put on record1 his testimony to the courage and determination with which the really military black races face any odds in battle. Our own civil war moreover has borne testimony to the superb fighting qualities of the African. In the very month in which Wolseley's testimony appeared, it received striking confirmation in the affair at Suakin, in which the negro allies of the English forces did so unfairly large a proportion of the fighting; and there are further confirmatory cases in the African warfare of the past, familiar enough to show that the Dark Continent has an abundance of the raw material for organized armies. And it is more than probable that the militant African will be as competent as our American Indian to handle modern weapons and munitions.

Why, then, when educated leaders shall be developed, should not Africa, in her turn, evolve governments as capable as China or Japan of throwing some weight into any general disturbance of the international balance? The possible wealth of Africa is immeasurably beyond that from which the far eastern powers have armed themselves. When we hear of Chinese and Japanese war fleets now, the conception of them has gradually become familiar; but the conception of them would have seemed about as strange thirty years ago as that of a Zulu squadron of iron-clads would seem to us now. It is certain that if any African power should come to have ambition enough to

form such a fleet, no European power would have any more scruple in seeking its aid by alliance than the Roman emperor had in accepting the tax from an unsavory source, and for the same reason.

It may be, of course, that all such speculations are less than idle; that the African is hopelessly a child or a slave; that the destiny of the Dark Continent is only to be exploited for the benefit of the other continents; and that the relations between Europe and Africa are always to be commercial only, and never in any wise international. It is well to notice, however, that this last hypothesis has already been relied upon in the case of China and Japan, and that it already seems to be proving somewhat delusive. One cannot feel certain that the other hypotheses above stated are not equally or more delusive. Certainly Africa shows no signs of supine acquiescence in a commercial fate. Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, and Italians are still chipping at the edges of the Dark Continent, and seem to find advance into the interior unexpectedly difficult. There may yet be the seeds of stirring international episodes in the Basuto, the Zulu, or the Ashanti, as Wolseley describes them; or in the men of whom he uses these astonishingly strong words: "I am certain our men would much prefer to fight the best European troops rather than the same number of African warriors who were under the influence of Mohammedan fanaticism."

W

American Literature.2

HOEVER will read through this big work, of which seven volumes are now issued, will have gained a knowledge of American history, not so connected, but much more vivid than he can get from Bancroft or Hildreth. And the best way to study history is in the documents. The editors have given a liberal interpretation to the word literature; indeed, they have been forced to do so, for it is not much more than half a century that literature as a fine art has been practiced in this country with any success.

The first two volumes cover the colonial period and follow the time division adopted by Tyler in his unfinished "History of American Literature," being devoted respectively to the years 1607-1675, and 16761764 (Tyler makes it 1607–1676 and 1677-1765). The dividing line between the first and second colonial period is Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia and King Philip's War in New England. These volumes, in fact, make an excellent supplement to Professor Tyler's work without in the least taking its place, since they consist merely of selections from colonial writers with no comment, and no biographical matter beyond the dates and places of birth and death. In this respect the "Library" differs from such standard collections as Duyckinck's and Griswold's. It is not a cyclopedia; 1 "Fortnightly Review," December, 1888.

2 A Library of American Literature, from the Earliest Settlement to the Present Time. Compiled and Edited by Edmund Clarence Stedman and Ellen Mackay Hutchinson. In ten volNew York: Charles L. Webster & Co. 1888.

umes.

it gives, in general, longer extracts, and its material is chosen with a nicer taste and from a more modern point of view.

A glance at the contents of the successive volumes in the series will enable the reader to follow the growth of the American mind and the development of a native society and a civilization which, if in the main derived from Europe, is also in a degree original. In the first volume, as was to be expected, the place of honor is given to that delightful soldier of fortune, Captain John Smith, of the Virginia Adventurers; and the greater part of the book is allotted to narratives of voyages, reports of life in the New World sent back to England, journals like Bradford's and Winthrop's, the sermons and theological writings of New England divines such as Hooker and Cotton, and descriptions of the Indians. This was the age of settlement and discovery, and the authors represented in this volume were all born in England and in great part reared there. Perhaps the most important names after those already mentioned are Roger Williams and John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians. In New England, theology seems to have formed the sole intellectual interest of the people and almost the daily business of their lives. The Cambridge platform; the letters of persecuted Quakers," written in the common gaol in the bloody town of Boston"; the punning epitaphs composed upon deceased ministers by their survivors; and the metrical horrors of the famous "Bay Psalm Book" (1640), the first book printed in America, round out the picture of early colonial life in New England and deepen one's thank

fulness that one is only a descendant of the Puritans. But the great interest of their subject-matter and the earnestness of their spirit redeem the work of these ancient annalists and preachers from absolute dullness. Now and then there is a touch of quaintness, of simplicity or grave humor, or a bit of graphic narrative which seems like a concession to worldly-mindedness and engages the modern reader. Mistress Anne Bradstreet, "The Tenth Muse," our first if not really our worst poet, is not so amusing as the Sweet Singer of Michigan. Nathaniel Ward, "The Simple Cobbler of Agawam," is a humorist of that distressing variety which abounded in the generation of Thomas Fuller, and is not to be compared with Artemus the Delicious. But Captain John Underhill is a pleasant soul, and Thomas Morton of Merrymount has some contemporaneous human interest as a foil to the Puritans, and, if for no other reason, then because Hawthorne has made such good use of him in his " Maypole of Merrymount." There is, in truth, a legendary and almost mythological air about this Merrymount episode.

In the second volume we reach the first native American writers. The Calvinistic gloom of the Puritans takes a still deeper tinge, and we are met on the threshold with Michael Wigglesworth's “Day of Doom”—thatstrange New English Inferno which once made thousands of readers shudder and now makes an occasional one laugh, or would make him laugh were it not for a certain intensity and sincerity, amounting almost to poetic imagination, under its hard, literal diction and doggerel

verse.

Thirty years later and this Calvinistic blackness gets a streak of blood across it, and we come to the Salem witch-killings—the internal, as Indian massacres were the external, tragedy of colonial New England. Increase and Cotton Mather—what Tyler calls "the dynasty of the Mathers"-are the prominent figures in the literature of this period. The "Magnalia" is the great book of old New England. Its author was pedantic, vain, bigoted, and superstitious. His book is crabbed enough in style, but it is full of meat, and may be relished to-day by readers with a strong stomach. The editors have done well in giving among their other selections from Cotton Mather his account of Captain Phips's adventure in raising the wreck of a Spanish treasure ship from a reef near Hispaniola. The whole life of Phips, as told in the "Magnalia," reads like a romance. Judge Sewall's confession of his guilt in the witchcraft matter is given, and also the indignant exposure of the whole business of Mather's "Invisible World," by Robert Calef, a Boston merchant, whose sanity, in contrast with the wretched credulity of the ministers and magistrates, imports a little of the eighteenth-century éclaircissement into the darkness of the seventeenth. The editors, for some reason, have not included the fine passage from Sewall's "Phænommena" which Whittier has versified and which Professor Tyler quotes in his " History." Room might have been made, too, for an extract from Higginson's "Attestation to Cotton Mather's Magnalia," which contains some really eloquent writing.

Narratives of captivity among the Indians, and ballads of Lovewell's Fight and of the French and Indian War, continue, in this volume, the history of the gradual extinction of the aborigines begun in the first. Although the Indians had ceased to be a serious

menace to the advance of the English settlements, they were in some respects more formidable to outlying towns, like Deerfield, than they had been in the days of the Pequot and King Philip's wars, being organized and supplied with fire-arms by their French allies. The opening up of the Carolinas and the survey of the Dismal Swamp furnish new fields to the literature of exploration and wild adventure. In the eighteenth century Puritanism finds its most spiritual and most logical expression in Jonathan Edwards, who must be pronounced, upon the whole, the greatest name in our strictly colonial period. Edwards's limpid style and "that inward sweetness" in his "sense of divine things" give a beauty to some of his pages which makes them the nearest approach to pure literature in the writings of American theologians before Channing. Copious and judicious selections are given from Hubbard's "History of New England" and from the Virginia historians Beverly and Stith, whose more formal works now began to take the place of contemporary journals like Bradford's and Winthrop's. Finally, towards the end of the volume, we reach the first American dramatist, Thomas Godfrey of Philadelphia, whose tragedy "The Prince of Parthia" (1765) has nothing to recommend it to curiosity except its date.

66

The third volume is devoted to the literature of the Revolution (1765-1787). Politics now takes the first place, hitherto occupied by theology, and even the sermons of the time have a strong tinge of patriotism. Franklin is the great figure of the volume. He was the first American man of letters who gained a European reputation, except, possibly, Edwards; the first intellectual product of the New World that could be measured against those of the old by the same standards without allowances or qualifications. The selections from Franklin are fairly representative of his manysided activity. They include several of his papers on electricity, letters on public questions and private opinions, amusing trifles like "The Whistler," and the "Dialogue between Franklin and the Gout," and passages from “Poor Richard's Almanac,” and from the still popular "Autobiography," the most humanly interesting American book of the last century. The spirit of Franklin and of his age was very different from that of Mather or of Jonathan Edwards. He was émancipé —a deist and a utilitarian, distinctly secular and unspiritual. In his inventiveness, thrift, common sense, and practicality he stands out as the "primal Yankee." Matthew Arnold, who praised the crystal clearness of his English, thought him the most characteristic American in literature.

The eighteenth-century rebound from the religious tension of the seventeenth is seen also in the writings of other American deists, like Jefferson, “Tom" Paine, and Ethan Allen. The political writings and speeches of these and other patriots, such as Otis, Washington, the Adamses, Patrick Henry, Jay, Josiah Quincy, etc., make up the bulk of the volume. Revolutionary songs and ballads, both Whig and Tory, and documents like the Declaration of Independence, give fullness to the historic view of the period. The Loyalist side is represented by extracts from Governor Hutchinson, James Rivington, the official Tory printer of the“ Gazette,” and the famous "History of Connecticut," by Rev. Samuel Peters, the source of unnumbered slanders on the land of steady habits. There are eight pages from

the diary of John Woolman, that ancient New Jersey Friend and abolitionist, whose quaint sweetness of spirit made Charles Lamb fall in love with the early Quakers. In the prose and verse of Francis Hopkinson of Philadelphia, in Trumbull's "M'Fingal" and the pasquinades of the other “Hartford wits," we encounter satire and humor not entirely devoid of point even at this distance of time. And in Philip Freneau we reach the first real American poet. The editors would have done well, perhaps, to include among their selections from Hopkinson the description of a salt-box in his “College Examination," which is better known than anything of his except the "Battle of the Kegs." The selections from Freneau are good, but “ The Indian Student" is more deserving of a place in the volume than any of the author's political or satirical verses, which are all worthless, except " Eutaw Springs.'

In this volume, as in the latter part of the second and throughout the fourth, the changes in style keep pace with the advancing literary fashions of the mother country. There is the same difference between the prose of Cotton Mather and that of Jonathan Edwards as between the prose of Burton and that of Locke. Dryden and Butler, a little later Addison and Pope, a little later still Johnson and Goldsmith, become the models of our lighter literature in prose and verse. 'M'Fingal" imitates Hudibras; William Livingston, afterwards governor of New Jersey, in his poem "Philosophical Solitude" (1747), tells in the manner of the “Rape of the Lock" of the coquetries of "nymphs" like Sylvia and Chloe:

Then parrots, lapdogs, monkeys, squirrels, beaux,
Fans, ribbons, tuckers, patches, furbelows,
In quick succession through their fancies run,
And dance incessant on the flippant tongue.

In President Dwight's "Triumph of Infidelity" (1788) and Mercy Warren's poems (1790), Pope continues to give the law, though Dwight's "Greenfield Hill" shows some influence of Goldsmith and Cowper. Franklin's "Busybody" (1729) was an imitation of the "Spectator." Freneau shows distinct traces of Gray's and Collins's elegiac verse. There was little or nothing as yet of original value in our polite literature.

The literature of the Republic begins with the fourth volume (1788-1820). This was the era of constitutionmaking and constitutional interpretation in American political history, and here the important names are those of Hamilton, Marshall, Gallatin (in finance), Fisher Ames, and later, as the points at issue between the Federalists and the States-Rights party developed and the slavery question loomed ominous, John Quincy Adams, Josiah Quincy, and that line of great orators, Randolph, Clay, Webster, and Calhoun. It was the golden age of American eloquence, and the most imposing figure in the volume is that of Daniel Webster. Theology retires more and more into the background, and general literature, though still imitative, puts forth brave attempts. The forms of our first comedian, Royall Tyler, our first lexicographer, Noah Webster, and our first professional novelist, Charles Brockden Brown, come into view. Tyler was, in his day, a versatile and even brilliant figure, though his work has not worn well. His "Contrast," the first American comedy regularly produced, was acted at the John Street Theater in New York in 1786, and is somewhat after the manner - as to the dialogue of Sheridan's plays.

