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hope by due diligence in the performance of my duties, though I may disappoint your expectations, yet to retain, when retiring, something of the good-will and confidence which welcome my entrance into office.

It is joyous in the midst of perilous times to look around upon a people united in heart, where one purpose and high resolve animates and actuates the whole; where the sacrifices to be made are not weighed in the balance against honor and right and liberty and equality. Obstacles may retard, but they cannot long prevent, the progress of a movement sanctified by its justice and sustained by a virtuous people. Reverently let us invoke the God of our Fathers to guide and protect us in our efforts to perpetuate the principles which by his blessing they were able to vindicate, establish, and transmit to their posterity. With the continuance of his favor ever gratefully acknowledged, we may hopefully look forward to success, to peace, and to prosperity.

IT

A STATEMENT OF POSITION AND FEELINGS.

[From the Same.]

T is not only untrue, but absurd, to attribute to me motives of personal ambition to be gratified by a dismemberment of the Union. Much of my life had been spent in the military and civil service of the United States. Whatever reputation I had acquired was identified with their history; and, if future preferment had been the object, it would have led me to cling to the Union as long as a shred of it should remain. If any, judging after the event, should assume that I was allured by the high office subsequently conferred upon me by the people of the Confederate States, the answer to any such conclusion has been made by others, to whom it was well known, before the Confederacy was formed, that I had no desire to be its president. When the suggestion was made to me, I expressed a decided objection, and gave reasons of a public and permanent character against being placed in that position.

Furthermore, I then held the office of United States Senator from Mississippi-one which I preferred to all others. The kindness of the people had three times conferred it upon me, and I had no reason to fear that it would not be given again, as often as desired. So far from wishing to change this position for any other, I had specially requested my friends (some of whom had thought of putting me in nomination for the Presidency of the United States in 1860) not to permit "my name to be used before the Convention for any nomination whatever."

I had been so near the office for four years, while in the Cabinet of

Mr. Pierce, that I saw it from behind the scenes, and it was to me an office in no wise desirable. The responsibilities were great; the labor, the vexations, the disappointments, were greater. Those who have intimately known the official and personal life of our Presidents cannot fail to remember how few have left the office as happy men as when they entered it, how darkly the shadows gathered around the setting sun, and how eagerly the multitude would turn to gaze upon another orb just rising to take its place in the political firmament.

Worn by incessant fatigue, broken in fortune, debarred by public opinion, prejudice, or tradition, from future employment, the wisest and best who have filled that office have retired to private life, to remember rather the failure of their hopes than the success of their efforts. He must, indeed, be a self-confident man who could hope to fill the chair of Washington with satisfaction to himself, with the assurance of receiving on his retirement the meed awarded by the people to that great man, that he had" done enough for life and for glory," or even of feeling that the sacrifice of self had been compensated by the service rendered to his country.

Henry Giles.

BORN in County Wexford, Ireland, 1809. DIED at Hyde Park, Mass., 1882.

DON QUIXOTE, THE IDEAL OF KNIGHTHOOD.

[Illustrations of Genius. 1854.]

PPRECIATED in his entireness, the knight is a glorious inhabitant

AP

of the imagination world. He appears everywhere in fine relations to humanity. In his worst mistakes he is lovable; and there is much more in him of what is admirable than of what is laughable. He is kind in his home, and in his neighborhood he is respected. With men he is frank and brave; with women he is refined and more than courteous. Of high bearing and of jealous dignity, he does not shun the humble; and, though no abuser of the rich, if a side is to be taken, he takes it with the poor. Filled with thoughts which, though out of season and out of place, are yet as sublime as they are benevolent, he lives always in sight of good intentions; he is delighted in the joy of all around him; it gives him pleasure to promote and to increase it; he designs to exalt his friends; he designs to bless the world; and if, while walking in this trance of generous visions, he comes into rude collision with stern actuality,-if in this collision he gets wounded and bruised, he does not comVOL. VI.-27

plain or whine, but is as cheerful as he is patient. He is innocent of heart; pure in his thoughts; in principles, of invincible integrity; in actions, of stainless honesty and honor; in speech, of virgin delicacy and of gracious elegance. Don Quixote really never falls in our respect. He is never degraded by his mischances. He is always elevated, and elevated in spite of the most ridiculous situations. He does not for a moment forget his personal dignity; for in his most infatuated actions there is a spirit of grandeur. Look, for example, at the nobleness of his ideas on his supposed vocation. "Knight errantry," he contends, "is equal to poetry, and something beyond it. It is a science, also, which comprehends all or most of the other sciences. The knight must be learned in the law, experienced in distributive and commutative justice, to assign each man his own. He must be conversant with divinity, to explain clearly and distinctly the Christian faith which he professes. He must be skilled in medicine, that he may know diseases and how to cure them. He must be an astronomer, that he may be able always to ascertain time and place by looking at the stars. He must be adorned with all the theological and cardinal virtues; he must have faith in God; he must be constant in love; he must be chaste in his thoughts, modest in his words, liberal in good works, valiant in exploits, patient in toils, charitable to the needy; and steadfastly he must adhere to truth, even at the expense of life." "The poor knight," he again observes, "can only manifest his rank by his virtues. He must be well bred, courteous, kind, and obliging; not proud, not arrogant, no murmurer; above all, he must be charitable." "Since, my Sancho," he exclaims, in another place, "we seek a Christian reward, let our works be conformable to the religion we profess. In slaying giants, we must destroy pride and arrogance; we must vanquish envy by generosity; wrath, by a serene and humble spirit; gluttony and sloth, by temperance and vigilance; licentiousness, by chastity; and indolence, by traversing the world in search of every honorable opportunity of renown." Cervantes has, in spirit, made his hero according to the standard which his hero here applies to knighthood. Richly endowed in moral qualities, he is not less richly endowed intellectually. He is a man of culture. He is also a man of genius of genius with all its intensities and sympathies. His faculties are not balanced, but they are uncommon; and, when not disturbed by his disorder, they exhibit every sort of mental power. His memory is quick and retentive; his imagination strong, brilliant, and graceful; his intellect active and acute. His genius has an eloquence that does it justice in perfect speech-speech that answers to every play of emotion and to every mood of thought; that is, grave for deliberate wisdom, musical for poetic fancy, simple for easy talk, gathering force as needed from gentleness to vehemence; it rises as the sentiment rises, from familiar

