"shooting on the wing." So deficient
is Mr. Schurz in this talent, that he has been known to use a
manuscript in an after-dinner response, a style of speech whose chief
merit consists in its spontaneity, with apt reference to incidents
which could not possibly be foreseen.

The loss of Mr. Schurz's popularity--a popularity that was very marked
in the earlier period of his career--is due in part to certain unsteady
and erratic tendencies, some of which are in strong contrast with
characteristics that are recognized as belonging in an especial degree
to his race. Through all the centuries since Tacitus drew his vivid
picture of the habits and manners of the Germans, their attachment, it
might almost be called their passion, for home, has been a marked and
meritorious feature of their character. To Fatherland first, and then
to whatever country fate or fortune may draw them, their devotion is
proverbial. This admirable trait seems altogether wanting in Mr.
Schurz. When he left Germany he lived for three years in other
countries of Europe,--first in Switzerland, then in France, then in
England. In 1852 he came to America, and resided first in
Pennsylvania, then in Wisconsin, then in Michigan, then in Missouri,
and then in New York. He has not become rooted and grounded anywhere,
has never established a home, is not of any locality or of any class,
has no fixed relation to Church or State, to professional, political,
or social life, has acquired none of that companionship and confidence
which unites old neighbors in the closest ties, and give to friendship
its fullest development, its most gracious attributes.

The same unsteadiness has entered as a striking feature in the public
career of Mr. Schurz. The party he upheld yesterday met with his
bitterest denunciations the day before, and to-morrow he will support
the political organization of whose measures he is the most merciless
censor to-day. He boasts himself incapable of attachment to party, and
in that respect radically differs from the great body of his American
fellow-citizens. He cannot even comprehend that exalted sentiment
of honorable association in public life which holds together successive
generations of men,--a sentiment which in the United States causes
the Democrat to reverence the memory of Jefferson and Jackson and
Douglas, which causes his opponent to glory in the achievements of
Hamilton and Clay and Lincoln; a sentiment which in England has