Tyler's novel, "The Algerine Captive," suggests Smollett and Le Sage, and a passage given from his "The Yankey in London" (1809) shows that the differentiation between English English and American English (as in the use of guess and clever), which forms so large a part of the stock in trade of our "international" novelists, had already become noticeable. Brown's uncanny romances have recently been republished entire. He was not without genius, and faintly foretokens Hawthorne. Shelley, as is well known, fed upon his novels, and contributed to the same school of fiction his youthful performances, "Zastrozzi” and “St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian." There is a native touch in such anonymous ballads as “The Country School" and "Sleighing Song," the latter slightly reminding one of a very popular sleighing idyl by one of the editors of this "Library." Under John Quincy Adams we miss the clever and rather well-known verses entitled "The Wants of Man," which are a sort of anticipation of Dr. Holmes's "Contentment," as Thomas Green Fessenden's ballad "The Country Lovers," here given, is of Lowell's "The Courtin'." The beginnings of Knickerbocker literature are illustrated by passages from William Irving and J. K. Paulding; and the approach of a finer culture in New England by specimens from the novels, lectures, and poems of Washington Allston. Of pieces still current and generally familiar we may note, as falling within this period, Hopkinson's 'Hail, Columbia," Moore's "Visit from St. Nicholas," and Key's "Star-Spangled Banner." A feature of this volume, repeated in some of the later ones, is a collection of "Noted Sayings," such as Commodore Perry's "We have met the enemy, and they are ours," and Pinckney's "Millions for defence, but not one cent for tribute." (What he really did say was, "Not a penny, not a penny!")

With volume five (1821-1834) we enter upon the be. ginning of American literature in the stricter sense of the word. There was little or nothing before this in the nature of creative or imaginative work of any permanent importance. But now we come upon the names of Irving and Cooper; of historians like Prescott; naturalists like Audubon; poets like Pierpont, Dana, Halleck, Bryant, Percival, and Drake; orators and lecturers like Everett and Choate. None of these is quite forgotten, and several of them are as fresh in. interest as ever. And though the volume is in general a depository of faded reputations, it holds many single pieces which are still retained in the anthologies and preserved in popular recollection. Such are "The Old Oaken Bucket" of Samuel Woodworth, Mrs. Willard's "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep," Wilde's "My Life is like the Summer Rose," Payne's "Home, Sweet Home!" Dr. Muhlenberg's “I Would not Live Alway," and others, less known but equally worthy of remembrance, like Lavinia Stoddard's "The Soul's Defiance," the spirited anonymous ballad entitled "The Yankee Man-of-War," and Grenville Mellen's fine poem, "The Bugle." Mellen's battle-piece, with its noble closing line:

High over all the lonely bugle grieves, which Emerson admired and inserted in his "Parnassus," is not given here. The volume opens fittingly with the name of Dr. Channing, whose "Remarks on National Literature" (1823) was the first formal

declaration of our intellectual independence of England. It shows how young our genuinely American literature still is, that some of the writers represented in this volume have died within the last decade. Bryant, e. g., died in 1878; R. H. Dana and General Dix in 1879; Palfrey, the historian of New England, in 1881; Dr. Orville Dewey and Thurlow Weed in 1882.

The sixth volume (1835-1860) covers what still remains the great period of American literature - the generation that preceded the civil war. This is crowded with names of the first importance: Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Whittier, Poe, and Bancroft, whose works still form our favorite and daily reading; and with others, whose writings, though less familiar, are yet significant, and in part, at least, survive : Alcott, Pinkney, Prentice, Willis, Simms, and Margaret Fuller. Although the period was rich in pure literature, the selections continue to take in a wide range and to illustrate American thought on many sides. The speeches and political writings of public men, such as Lincoln, Seward, Garrison, Chase, John Brown, Jefferson Davis, Robert Toombs, and Caleb Cushing; the work of theologians, like Horace Bushnell, Theodore Parker, Mark Hopkins, and Orestes Brownson; of scholars in many departments, such as Lieber, Woolsey, Marsh, Hedge, Felton, Barnard, and Peirce; of literary critics, like Ripley and Hillard; and of historians, like Gayarré and Hildreth-all these are amply presented. In this period the national mind seems first to reach maturity. The authors above named are distinguished, in general, from their predecessors: in belles lettres, by a stronger and finer art, a greater native impulse, and a freedom from the influence of foreign and especially of English models; in the literature of knowledge, by a wider learning and a nicer scholarship, which testify to the improvements in American education; in divinity, by a more liberal spirit and a disposition to attend more to religious philosophy and less to dogmatic theology, which shows the influence of Unitarian dissent in New England and the growth of a more cosmopolitan population in the country at large; and in political literature, by a plainer style, a more earnest and sincere conviction, and a higher moral tone in the discussion of party issues, particularly of the slavery question.

