volunteers, and in thirty days he had three hundred thousand. Young America launched itself on the plains of Mexico, and the spirit of nationality became the guiding spirit of the hour. There was, a few years ago, some nationality inspired by the spectacle of ten or twenty warsteamers sent off to battle with some half-barbarian despot in Paraguay. But we shall not witness either the resurrection of the nationality we have hitherto inspired, nor, much less, the creation of a universal sentiment of nationality, except in some decisive conflict between the United States and a great foreign nation.

We are not pleading in behalf of war. But there are misfortunes that fall on nations infinitely greater than those which are entailed by war. Wars do not cause the extermination of nations, nor inflict half the trouble that comes from the decay of a national sentiment. No nation was ever yet exterminated by battle until it had already lost the spirit of its nationality. A nation is nothing more in the aggregate of states without this sentiment than is a man in the midst of his fellows if he loses all control of his own will. Switzerland has maintained her nationality, and she has remained unbroken and unconquered for ages. So has Hungary, who showed a few years ago how strong she was in sentiment when she levelled that brave blow on the breast of her spoiler. France is always fired by nationality, and in all her pride she exults in the glory which a Napoleon dynasty sheds over her. So, too, with England. All Britons rejoice in the supremacy of the home Government. We do not, of course, embrace Irishmen, because England has never been able, during the five hundred years of her despotism, to blot out the national sentiment of that brave people.

The result of all this is, that any American statesman who is afraid of a collision with one of the first Powers of Europe is not fit to have any voice in the national councils. We are very proud of our Washingtons and Jeffersons and Jacksons

and Constitutions and Capitols; and we brag of the whole thing every 4th of July.

But foreigners have much less respect for us as a people than we suppose. They respect our history, because it is filled with the achievements of our fathers. They all look upon us with a kind of wonder, because the country is so big, and they innocently suppose big people must live here. They respect our steamers, because they outstrip in speed those of other nations. They respect our telegraphs, because we have fifty thousand miles of them. They respect our clippers, because they are the fastest sailers in the world. They admire our daguerreotypes, because they are the best. But, after all, Americans make a great mistake if they suppose that Europeans do not curl up the lip with some scorn when we talk about coming in collision with the Old World.

It is plain enough that we shall never be recognized heartily, socially, and respectfully as the First Power, or even among the very first, until the pride of foreign monarchs, so often displayed, shall be humbled in a terrific and, if need be, a long struggle for the vindication of the right of men to self-government.

In the Old World it is prescriptive right, hereditary privilege, ecclesiastic power, with all the retinue of titles and powers, and all other things, which command popular admiration. Here we have none of these questions or things, nor do we need them. But we must have something to supply their places; and this something can be had only by the display of that national power which shall prove great enough to protect all weak nations, and strong enough to defy strong ones, even if they melt all their decrepit carcasses into one body.

In this direction it is plain to see that the fates of America are being drifted by events.

Our newspapers agitate a few of their readers every morning by long and tedious despatches from Washington, or

Halifax, or Mobile, or some other place, about what Lord Napier has been saying, or what Lord Lyons is about to say, when by a little pluck in our statesmanship this telegraphic business would all be snuffed out.

Has it come to this, that England will attempt to establish a police over American waters, and make an arrangement with Nicaragua, or Costa Rica, or Guatemala, or San Salvador, or New Grenada, pledging her imperial power and her irresistible arms to keep American pirates off their coasts? We do not believe that England is foolish enough to offer her services in that business, where it is perfectly certain that it would be considered an insulting interference that would sweep one or the other of our Powers from the ocean. But British statesmen understand very well that our politicians have more faith in gas than they have in gunpowder, or firmness, or dignity, or, above all, in a national sentiment.

The Peace Society preaches to us about not going to war, precisely as good nurses talk to children about not eating sweetmeats and sugar-candy; but it unfortunately happens that as long as confectioners make these things children will eat them, and their fathers and mothers will give them to them besides, although it may just as inevitably follow that the services of the family doctor cannot be dispensed with when the colic comes.

Young nations are young children, and old nations are in their second childhood.

Our nation must be consolidated; and nothing can do it but to create a common interest, either for attack or defence. The heroism of every nation has been the only sentiment out of which nationality has been created. Without appealing to this, no great Government would have become what it has been; without this, no nation would achieve any thing. It is all vain to wait "for the good time coming,"—that political millennium when all nations will lie down together and kiss and smother one another to death with kindness and fraternal

love. This is all nonsense. This is stuff to throw to cats and pups. It means nothing; for while humanity lasts it will be made up of men and women, and men and women are made up of will, of power, of heroism, of truth, of laws, of insults, of passions, of every thing human or divine. These qualities exist in human nature itself.

They are eternally in conflict, even in the individual man, or woman, or child, and they will remain there, unless by eternal duration virtue at last achieves a complete triumph over vice, and judgment and reason assume undisputed empire over all the prostrate passions. But even under God's own immediate sway, where inspiration teaches us that he has had immediate control over spirits without flesh and blood, and, consequently, without those types of passion that belong to the human race, he has had angels and devils,—on the one side of him a heaven filled with the choral music of uncounted seraphs, and on the other a hell filled with the howlings of damned spirits. People who suppose they are to pass through this universe in easy-chairs, never feeling one of the blasts of misfortune nor having their cheek visited by any rude wind of adversity,-people who are sighing forever for "that good time" will have a precious long time in getting it. The universe is a living, flaming, pasIt is no place for people to go to sleep; for, even if they go to their graves, the day of resurrection will bring them out.

sionate, active thing.

XL.

Mr. Lincoln:-What Kind of a Man-What Kind of a President-he is.

WHEN Mr. Lincoln entered the Presidential mansion, he could not have answered either of these questions. It is a matter of serious doubt if he could do it even now.

It was once a post for the retirement of a statesman of wellearned fame, for his coronation when he had earned the supreme honors of the state. In times of peace our great public men found their legitimate way to the Home of the Presidents (as Washington wished to have the White House called). Those honors then were always worthily won, and the laurel wreath kept green on the brows of all their wearers,—at least till the last of the primitive chieftains went to his untroubled rest under the shades of the "Hermitage."

Yes, those men lived to reap the rich rewards of peace after their battles, of repose after their toils.

But it was no pillow of down on which Abraham Lincoln was invited to lay his head. He thought he understood something of what had been committed to him; and when he stood on the eastern portico of the Capitol, all blanched before the surging sea of anxious men and women who were waiting to learn "What of the night?" would bring from the new sentinel, he uttered words to which the events of the future were to give an astounding and unforeseen significance.

Lincoln's Presidency was a heritage of trouble from the start. No good man in his senses would have taken the honor, if he could have foreseen a tithe of its bewildering heart-achings, the treason, the blood, the agony it would cost