our map no Rubicon. But then I expect to see this Communistic madness rebuked and ended. If it is not rebuked and ended, I shall have to say, as many a sad-eyed Roman must have said nineteen hundred years ago: I prefer civilization to the Republic.

ROSWELL D. HITCHCOCK.

Note 86.

GARFIELD.

WHEN General Garfield took the oath of office as President, he seemed to those who knew him best, though in his fiftieth year, still in the prime of a splendid and vigorous youth. He was still growing. We hoped for him eight years of brilliant administration, and then in some form or place of service an old age like that of Adams, whom, in variety of equipment alone of our Presidents, he resembled. What was best and purest and loftiest in the aspiration of America seemed at last to have laid its hand on the helm. Under its beneficent rule we hoped, as our country entered on its new career of peace and prosperity, a nobler liberty, a better friendship, a purer justice, a more lasting brotherhood.

But he was called to a sublimer destiny. He had ascended along and up the heights of service, of success, of greatness, of glory; ever raised by the people to higher ranks for gallant and meritorious conduct on each field, until by their suffrages he stood foremost among men of the foremost among nations. But in the days of his sickness and death he became the perpetual witness and example of how much greater than the achievements of legislative halls, or the deeds of the field of battle, are the household virtues and simple family affections which all men have within their reach; how much greater than the lessons of the college or the camp, or the Congress, are the lessons

learned at mothers' knees. The honors paid to Garfield are the protest of a better age and a better generation against the vulgar heroisms of the past. Go through their mausoleums and under their triumphal arches, and see how the names inscribed there shrink and shrivel compared with that of this Christian soldier, whose chiefest virtues, after all, are of the fireside and the family circle, and of the dying bed. Here the hero of America becomes the hero of humanity.

We are justified, then, in saying of this man that he had been tried and tested in every mode by which the quality of a human heart and the capacity of a human intellect can be disclosed; by adversity, by prosperity, by poverty, by wealth, by leadership in deliberative assemblies and in the perilous edge of battle, by the height of power and of fame. The assay was to be completed by the certain and visible approach of death. As he comes out into the sunlight, more and more clearly does his country behold a greatness and symmetry which she is to see in their true and full proportions only when he lies in the repose of death.

We should be unfaithful to ourselves if in asking for this man a place in the world's gallery of illustrious names we did not declare that we offer him as an example of the products of Freedom. With steady and even step he walked from the log-cabin and the canal path to the school, to the college, to the White House, to the chamber of death. The ear in which the voices of his countrymen hailing him at the pinnacle of human glory had scarcely died out, heard the voice of the dread Archangel, and his countenance did not change. Is not that country worth dying for whose peasantry are of such a strain? Is not the Constitution worth standing by under whose forms Freedom calls such men to her high places? Is not the Union worth saving which gives all of us the property of countrymen in such a fame? GEO. F. HOAR.

GRANT.

201

Note 87.

GRANT.

THE career of General Grant, if considered as simply a single great episode in the history of our country, furnishes the most striking and convincing proof of the security and stability of our institutions. Years ago in England, it was predicted of the United States that when the separate States had become powerful, their population large, their interests diverse and antagonistic, and the inequalities in wealth and social position more wide and emphatic, that then should a great revolution occur the government would not be able to sustain the shock; that the sentiments of liberty and the traditions of popular government would be found too weak as cohering and preserving principles, and that then the hour would have come for a man of strong arm and military prestige to seize the reins of government and establish the principles of monarchy. And Lord Macaulay, referring in 1829 to the prosperous condition of the United States as compared with other nations, yet distrustful of their future, said: "As for America, we appeal to the twentieth century." Now these words and prophecies were not prompted by envy, but were the expression of what many of our own best thinkers regarded as profound political wisdom and foresight. But when the precise conditions which, it was predicted, would result in our overthrow, had supervened, and that, too, near the auspicious dawn of the twentieth century; when the most appalling of revolutions was upon us, a revolution which involved the very foundation principles of the government; when the portentous hour seemed to have struck for the appearance of "the man on horseback," we saw the nation rising from the struggle strengthened by the ordeal, the sentiments of liberty and the traditions of popular government more abiding and sure in the hearts of the people, and with the fact, certain and demonstrated, that war and revolution had not raised up a man, bold enough, daring enough, proud enough

or ambitious enough to desire to be anything more than a plain citizen and subject of this great republic.

Though cut off from life while yet its end seemed to reach far down the future, General Grant was, perhaps, as singularly fortunate in his death as in his life. The best that earth affords had been his. Power, position, wealth, the pleasures of travel, the delights of honor, the excitements of the field, the joy of the victor, all were his. But it was not in the memory of these, not in the recollection of what he had been, and seen, and achieved that he found the sweetest solace and comfort in his closing hours. It was rather in the knowledge which he had and which was assured to him by messages of sympathy and condolence which came to him every day from every quarter of the land, that he left a country united, reconciled, harmonized, and that the peace for which his puissant sword was raised, in the ardor of his manhood, had come to dwell within the land. Toward the realization of that supreme fact no man had looked more eagerly, more hopefully than he; for although a soldier by profession, war was to him distasteful. He engaged in it, not as a passion, but as an awful duty, as a means to secure peace.

When the bridge at Lodi had been crossed, visions of empire, dreams of universal conquest began to stir the soul of Napoleon. When Cromwell saw Prince Rupert's cavalry recoil at Marston Moor before the pikes of his psalm-singing Puritan soldiers, aspirations for the Protectorate moved uneasily in his breast. But when General Grant stood behind the surrendered ramparts of Fort Donelson, the thought which came to him, which filled his mind and burdened his heart, was, what a tremendous responsibility Providence had placed upon him. And thus it was that when the end came, he sheathed his sword, not reluctantly, regretfully, as a conqueror, but gladly, joyfully, willingly, as a Christian man. OLIVER E. BRANCH.

PATRIOTISM.

203

Note 88.

PATRIOTISM.

RIGHT and wrong, justice and crime, exist independently of our country. A public wrong is not a private right for any citizen. The citizen is a man bound to know and to do the right: and the nation is but the aggregate of citizens. If a man should shout, "My country, by whatever means extended and bounded; my country, right or wrong!" he merely repeats the words of the thief who steals in the street, or of the trader who swears falsely at the custom-house, both of them chuckling, "My fortune, however acquired."

Thus, we see that a man's country. is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods: but it is principle, and patriotism is loyalty to that principle. In poetic minds and in popular enthusiasm this feeling becomes closely associated with the soil and symbols of the country. But the secret sanctification of the soil and the symbol is the idea which they represent; and this idea the patriot worships through the name and the symbol, as a lover kisses with rapture the glove of his mistress, and wears a lock of her hair upon his heart.

So, with passionate heroism, of which tradition is never weary of tenderly telling, Arnold von Winkelried gathers into his bosom the sheaf of foreign spears, that his death may give life to his country. So, Nathan Hale, disdaining no service that his country demands, perishes untimely, with no other friend than God and the sanctified sense of duty. So, George Washington, at once comprehending the scope of the destiny to which his country was devoted, with one hand puts aside the crown, and with the other sets his slaves free. So, through all history, from the beginning, a noble army of martyrs has fought fiercely and fallen bravely for that unseen mistress, their country. So, through all history to the end, as long as men believe in God, that army