iron-clad vessels were pitted against each other. The Merrimack was
driven back disabled. We breathed freely again at this
_denouement_, and congratulated ourselves that the nation had
been saved from enormous damage and disgrace. We did not foresee that
the great Rebel monster, despairing of a successful encounter with her
antagonist, was to end her career by suicide. We thought only of the
vast injury which she might have done, and might yet be capable of
doing, to the Union cause, but from which we had so providentially
escaped. It was indeed a narrow escape. Nothing but the opportune
arrival of the Monitor saved us; and for this impregnable vessel we
are indebted to the genius of Ericsson.

This distinguished engineer and inventor, although a foreigner by
birth, has long been a citizen of the United States. His first work in
this country--by which, as in the present instance, he added honor and
efficiency to the American navy--was the steam-frigate Princeton, a
vessel which in her day was almost as great a novelty as the Monitor is
now. The improvements in steam machinery and propulsion and in the arts
of naval warfare, which he introduced in her, formed the subject of a
lecture delivered before the Boston Lyceum by John O. Sargent, in 1844,
from which source we derive some interesting particulars concerning
Ericsson's early history.

John Ericsson was born in 1803, in the Province of Vermeland, among the
iron mountains of Sweden. His father was a mining proprietor, so that
the youth had ample opportunities to watch the operation of the
various engines and machinery connected with the mines. These had been
erected by mechanicians of the highest scientific attainments, and
presented a fine study to a mind of mechanical tendencies. Under such
influences, his innate mechanical talent was early developed. At the