The seventh volume continues the literary history of the same generation (1835-1860) and adds the names of Mrs. Stowe, Holmes, Motley, Thoreau, Lowell, Walt Whitman, and of their less famous contemporaries, many of whom are still living and writing. Politics and political journalism — the latter not ignored in previous volumes - are represented mainly by passages from the writings of Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips, Horace Greeley, Alexander H. Stephens, Henry J. Raymond, and Generals Grant and Sherman; and liberal extracts are given from Beecher's sermons, lectures, and public addresses, and several pages of characteristic sentences and paragraphs from his extemporaneous discourses. One hundred and thirty-eight authors are drawn upon in this seventh volume, whose contents exhibit a greater variety than any one of the preceding. The majority of these are fairly well known, but now and then a selection occurs which will strike the general reader as something of a rarity or a literary curiosity. Such is the passage from Delia Bacon, the originator of the "Baconian theory" of Shakspere. Such the "Table-Talk " of Thomas Gold Appleton, who

said so many good things and wrote so little. Such also the two poems from the little known volume of Sam Ward, the King of the Lobby, prince of good fellows, most accomplished of talkers and of diners. It was over the mahogany, indeed, that we first heard from his own lips his little poem "Edelweiss," and a few stanzas of his clever French translation of" Locksley Hall,"

C'est bien toi, manoir de Locksley,

either one of which would have graced a page in vol

Buchanan, Lincoln, and Duff Green.

IN December, 1860, President Buchanan sent to President-elect Lincoln, by General Duff Green, an urgent invitation to come immediately to Washington, with assurances that he would be received and treated with all due courtesy; the object of the invitation being that they might consult and act in concert to" save the Union without bloodshed," if possible. In THE CENTURY for November, 1887, page 87, the authors of the Life of Lincoln say:

Whether this proposition came by authority or not, the envoy or the motive of the mission. In either case Lincoln could not publicly either question the truth of the appeal was most adroitly laid. Of course it was impossible to accept or even to entertain it. . . His [General Green's] whole aim had been to induce Lincoln tacitly to assume responsibility for the Southern revolt.

Mrs. Green's nephew, Ninian W. Edwards, and Mr. Lincoln married sisters. This family alliance led to a warm personal friendship between Mr. Lincoln and General Green, which continued down to their last meeting, on board the Malvern, at Richmond, Virginia, April 5, 1865, when Mr. Lincoln sprung forward to greet General Green with the exclamation, "My dear old friend, can I do anything for you?"

When Mr. Lincoln came to Washington as a member of Congress he took lodgings in Carroll Place, then more commonly called" Green's Row," that he might be near General Green, and his wife near Mrs. Green. The following, which is one of many letters to General Green, illustrates their friendly and confidential relations. This letter was "confidential" in 1849, but the lapse of time, the death of both parties, and the reference to General Green in the Life of Lincoln justify its publication now:

SPRINGFIELD, ILLS., May 18, 1849.

DEAR GENERAL:

I learn from Washington that a man by the name of Butterfield will probably be appointed Commissioner of the General Land Office. This ought not to be. That is about the only crumb of patronage which Illinois expects; and I am sure the mass of General Taylor's friends here would quite as lief see it go east of the Alleghanies, or west of the Rocky Mountains, as into that man's hands. They are already sore on the subject of his 1 Justin Butterfield, who was appointed. — EDITOR.

getting office. In the great contest of '40 he was not seen or heard of; but when the victory came, three or four old drones, including him, got all the valuable offices, through what influence no one has yet been able to tell. I believe the only time he has been very active was last spring a year, in opposition to General Taylor's nomination. Now cannot you get the ear of General Taylor? Ewing is for B., and therefore he must be avoided. Preston I think will favor you. Mr. Edwards has written me offering to decline, but I advised him not to do so. Some kind friends think I ought to be an applicant; but I am for Mr. Edwards. Try to defeat B., and in doing so use Mr. Edwards, J. L. D. Morrison, or myself, whichever you can to best advantage. Write me, and Yours truly,

let this be confidential.

