XXIII.

Office-Holders as they are, and how they should be.

OUR republic has a great many sins to answer for that she never committed. The republic per se has always been right. It is unfortunately true that her children have too often been wrong.

"Your system of government," said Guizot to me, on a certain occasion, "is perfect as an ideal. It is only necessary to have you live up to it."

"Yes; but you may pass the same criticism on the Nazarene Faith. Christianity is a perfect system:-its members are often imperfect. And yet you do not doubt that it will yet conquer the world.”

It is very plain that the last two generations have taken very little pains to understand the government of the United States. Not one voter in a hundred ever read the Constitution; not one in a thousand ever felt how much that Constitution was worth. We are beginning to learn it now. It will take some time to read the lesson. We must go through the fire. We attach most value to those possessions which we came dearly by. From the first altars went up a pure flame of patriotic devotion. There was very little sham in those days. All through our early history was the clear ring of the hammer of the real blacksmith; and that ring can be heard yet.

Here is our curse. Our old blacksmiths are dead, and most of their nephews and grandchildren have been made brigadier-generals. God save us !

But he must do it by fire. Let the storm come: the true

We have had amalgams

metal can stand the alembic test. enough,-quantum ad sufficit. Let us have a pure and good nation hereafter, or none. With this spirit, and in this spirit only, can we safely and surely render back to God (when we die) the sacred heritage we got from our fathers.

Now to one point. Who is a good soldier? Who can help his country now? Mere shoulder-straps can never get us out of our trouble. Heads and hearts alone can save us. Neither will be wanting, for the exigency invokes both, and both will be forthcoming. So grand a nation must not-cannot-perish.

How wrong we were to allow ourselves to get into this enormous trouble! how wrongly we went to work to cure it! From sheer thoughtlessness, the brave men of the nation rushed to the rescue. Brave men saw only a breach in our

walls: they must fill it.

But every selfish man, every politician, every trickster and trifler, saw a chance to "make a spec" out of it, and every Governor of a State and every secretary was besieged night and day for a commission :-"my son," or "nephew," or "a particular friend of mine," "must be looked after." No matter for the old country!—no matter for the flag!—no matter for the sanctified souvenirs of our origin, nor the holy dead of the olden time. My son, or nephew, or friend, "must have a commission."

What came of all this? Whole cohorts, rank and file, were led to indiscriminate slaughter by incompetent officers! The nation has worn mourning over this.

Further not less than a thousand or two of these shoulderdecked gentlemen are gazetted as deserters to-day. If the private does this, he is punished by military law; and the penalty is an instant and ignominious death.

Shoulder-straps escape death, and they are not often enough cashiered; nor has one of them been shot or hanged yet. Talk about Mr. Lincoln's severity! He has been breathing the "gales of Araby the Blest" over this rebellion, instead

of burying its aiders and abettors in a common sepulchre. Mercy! Lincoln has shown enough for the most merciful Hemp is the only quality he has lacked. It must be confessed he is a poor headsman.

The great lack of the war has been the want of heroic dedication to the country. With this dedication, we are invincible; without it, we are lost!

I must say that, highly as I respect, esteem, and admire the true fighting officer of this contest, I would still rather be the admirer and historian of the rank and file.

The Government of this country belongs to its people, and this people will take care of it. If all goes well, it is all well. If things go wrong, stand from under. A general who cannot win must give way to a man who can. An administration that cannot crowd the war to a triumphant and glorious termination must give way to the people.

XXIV.

Scenes and Sayings in the Hospital.

THE scenes of the war which have brought out the finest heroism of the American character have been in the hospitals.

My distant readers will have heard or known more or less of the sanitary régime of the army,-by which I mean the way to get a soldier into good health again, through the agency of the best skill known to the healing art.

We have had to improvise hundreds of hospitals. It is only in our principal cities that we have had instant facilities to accommodate completely the sick and wounded. Thus, after the principal battles in the neighborhood of Washington, of Bull Run, Ball's Bluff, Winchester, and Antietam, we have had men brought in in long trains of ambulances by the hundred, of a morning, in every stage of suffering which attends fractured limbs and gunshot- and shell-, sabre- and bayonetwounds, in literally thousands of forms.

By an act of the President, which met with the entire approval of those who knew the circumstances, most of the churches in Washington and Georgetown were taken possession of for the sufferers; and I am quite sure that when we saw the poor fellows carried in and laid down before these altars of God, it was the universal feeling that it was no desecration of the temples that had been consecrated to the worship of our Father in heaven.

It was with a melancholy and yet with a coveted pleasure that we looked upon such scenes. When a groan escaped from a suffering man, it was an exception to the rule; for not

one in a hundred made a complaint; and there was infinite relief and satisfaction in seeing the surgeons proceed to their humane but exhausting labors.

In going to my accustomed place of worship, and finding that where every seat had been, a suffering soldier lay, and seeing no priest at the altar, it seemed to me that in the best days of a primitive Christianity no temple had ever been consecrated to holier purposes. The ministers of Christ had descended from the altar to carry their sublime precepts into practice, and, like Good Samaritans, were pouring oil into the wounds of the suffering.

The complete dedication of the Washington clergy of all denominations to this sublime work afforded to many thousand sick and wounded men the most touching and effective illustrations they had ever witnessed of the beneficent spirit of the religion of the Captain of their salvation. I have seen the fruit of such ministrations of kindness and benevolence, the stalwart man who lay helpless as a child, stripped of all the pride of his strength,—a man who but a few hours before would have treated any allusion to the retributions of another life with levity or a sneer,-now softened by suffering and won by sympathy, greeting with cheerfulness the reading of any of the words of the Savior, and conversing with freedom about his own soul.

But here, as elsewhere, the easier and more felicitous triumphs of divine truth are made with the

young.
*

*

The following touching scene, which was witnessed in a hospital at Memphis, can be relied upon as authentic :—

"We came to the body of a non-commissioned officer,—a fine, large man,-who during the last few hours had become insane. The bone of his thigh was shattered by a ball, so high up that amputation could not be performed: so nothing was offered him but to lie there and die,-watching the terrible hues of mortification come upon his limb, feeling the horrible