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ican nationality and the colonized Englishman of the Revolution. Notwithstanding the French and Spanish that had settled in certain localities, the men who constituted the back-bone of "the Confederacy" were, socially and governmentally, in their traditions, instincts, temper, and blood, essentially English. When on the 15th of April the President issued his call for seventy-five thousand men, the derisive laugh which rose from the rebel Congress at Montgomery was an English laugh. It was an echo of Hampden's laugh when the Stuarts asked for ship-money. It was Henry's laugh in the Virginia House of Burgesses. Look where you will, the springs of the Confederacy were English. It was a sturdy English voice that first counselled secession and "independence." It was a bold and steady English hand that wrote the Constitution of the Confederacy. It was English ideas that moved their cabinet; English intrepidity that sailed the Alabama; English pluck and obstinacy that carried Jackson through the Shenandoah, and bore up Robert Lee when he retreated inch by inch over the dying and the dead along that bloody track from the Wilderness to the James.

The great internecine, fratricidal struggle of the Republic is yet to come; can never come in any true sense until we have a strictly homogeneous people. Let us not miss the central lesson of the conflict. When Major Anderson surrendered Fort Sumter, Europe, looking on, said that the Saxon race had failed again in its trial of self-government. But wait a moment. What sound is that like the rushing of a mighty wind? It is the NEW AMERICAN NATIONALITY. The Saxon race may have failed, but this race has not failed —thank God, did not fail! In the tangles of the Chickahominy; by the Annà and the James; in the trenches about Petersburg and "above the clouds" at Lookout Mountain; at Antietam, at Shiloh, at Gettysburg—the English Saxon of the Colonial type met the American Saxon of the National type, and from the collision there sprang a new and better hope for the perpetuity of free government.

This was the meaning of the strife. Not brother against brother, but the "boy in blue" against the "continental "; and the "boy in blue" triumphed.

EDGAR A. ENOS.

IMPULSE AND DUTY.

THERE are two great impelling motives, one or the other of which inspires all brave and worthy action: impulse and duty. They are as unlike as sunshine and storm. But as you cannot tell which has contributed most to bring out the beauty of the flower, sun or rain, so you cannot tell which of these two motives has contributed most to the heroic in human life. Impulse is the offspring of sympathy, emulation, passion. Duty is the child of reason, meditation, prayer. The one is a creature of feeling, responding quickly to appeals for succor or protection. The other, an impersonation of judgment, measuring every demand of society, the Church, or State, by the standard of right. Impulse is philanthropy putting alms into every outstretched hand chivalry taking up the cause of oppressed weakness. It is the quick, effective eloquence of Henry animating the minds of America and defying the power of England. It is the brave boy throwing himself in the path of a runaway team to save a little sister. Duty is discriminating charity, growing not in pity, but in wisdom. It is the patriot turning from wife and children to save his country. It is the commander holding his post while furious battle assails from without and famine wastes within. The most popular men are the men of impulse. Sympathetic, impressible, they charm by their enthusiasm and captivate by their impetuosity. They are the heroes of romance and history whom the young worship; and in every-day life they are the men who give impetus to new projects and reanimate failing enterprises with prodigious though fitful energy. Men of duty are less attractive. They are sometimes cold,

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austere, but the cause they espouse, they uphold, not spasmodically, but with unfaltering determination. You remember that famous day when a great darkness fell on the land and a superstitious terror filled the hearts of the people In a terrified New England assembly a motion was made to adjourn. There was one man present to oppose the motion. "This may well be the day of judgment," said he, “but be it so. I want my God to find me doing my duty." Thus undisturbed, uncompromising, are the men of duty always.

As reformatory forces it would be difficult to tell to which the world is the more indebted, impulse or duty. Impulse is the quicker to respond to an urgent public demand: duty the more faithful and constant in meeting it. Impulse is the passionate spirit that incites revolution: duty the devout purpose that carries it forward to triumph. Without the ardent impulses of love and sympathy that inspire brilliant and generous acts, the brightest and sweetest phases of human life would be wanting. Without stern and constant duty upholding the right, unwearied in needed labor, there would be no progress, no permanence in the institutions of

men.

M. M. CURTIS.

Note 82.

THE LAST STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY.

Ir was humanity that the men of Valley Forge defended. It was Liberty herself that they had in keeping: Liberty that was sought in the wilderness and mourned for by the waters of Babylon: that was saved at Salamis and thrown away at Charonea that was fought for at Cannæ and lost forever at Pharsalia and Philippi: she who confronted the Armada on the deck with Howard and rode beside Cromwell on the field of Worcester: for whom the Swiss gathered into his breast the sheaf of spears at Sempach, and the Dutchman broke the dikes of Holland, and welcomed

in the sea. She of whom Socrates spoke, and Plato wrote, and Brutus dreamed, and Homer sung for whom Eliot pleaded, and Sidney suffered, and Milton prayed, and Hampden fell!

Driven by the persecution of centuries from the older world, she had come with Pilgrim and Puritan, with Cavalier and Quaker, to seek a home in the new. Attacked once more by her old enemies, she had taken refuge here: here, but not alone. The dream of the Greek, the Hebrew's prophecy, the desire of the Roman, the Italian's prayer, the longing of the German mind, the hope of the French heart, the glory and honor of Old England herself, the yearning of every century, and the aspiration of every age, all these were with her.

And here, in the heart of America, they were safe. The last of many struggles was almost won. The best of many centuries was about to break. The time was already come when from these shores the light of a new civilization should flash across the sea, and from this place a voice of triumph make the old world tremble: when from her chosen refuge in the West, the spirit of Liberty should go forth to meet the rising sun and set the people free!

HENRY ARMITT BROWN.

Note 83.

MISWRITTEN HISTORY.

LIFE is a battle, though we no longer wear swords. Living, struggling men while the fight goes on get scant praise and less appreciation. Eulogy we reserve for the dead. When men's passions are roused, they say and believe what they wish to say and believe, not what they ought. What men will believe at any time depends not half so much on the fact as on their state of mind. We deify those who fight our battles, and are sure of the wickedness of those

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who fight against us. Since so great a part of the material of history must be what men say about each other when they are in each other's way, it is small wonder that the faces which look out upon us from the pages of the past are never the faces which actually frowned and smiled upon the world. Time only exaggerates our illusions. Many harsh features have melted into beauty in the sweet azure of the distance, and many noble forms have been badly distorted by the atmosphere through which the light comes to us from them. Under the ban of history lie many great hearts which have held the world, while there bask in the smiles of the just many a whited sepulchre full of dead men's bones. But all these mistakes and distortions are of no consequence to the dead, and of but little to the living. For the dead the grave makes all things equal. Imperial Cæsar sleeps, if he were a patriot, as sweetly under undeserved blame as Brutus does, if he were a knave, under undeserved praise.

Yet all these little falsehoods about men and motives, and even about events, are trivial beyond characterization compared with the enormous falsehood which underlies this whole method of writing history, the silent assumption that these princes and potentates, these leaders and statesmen, these warriors and politicians caused the rise and fall of nations, the birth and decay of religions, the progress and degradation of the human race; that they made civilization and laws and conquests, and changed the fate of empires at their will. To history of that kind democracy was but of yesterday, and in that history the people took no part except as they were forced by the brave men, or cajoled by the knaves. To such history, that interesting figure, that much married, much widowed, and altogether bereaved man, Henry VIII., was the founder of our holy religion, and Elizabeth its preserver and savior: Napoleon was the conqueror of Europe and Alexander of the world. But democracy is not of yesterday. It has equal date with the race of man. There has never been a moment since time