t fiery kiss of war the
spell is broken, the blood tingles along her veins again, and she
awakes conscious of her beauty and her sovereignty.

It is true that, by the side of the self-devotion and public spirit,
the vices and meannesses of troubled times have shown themselves, as
they will and must. We have had shoddy, we have had contracts, we have
had substitute-brokerage, we have had speculators in patriotism, and,
still worse, in military notoriety. Men have striven to make the blood
of our martyrs the seed of wealth or office. But in times of public and
universal extremity, when habitual standards of action no longer serve,
and ordinary currents of thought are swamped in the flood of enthusiasm
or excitement, it always happens that the evil passions of some men are
stimulated by what serves only to exalt the nobler qualities of others.
In such epochs, evil as well as good is exaggerated. A great social
convulsion shakes up the lees which underlie society, forgotten because
quiescent, and the stimulus of calamity brings out the extremes of
human nature, whether for good or evil.

What is especially instructive in the events we have been witnessing
for the past four years is the fact that the people have been the chief
actors in the drama. They have not been the led, but the leaders. They
have not been involved in war by the passions or interests of their
rulers, but deliberately accepted the ordeal of battle in defence of
institutions which were the work of their own hands, and of whose
beneficence experience had satisfied them. Loyalty has hitherto been a
sentiment rather than a virtue; it has been more often a superstition
or a prejudice than a conviction of the conscience or of the
understanding. Now for the first time it is identical with patriotism,
and has its seat in the brain, and not the blood. It has before been
picturesque, devoted, beautiful, as forgetfulness of self always is,
but now it is something more than all these,--it is logical. Here we
have testimony that cannot be gainsaid to the universal vitality and
intelligence which our system diffuses with healthy pulse through all
its members. Every man feels himself a part, and not a subject, of the
government, and can say in a truer and higher sense than Louis XIV., "I
am the state." But we have produced no Cromwell, no Napoleon. Let us be
thankful that we have passed beyond that period of political
development when such productions are necessary, or