A. LINCOLN.

Mr. Buchanan knew of these friendly relations, and therefore chose General Green as his "envoy.' When the proposition was submitted to Mr. Lincoln, he not only expressed his willingness to accept it, but manifested an eagerness to start at once for Washington. He regretted being detained by an appointment with Senator Ben. Wade, whom he was expecting by every train, and said that he would start for Washington as soon as he had met that appointment. Senator Wade came and opposed the proposition successfully. Mr. Lincoln changed his mind and declined Mr. Buchanan's invitation.

Failing in this, General Green then sought to obtain from Mr. Lincoln a letter which could be used at the South as an antidote to his Cooper Institute speech and his speech of the 16th of June, 1858, before the State convention at Springfield, Illinois (see THE CENTURY for July, 1887, p. 386), in which he took the ground that "this Government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free," and which had led the South to believe that he and his party would be satisfied with nothing short of the "extinction" of slavery. So far from his "whole aim" being to throw on Mr. Lincoln the "responsibility for the Southern revolt," General Green's only aim was to relieve him of that responsibility by satisfying the South that they had no reason to fear that he would make or countenance in others any attempt to emancipate their slaves. In this he also failed. The letter sent by Mr. Lincoln to Senator Trumbull, to be delivered "if, on consultation, our friends, including yourself, think it can do no harm," never reached General Green.

General Green's own account of his mission to Springfield and of his interview with Mr. Lincoln in Richmond after its occupation by the Federal troops may be found in "Facts and Suggestions," by Duff Green, published in 1866 by Richardson & Co., New York, and Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia.

At Richmond, Mr. Lincoln told General Green that Mr. Corwin's resolution, prohibiting Congress from any interference with slavery in the slaveholding States, was passed on the last night of the session at his (Lincoln's) request. Commenting on this, General Green wrote as follows:

Sea-Coast and Lake Defenses.

GLANCING through the great four-volume report of the Chief of Engineers, United States Army, with which I have just been favored through the courtesy of that officer, I find one page, out of its three thousand pages of business-like statements of work done during the year reported upon, which, if none other, ought to interest and impress every patriotic citizen.

Describing the condition of our so-called "sea-coast and lake frontier defenses," this officer remarks, "The wisdom of providing for the public defense in time of peace and while the Government is in a condition of financial prosperity would appear to be too evident to need further demonstration." The matter has been repeatedly reported upon, and the result has been the annual expenditure, years ago, of about $100,000 per annum, until 1885; since which date absolutely nothing has been done. The consequence of this miserable state of affairs is thus graphically stated by the Chief of Engineers; and could anything be more pitiful?

Neglect of any structure, however massive or well built, results in more or less rapid deterioration, and we find to-day everything connected with our permanent defenses, which are dependent upon annual appropriations for the maintenance and repair, going to rack and ruin : slopes overgrown with grass and weeds and gullied by the rain; walks and roads ragged and untrimmed and full of holes and breaks; ditches and drains filled up or fallen in, and pools of stagnant water on the parades and in the casemates; the sewers in bad order with the consequent evils; mortar and cement fall from the joints of masonry for the want of repointing; timber gun and ammunition platforms rotten or decayed; and permanent concrete or masonry platforms settling or out of plumb, thus preventing the proper service of the guns; casements and quarters leaky, unhealthy, and uninhabitable; magazines damp and useless; revetment walls and water fronts falling down, and waves making serious and rapid encroachments on valuable land, thus impairing eligible sites for future works; and generally about the ungarrisoned forts an appearance of total abandonment and decay; and from the commanders of garrisoned forts continued and urgent appeals to keep the works in order for the comfort and convenience of the garrison and the efficient use of the armaments.

Was there ever a more extraordinary picture of the inefficiency of our legislative body or of the shiftlessness that may sometimes characterize the administration of such trusts? What facts or what circumstances could give the enemies of the republican system of government a better argument against government by representatives chosen by the people? A great nation like ours permits every material guarantee of the permanence of its institutions to be absolutely neglected; pays not the slightest attention to its most important defensive armaments; allows its army and navy to become weakened, demoralized, and incapable of doing the work assigned, and placidly sees the smallest of those nations with which it is liable at any time, through the fault of the stranger or the incapacity of its own administrations, to be forced into conflict, providing itself with fleets and armies such as give the enemy the power to inflict incalculable and irremediable damage on our coasts before we can even make a fair beginning in the work of rehabilitating our defenses. Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, even the smallest of the South American republics, in case of the sudden outbreak of such hostilities as may result from any folly of the least among our foreign representatives, of the pettiest consul, could to-day bombard New York