VI.

GEORGE S. BOUTWELL.

HEN Anson Burlingame was in this country

WH

the last time he gave me an account of his life in China, his relations with the principal personages there, and said, finally, "When I die they will erect monuments and temples to my memory. However much I may now protest, they will do that." This, we are told, the people and government of China have done.

Gratitude to public benefactors is the common sentiment of mankind. It has found expression in every age; it finds expression in every condition. of society. Monuments and temples seem to belong to the age of art rather than to the age of letters, but reflection teaches us that letters cannot fully express the obligations of the learned, even to their chief benefactors, and only in a less degree can epitaphs, essays and histories satisfy those who have not the opportunity and culture to read and understand them. Moreover, monuments and temples in honor of the dead express the sentiments of their

contemporaries who survive; and the sentiments of contemporaries, when freed from passion, crystallize, usually, into opinion-the fixed, continuing opinion of mankind. Napoleon must ever remain great; Washington, good and great; Burke, the first of English orators; the younger Pitt, the chief of English statesmen; and Henry the Eighth, a dark character in British history. Time and reflection, the competing fame of new and illustrious men, the antiquarian and the critic, may modify the first-formed opinion, but seldom or never is it changed. The judgment rendered at the grave is a just judgment usually, but whether so or not it is not often disturbed.

The fame of noble men is at once the most endearing and the most valuable public possession. Of the distant past it is all of value that remains; and of the recent past, the verdant fields, the villages, cities and institutions of culture and government are only monuments which men of that past have reared to their own fame. History is but the account of men: the earth, even, is but a mighty theater on which human actors, great and small, have played their parts. Superior talents and favoring circumstances have secured for a few persons that special recognition called immortality; that is, a knowledge of qualities and actions attributed to an individual whose name is preserved and transmitted, with that knowledge, from one generation to

another. This immortality may be nothing to the dead, but the record furnishes examples and inspiring facts, especially for the young, by which they are encouraged and stimulated to lead lives worthy of the illustrious men of the past. Herein is the value, and the chief value, of monuments, temples, histories and panegyrics. If the highest use of sinners is, by their evil lives and bad examples, to keep saints to their duty, so it is also that the immortality accorded to those who were scourges rather than benefactors serves as a warning to men who strive to write their names upon the page of history. But the world really cherishes only the memory of those who were good as well as great, and hence it is the effort of panegyrists and heroworshipers to place their idols in that attitude before mankind. The immortal few are those who have identified themselves with contests and principles in which men of all times are interested; or who have so expressed the wish or thought or purpose of mankind, that their words both enlighten and satisfy the thoughtful of every age. When we consider how much is demanded of aspirants for lasting fame, we can understand the statement that that century is rich which adds more than one name to the short list of persons who in an historical sense are immortal. In that sense those only are immortal whose fame passes beyond the country,

beyond the race, beyond the language, beyond the century, and far outspreads all knowledge of the details of local and national history.

The empire of Japan sent accredited to the United States as its first minister resident, Ari Nori Mori, a young man of extraordinary ability, and then only twenty-four years of age. A few months before Japan was opened to intercourse with other nations, an elder brother of Mori lived for a time as a student at Jeddo, the capital of the empire. Upon his return to his home in the country he informed the family that he had heard of a new and distant nation of which Washington, the greatest and best of men, was the founder, savior and father. Beyond this he had heard little of the country or the man, but this brief statement so inspired the younger brother to know more of the man and of the country, that he resolved to leave his native land without delay, and in disobedience both to parental rule and public law. In this single fact we see what fame is in its largest sense, and we realize also the power of a single character to influence others even where there is no tie of country, of language, of race, or any except that which gives unity to the whole family of man. If, then, the acquisition of fame in a large sense be so difficult, is it wise thus to present the subject to the young? May they not be deterred from those manly efforts which are the prerequisites to success?

I answer, Fame is not a proper object of human effort, and its pursuit is the most unwise of human undertakings. I am not now moralizing; I am trying to state the account as a worldly transaction. Moreover, there is a distinction between the fame of which I have spoken and contemporaneous recognition of one's capacity and fitness to perform important private or public service. This is reputation rather than fame, and it well may be sought by honorable effort, and it should be prized by every one as an object of virtuous ambition. Success, however, is not so often gained by direct effort as by careful, systematic, thorough preparation for duty. The world is not so loaded with genius, nor even with talent, that opportunities are wanting for all those who have capacity for public service.

Mr. Bancroft gave voice to the considerate judgment of mankind when, in conversation, he said, "Beyond question, General Washington, intellectually, is the first of Americans." If this statement be open to question, the question springs from the limitation, for beyond doubt Washington is the first of Americans. His pre-eminence, his greatness, appear in the fact that his faculties and powers were so fully developed, so evenly adjusted and nicely balanced, that in all the various and difficult duties of military and civil life he never for an instant failed to meet the demand which his position and the at