ong
his own supporters accused of wanting every element of statesmanship,
was the most absolute ruler in Christendom, and this solely by the hold
his good-humored sagacity had laid on the hearts and understandings of
his countrymen. Nor was this all, for it appeared that he had drawn the
great majority, not only of his fellow-citizens, but of mankind also,
to his side. So strong and so persuasive is honest manliness without a
single quality of romance or unreal sentiment to help it! A civilian
during times of the most captivating military achievement, awkward,
with no skill in the lower technicalities of manners, he left behind
him a fame beyond that of any conqueror, the memory of a grace higher
than that of outward person, and of a gentlemanliness deeper than mere
breeding. Never before that startled April morning did such multitudes
of men shed tears for the death of one they had never seen, as if with
him a friendly presence had been taken away from their lives, leaving
them colder and darker. Never was funeral panegyric so eloquent as the
silent look of sympathy which strangers exchanged when they met on that
day. Their common manhood had lost a kinsman.

RECONSTRUCTION

1865

In the glare of our civil war, certain truths, hitherto unobserved or
guessed at merely, have been brought out with extraordinary sharpness
of relief; and two of them have been specially impressive, the one for
European observers, the other for ourselves. The first, and perhaps the
most startling to the Old World watcher of the political skies, upon
whose field of vision the flaming sword of our western heavens grew
from a misty speck to its full comet-like proportions, perplexing them
with fear of change, has been the amazing strength and no less amazing
steadiness of democratic institutions. An army twice larger than
England, with the help of bounties, drafts, and the purchase of foreign
vagabonds, ever set in the field during the direst stress of her
struggle with Napoleon has been raised in a single year by voluntary
enlistment. A people untrained to bear the burden of heavy taxes not
only devotes to the public service sums gathered by private
subscription that in any other country would be deemed fabulous, but by
sheer force of public opinion compels its legislators to the utmost
ingenuity and searchingness of taxation. What was uttered as a sarcasm
on the want of public spirit in Florence is here only literally true:--