object for which he fought. The three great generals of the world are usually enumerated-following Macaulay-as being Caesar, Cromwell and Napoleon. Two of these fought in wars of mere conquest, and the contests of the third were marred by a gloomy fanaticism, by cruelty and by selfishness. General Grant fought to restore a nation, that nation being the hope of the world. And he restored it. His work was as complete as it was important. Caesar died by violence; Napoleon died defeated; Cromwell's work erumbled to pieces when his hand was cold. Grant's career triumphed in its ending; it is at its height to-day. It was finely said by a Massachusetts statesman that we did not fight to bring our opponents to our feet, but only to our side. Grant to-day brings his opponents literally to his side, when they act as pallbearers around his coffin. / The next thing remarkable about him was the spirit in which he fought. He belonged in his whole temperament to the Anglo-Saxon or Germanic type of generals, and not to the French or Latin type. When we come to the mere executive qualities involved in fighting, we find that Grant habitually combined in action two things rarely brought together -quickness and perseverance. That could be said of him which Malcolm McLeod said of Charles Edward, the Pretender: "He is the bravest man, not to be rash, and the most cautious man, not to be a coward, that I ever saw." He did not have the visible and conspicuous dash of Sherman or Sheridan; he was rather the kind of man whom they needed to have behind them. But in quickness of apprehension and action, where this quality was needed, he was not their inferior, if they were even his equals. He owed to it his first conspicuous victory at Fort Donelson. Looking at the knapsacks of the slain enemy, he discovered that they held three days' rations, and knew, therefore, that they were trying to get away. Under this stimulus he renewed the attack, and the day was won. Moreover, it is to be noticed that he was, in all his action as a commander, essentially original-a man of initiative, not of routine. He was singularly free from the habit of depending on others. And to crown all these qualities was added one more, that of personal modesty. When, at Hamburg, Germany, he was toasted as "the man who had saved the nation," he replied, "What saved the Union was the coming forward of the young men of the country." He put down the pride of the German officers, the most self-sufficient military aristocracy of the world, by quietly disclaiming the assumption of being a soldier at all. He said to Bismarck: "I am more a farmer than a soldier. I take little or no interest in military affairs, and, though I entered the army thirtyfive years ago and have been in two wars-the Mexican as a young lieutenant, and later (mark the exquisite moderation of that "and later") "I never went into the army without regret, and never retired without pleasure." Such a remark from the greatest captain of the age disarmed even German criticism. He told Bismarck, as we have seen, that he never entered on a war without regret or retired from it without pleasure. But he was destined to enter on just one more campaign-against pain and disease combined with sudden poverty. It was a formidable coalition. It is sometimes said that it is easier to die well than to live well; but it is harder than either to grow old, knowing that one's great period of action is past, and weighed down with the double weight of hopeless financial failure and irremediable bodily pain. Either bankruptcy or physical torture has by itself crushed many a man morally and mentally; but Grant's greatest campaign was when he resisted them both. Upon such a campaign as this he might well, as he said, shrink from entering; but having been obliged to enter upon it, he was still Grant. Thousands of Americans have felt a sense of nearness to him and a sense of pride in him during the last few months such as they never felt before. He was already a hero in war to us. The last few months have made him a hero of peace, miles pacificus. I It has been already said that the supreme generals of the world were Caesar, Cromwell and Napoleon. Grant was behind all three of these in variety of cultivation and in many of the qualities that make a man's biography picturesque and fascinating. He may be said to have seemed a little prosaic, compared with any one of these. But in moral qualities he was above them all; more truthful, more unselfish, more simple, more humane. He fell short of Washington in this, that he was not equally great in war and statesmanship; but his qualities were within reach of all; his very defects were within reach of all; and he will long be with Washington and Lincoln the typical American in the public eyes. It is this typical quality after all that is most valuable. His fame rests upon the broadest and surest of all pedestals, as broad as common humanity. He seems greatest because he was no detached or ideal hero, but simply the representative of us all. TORICAL SOCIETY. By DANIEL WEBSTER. NBORN ages and visions of glory crowd upon UNE my soul, the realizationof all which, however, is in the hands and good pleasure of Almighty God, but, under his divine blessing, it will be dependent on the character and the virtues of ourselves, and of our posterity. If classical history has been found to be, is now, and shall continue to be, the concomitant of free institutions, and of popular eloquence, what a field is opening to us for another Herodotus, another Thucydides, and another Livy! And let me say, gentlemen, that if we, and our posterity, shall be true to the Christian religion, if we and they shall live always in the fear of God, and shall respect his commandments, if we, and they, shall maintain just, moral sentiments, and such conscientious convictions of duty as shall control the heart and life, we may have the highest hopes of the future fortunes of our country; and if we maintain those institutions of government and that political union, exceeding all praise as much as it exceeds all former examples of political associations, we may be sure of one thing, that, while our country furnishes materials for a thousand masters of the Historic Art, it will afford no topic for a Gibbon. It will have no Decline and Fall. It will go on prospering and to prosper. But, if we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound |