grandeur of human achievement. If the triumphs, in both war and peace, of our own people of to-day had been attained half a century ago, we would now have a galaxy of national idols such as no other nation of the earth could boast of, made up of just such men as we belittle by the contact and criticism of the present. Our statesmanship of the first decade of the war was the broadest, the ablest and the noblest of a century of independence, and the impartial historian, who is yet to do his work, will so record it. Our heroism in long fraternal strife, stands alone in the annals of human courage and sacrifice, and the commander of our armies is recognized throughout the world as the great Captain of the age. When our illustrious men of the present generation shall sleep with the illustrious men of the past, and those who come after us shall see only the sunny side of greatness, ours will stand in history as the generation that was noblest in its men and in its attainments. And our great free people have stamped their impress upon every civilization of the world with greater emphasis during the present generation than ever before. England has liberalized her government until it is a monarchy only in name and royalty. The wail of the bondman has been silenced in Spain and Brazil, and the sad song of the serf is no longer heard in Russia. The scattered people of the Fatherland have regained German unity; Italy, long tossed by every wind and wave, has gathered its long dissevered provinces and a powerful nation again receives its laws from the Eternal City; France has become a Republic in fact as well as in name, and the distant peoples of the East have broken the crust of their darkness and are gradually receiving the sunlight of our advanced civilization. We have consecrated a continent to unsullied freedom, and the matchless progress of the people of our generation has advanced and elevated every nation of the earth with a rapidity that has no parallel in all the ages of the past.

THE SUNNY SIDE OF COUNTRY.

Take the sunny side of your country. Its government and its rulers are so close to you, that you see their imperfections, magnify their shadows, and bewail the decline of statesmanship, and public and private virtue. All nations have their ebbs and flows, and we have had them in abundance. We have many ghastly scars upon the temple of freedom; and mean ambition, and inordinate greed, have, at times, usurped the sacred altars of the Republic; but what nation that is felt in the race of enlightened progress, has escaped such trials and humiliations? We inconsiderately declaim against the degeneracy of the times, and turn to past generations, whose imperfections have faded from history, to prove how rapidly we are rushing to destruction. The complaint of the present is measurably true, but it has scarcely the semblance of justice in the comparison. We take the sunny side of the past and the shadows of the present. We forget that the whole vices of the world are now grouped in the daily newspaper, to be read at the breakfast-table, and that all the once hidden struggles of ambition among the mighty are pictured as they occur. Every infirmity of our rulers is carried to the home of the humblest citizen by the lightning's flash. We have grown greatly in public as well as private vices, but we have grown as vastly in population, wealth, and temptation; and the many public wrongs which were measurably or wholly hidden in the past, now have no hiding-place. The lightning news service, the lightning press, the lightning correspondent, the lightning railway trains, diffusing intelligence everywhere, compel us to face, in their nakedness, all the deformities of social, political, and religious life, and we mourn our own degeneracy, forgetful of the equal growth of the agencies which restrain vice and promote virtue. There are seasons in our free government when many good citizens despair of

the Republic; but they discard the sunny side and group together the shadows of the present and of the past. They remember how the great Republics of the ancients perished by the debauchery of the people, but they are unmindful that the fallen Republics were not Republics at all. Rome, Greece and Carthage never had Republics. They had free Democracies, ruled by the mob, that would deify a hero to-day and crucify him to-morrow; but the liberty of law, that is the jewel of our Republic, was unknown to them. Ours is the only great free government of the earth that conserves popular passions by the majesty of law, and it has checks and balances and sources of safety which, in all the many severe trials of popular government, have been fully equal to the preservation of our liberties. We have had many crucial tests of the fitness of our people to exercise their supreme sovereignty, under the limitations of law, and in what trial were the people found wanting? Even the fearful strain of a gigantic civil war did not more severely test the power of our government for self-preservation, than did the struggle of the infant and feeble Republic between Jefferson and the elder Adams. It was not merely a contest of disputing ambition; it was a life and death struggle between despotic Federalism and liberal and progressive Democracy, and it convulsed the government and made even Washington and Hamilton doubtful of the destiny of our free institutions. Again, despair filled many honest hearts when the unyielding power of Jackson asserted its supremacy in the government. It was contemptuously proclaimed as the mastery of the corn-cob pipe and the stone jug in the White House, but no one of the honored statesmen of his day died more revered than Jackson, and all of them combined, made no such indelible impress upon the policy of the Republic. Remember how many thousands of our best citizens despaired of the overthrow of slavery. They saw that slavery and free government could not endure

together, and for ten years before emancipation, the whole power of the government seemed to strengthen the cause of the slave-holder; but in the very hour of deepest gloom freedom came to all. It was not accident; it was the earnest struggle of the sovereign power asserting its omnipotence in the fullness of time. Many despaired of the Republic when civil war came with its impenetrable darkness, and some of the stoutest and most patriotic hearts quailed before the bereavement and sacrifice of the conflict; but Appomatox sheathed the sword, furled the insurgent flag, and restored the dissevered States to a common nationality. Then came the sore trial of reconstruction, with the Executive and Congress estranged in passion and legislation enacted in the tempest of sectional hatred; but the intelligence and patriotism of the people, ever obedient to even bad laws as the anchor of national safety, gradually effaced the errors of hate and made party necessity yield to integrity in local government in the reconstructed States. In the midst of the most impassioned conflicts between Executive and Congress, between opposing partisan leaders, and between re-inflamed sections, the President was impeached. He escaped conviction by a single vote, but the decision was the lawful judgment of a government of liberty and law, and the voices of discord were stilled. Another and severer test of the power of a law-loving people is yet fresh in the minds of all. A disputed Presidential election convulsed the country. It involved vast power and party spoils, and the white heat of a national struggle was intensified by the dispute. Fraud became a factor on both sides, in the desperation of partisan leaders; but when the country seemed to be on the very point of revolution, the arbitrament of law was invoked, and although its judgment reversed the popular judgment, all bowed to the omnipotence of the law that is the corner store of our freedom. With such triumphs vindicating cur fiee government,

The honest

why should we despair for the future? citizens have long mourned over the apparently omnipotent supremacy of political machines; but look out now at the sunny side of your country, and where are those machines that but yesterday were boastful and defiant? The people are patient, slow to call into action their reserve powers; but when they do summon their majesty, the machines are scattered like the wilted leaves of autumn. Look at the very centres of machine power, and where are the machines and where the bosses? Overthrown in New York; defeated in Brooklyn; hurled from power in Philadelphia; sent to the rear in Pittsburgh; defeated in St. Louis; rejected in Cincinnati, and now tottering in their dominion of States like Pennsylvania and New York. Who should waste a tear over the power of political machines? There is a sunny side to all the gloom political machines have cast upon us, and that is made by the grandeur with which the people toss their bosses out of power whenever public patience is overstrained. Ours is the sunniest land of the earth, and our government, with all its blemishes, is the sunniest side of man's government of man.

THE SUNNY SIDE OF HOME.

Take the sunny side of home. The home is the sunniest side of every great people. Without devotion to home there can be no devotion to country. The home is the cradle of patriotism; it is the fountain of happiness not only to individuals, but to nations as well, and it is the one spot of earth that should be guarded from needless shadows. Enough must come to each, even when most faithfully guarded by all the multiplied offices of love; but few there are who make their homes what they could or should be. It is only a few years since I visited a strange people away in the fastness of the Rocky Mountains. They were then separated from civilization by a