Charleston, again,
The Yankee scribes speak with the same certainly of taking Charleston as they were wont to do of taking Richmond. It is entertaining to read their mysterious hints about the unknown and awful agencies which he undisclosed in the bosoms of their Monitors, but which, at the appointed time (a time which has already been deferred oftener than the Ascension Day of the Minorities) are to be let loose in irresistible power upon the devoted city. Such a generation of braggart never before occupied the earth. How different the incessant clamoring of the multitudinous frogs outside the harbor and the stern silence which reigns within! The invading horde will never occupy Charleston. If it over fails into their hands it will be only as a heap of smoking ruins the very site of which will be uninhabitable after the heat of summer has set in. But we don't believe that even that much consolation awaits them. We can easily understand their impatience to defile Charleston more foully than New Orleans. They are already equating down in imagination in those majestic old churches; stationing whole regiments of their foreign braves in that specious and famous Orphan Asylum, which has sheltered and reared so many poor children of every nationality, and taking for their officers' quarters the stately old mansions of the Haguenot and Cavalier aristocracy. --All and more than they have done in New Orleans do they expect to perpetrate in Charleston. But, if ever there was a possibility that Charleston could fall unmutilated into their hands it has been annihilated by their fiendish and beastly conduct in New Orleans. Every citizen of Charleston would apply the torch to his own house sooner than see his beloved city reduced to such degradation. Not one house will be left standing for the Butlers to revel and riot in, even if their Monitors could force their way to the whatever of the city. --Not one roof would be left standing to shelter the hands of the invaders from the blazing sun that would stop render life insupportable to the unacclimated, whilst our numerous and well-appointed army would fall back, leaving the foe a few barren cares on a sickly coast as a graveyard for their soldiers and sailors.But Charleston, we feel a strong persuasion, is to meet no such fate. We believe that its means of defence are sufficient to set the foe at defiance, and that the God of Battles will defend a city which without disparagement to any other may be said to have had no superior, if an equal, in the domestic virtues of its people, in its catholic spirit and noble charities, in its humane provisions for the poor, the orphan, and the aged and infirm. We have abiding confidence in the devoted courage with which it will be defended, and in the great General who, we trust, is destined to immortalize his name, not only by the successful defence of the city, but the annihistion of the invaders.
