That last gun from the Cumberland, when
her deck was half submerged, sounded the requiem of many sinking ships.
Then went down all the navies of Europe and our own, Old Ironsides and
all, and Trafalgar and a thousand other fights became only a memory,
never to be acted over again; and thus our brave countrymen come last in
the long procession of heroic sailors that includes Blake and Nelson, and
so many mariners of England, and other mariners as brave as they, whose
renown is our native inheritance. There will be other battles, but no
more such tests of seamanship and manhood as the battles of the past;
and, moreover, the Millennium is certainly approaching, because human
strife is to be transferred from the heart and personality of man into
cunning contrivances of machinery, which by and by will fight out our
wars with only the clank and smash of iron, strewing the field with
broken engines, but damaging nobody's little finger except by accident.
Such is obviously the tendency of modern improvement. But, in the mean
while, so long as manhood retains any part of its pristine value, no
country can afford to let gallantry like that of Morris and his crew, any
more than that of the brave Worden, pass unhonored and unrewarded.
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