ifices be in vain. They call
on us by our clear understanding of the great principles of democratic
equality, for which our martyred brethren suffered and died, to show
to all the world that their death was no mean and useless waste, but a
glorious investment for the future of mankind.

"This war, these sufferings, these sacrifices, ought to make every
American man and woman look on himself and herself as belonging to a
royal priesthood, a peculiar people. The blood of our slain ought to
be a gulf, wide and deep as the Atlantic, dividing us from the
opinions and the practices of countries whose government and society
are founded on other and antagonistic ideas. Democratic republicanism
has never yet been perfectly worked out either in this or any other
country. It is a splendid edifice, half built, deformed by rude
scaffolding, noisy with the clink of trowels, blinding the eyes with
the dust of lime, and endangering our heads with falling brick. We
make our way over heaps of shavings and lumber to view the stately
apartments,--we endanger our necks in climbing ladders standing in the
place of future staircases; but let us not for all this cry out that
the old rat-holed mansions of former ages, with their mould, and moss,
and cockroaches, are better than this new palace. There is no
lime-dust, no clink of trowels, no rough scaffolding there, to be
sure, and life goes on very quietly; but there is the foul air of slow
and sure decay.

"Republican institutions in America are in a transition state; they
have not yet separated themselves from foreign and antagonistic ideas
and traditions, derived from old countries; and the labors necessary
for the upbuilding of society are not yet so adjusted that there is
mutual pleasure and comfort in the relations of employer and employed.
We still incline to class distinctions and aristocracies. We incline
to the scheme of dividing the world's work into two orders: first,
physical labor, which is held to be rude and vulgar, and the province
of a lower class; and second, brain labor, held to be refined and
aristocratic, and the province of a higher class. Meanwhile, the
Creator, who is the greatest of levelers, has given to every human
being both a physical system, needing to be kept in order by physical
labor, and an intellectual or brain power, needing to be kept in order
by brain labor. Work, use, employment, is the condition of health in
both; and he who works either to the neglect