Norfolk. Splendid as she is, however, and provided with all but the
very latest improvements in naval armament, the Minnesota belongs to a
class of vessels that will be built no more, nor ever fight another
battle,--being as much a thing of the past as any of the ships of Queen
Elizabeth's time, which grappled with the galleons of the Spanish
Armada.

On her quarter-deck, an elderly flag-officer was pacing to and fro,
with a self-conscious dignity to which a touch of the gout or
rheumatism perhaps contributed a little additional stiffness. He seemed
to be a gallant gentleman, but of the old, slow, and pompous school of
naval worthies, who have grown up amid rules, forms, and etiquette
which were adopted full-blown from the British navy into ours, and are
somewhat too cumbrous for the quick spirit of to-day. This order of
nautical heroes will probably go down, along with the ships in which
they fought valorously and strutted most intolerably. How can an
admiral condescend to go to sea in an iron pot? What space and
elbow-room can be found for quarter-deck dignity in the cramped lookout
of the Monitor, or even in the twenty-feet diameter of her cheese-box?
All the pomp and splendor of naval warfare are gone by. Henceforth
there must come up a race of enginemen and smoke-blackened cannoneers,
who will hammer away at their enemies under the direction of a single
pair of eyes; and even heroism--so deadly a gripe is Science laying on
our noble possibilities--will become a quality of very minor
importance, when its possessor cannot break through the iron crust of
his own armament and give the world a glimpse of it.

At no great distance from the Minnesota lay the strangest-looking
craft I ever saw. It was a platform of iron, so nearly on a level with
the water that the swash of the waves broke over it, under the impulse