour
every hour apparently grows into week
weeks become years, and years seem
expanded to ages. Every man who
looks back to the beginning of a war in
which he is Immediately interested, and
which has already lasted four or five
years, without looking at the interme-
diate events, will feel that he is contem-
plating the events Of yesterday. 1t IS
like looking across tremendous preci-
pice, directly to the other side. He sees
what is n-the opposite cliff, but he sees
nothing of the obstacles that lie between
him and it. Let him look down, how.
ever, and he will find his brain reel and
his eve sink. Even so is it with the
man who looks, not merely at the starting
point of bloody war, but at the Incl
dents which lie between him and it,
When he breaks the great whole into
separate parts, for analysis and contem~
plation, he becomes overwhelmed and
stupeiicd with the scene.
The events of this war have, no doubt,
succeeded each other with sufficient ra-
pidity, yet they arc tedious to US, what
ever they may be to the future historian.
1t seems to US like an age since Major
Anderson was upturned at Fort Sumter;
and when we read, the other day, that
Mr. Dudley Field proposed to carry him
back, and make him hoist his flag there
afain, we involuntarily asked whether
he was still alive, or had not died of old
age.
Xerxes is reported, by Herodot,s, to
have wept when he bchcld his mighty
comprehending five millions of the hu-
man race drawn out in the vast plain Of
Abydos, because the thought suddenly
struck him that in one hundred years
not a man of them would. be left alive.
In much less time than that the COM
batants in the present war will all have
disappeared from the face Of the earth,
and then we may repeat Montaigne's
standing questionable bono? What is
it all for? Oppressed and oppressors, so
far as the vile integuments of humanity
are concerned, will all have shared a
common fate. Yet the glory Of the pa.
tribt will last forever.
We wjte the above by way of expert
ment. We wish to see whether the
public will tolerate anything not apper-
tanning directly to the war.