aphorism to lofty declaration. Thus it singularly happens, that, while Cervantes was scourging fictitious errants out of the world, he was presenting an ideal of the truest knighthood that has ever been in it; indeed, that must always be in it, until manly principles and disinterested affections cease to have existence. Such knighthood must last and live while minds of high design and hearts of wise embrace last and live. No weapon of ridicule can harm it; the sharpest arrows of the most burning wit are shivered and quenched against its panoply of virtue.

Comparing the emotions that I have now with those which Don Quixote had once excited, I am made aware that years have been doing their work upon my mind. In youth we revel in the mirth of this story; we laugh at the exploits of the knight; we laugh at the misfortunes of the squire; we have no reverence for the chivalrous but bareboned imitation of Beltenebros; the famous recoverer of Mambrino's helmet; we extend no pity to the corpulent embodiment of proverbs that rises beside him; we enjoy with all our hearts the capers which the merry lodgers of the inn compel him to perform in the air without aid of tight-rope or slack-rope; his flounderings are to us most exhilarating fun; and, in imagination, we ourselves take hold upon the blanket. But, when time has taught us more sober lessons,-when we learn that we too have dreamed, that we too have had our buffetings and blanketings, we think differently. When we learn that we likewise have often put the shapings of fancy for the substance of truth, the coinage of the brain for the creation of reality, the vision in the wish for the fulfilment in the fact, laughter is changed into reflection and musing takes the place of gayety. There is hidden meaning in these wondrous imaginings of Cervantes; and experience, after many days, does not fail to show it. We have gleanings from them of life's purpose. here to do, and not to dream; we are here to endure as much as to enjoy; and, through doing and endurance, to grow-to grow in all that elevates the soul, in all that crowns it with genuine dignity, in all that clothes it at the same time with honor and humility, in all that renders it more gentle as it becomes more commanding. In the same manner we have gleamings of life's nature. Life is not all meditation; it is not all business; it is not all in the ideal; it is not all in the actual; and that life is best in which these several elements are best united. The ideal separate from the actual becomes mysticism or extravagance; the actual separate from the ideal degenerates into the sensual or into the sordid. It is in the proportioned combination of the ideal with the actual that life is highest; it is in this proportioned combination that life presents the finest union of enthusiasm and reflection, the finest harmony of beauty and of power.

Park Benjamin.

BORN in Demerara, British Guiana, 1809. DIED in New York, N. Y., 1864.

A GREAT NAME.

IME! thou destroyest the relics of the past,

TIME!

And hidest all the footprints of thy march
On shattered column and on crumbled arch,
By moss and ivy growing green and fast.
Hurled into fragments by the tempest-blast,
The Rhodian monster lies; the obelisk,
That with sharp line divided the broad disk
Of Egypt's sun, down to the sands was cast:
And where these stood, no remnant-trophy stands,
And even the art is lost by which they rose:
Thus, with the monuments of other lands,

The place that knew them now no longer knows.
Yet triumph not, O, Time; strong towers decay,
But a great name shall never pass away!

Robert Charles Winthrop.

BORN in Boston, Mass., 1809.

THE PATRIOT TRAVELLER IN FOREIGN LANDS.

[From a Speech at the Union Ratification Meeting, Boston, 25 September, 1860.—Addresses and Speeches on Various Occasions. 1852-86.]

IT

T is, without all question, my friends, one of the best influences of a sojourn in foreign lands, upon a heart which is not insensible to the influences of patriotism, that one forgets for a time, or remembers only with disgust and loathing, the contentions and controversies which so often alienate and embitter us at home. There is no room on that little map of his country which every patriot bears abroad with him, photographed on his heart, there is no room on that magical miniature map for territorial divisions or sectional boundaries. Large enough to reflect and reproduce the image and outlines of the whole Union, it repels all impression of the petty topographical features which belong to science and the schools. Still more does it repel the miserable seams and scratches by which sectional politicians have sought to illustrate their odious distinctions and comparisons. And so, the patriot traveller in

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