Providence that brought him so conspicuously to the front at Lincoln's death, to point years on to his own trial and agony from the assassin's bullet?

It was eminently natural that he should have been the chosen orator on such occasions, for every act of his life has been a testimony in defense of his country; that country which he loves so well. Speaking on its future, he said, at Hudson College:

"Our great dangers are not from without. We do not live by the consent of any other nation. We must look within to find elements of danger. The first and most obvious of these is territorial expansion, overgrowth, and the danger that we shall break to pieces by our own weight. This has been the commonplace of historians and publicists for many centuries, and its truth has found many striking illustrations in the experience of mankind. But we have fair ground for believing, that new conditions and new forces have nearly if not wholly removed the ground of this danger. Distance, estrangement, isolation have been overcome by the recent amazing growth in the means of intercommunication. For political and industrial purposes California and Massachusetts are nearer neighbors to-day, than were Philadelphia and Boston in the days of the Revolution. It was distance, isolation, ignorance of separate parts, that broke the cohesive force of the great empires of antiquity. Fortunately, our greatest line of extension is from cast to west, and our pathway along the parallels of latitude are not too broad for safety-for it lies within the zone of national development. The Gulf of Mexico is our special

providence on the south. Perhaps it would be more fortunate for us if the northern shore of that gulf stretched westward to the Pacific. If our territory embraced the tropics, the sun would be our enemy. The stars in their courses

would fight against us. Now these celestial forces are our friends, and help to make us one. Let us hope the Republic will be content to maintain this friendly alliance.

Our northern boundary is not yet wholly surveyed. Perhaps our neighbors across the lakes will some day take a hint from nature, and save themselves and us the discomfort of an artificial boundary. Restrained within our present southern limits with a population more homogenious than that of any other great nation, and with a wonderful power to absorb and assimilate to our own type the European races that come among us, we have but little reason to fear that we shall be broken up by divided interests and internal feuds, because of our great territorial extent. Finally, our great hope for the future our great safeguard against danger, is to be found. in the general and thorough education of our people and in the virtue which accompanies such education. And all these elements depend, in a large measure, upon the intellectual and moral culture of the young men who go out from our higher institutions of learning. From the standpoint of this general culture we may trustfully encounter the perils that assail us. Secure against dangers from abroad, united at home by the stronger ties of common interest and patriotic pride, holding and unifying our vast territory by the most potent forces of civilization, relying upon the intelligent strength and responsibility of each citizen, and, most of all, upon the power of truth, without undue arrogance, we may hope that in the centuries to come our Republic will continue to live and hold its high place among the nations as

"The heir of all the ages in the foremost files of time.'"

From our Republic and its future, we turn aside to gather in a literary scrap, an address on Burns, in which we find this, from a fine comparison of three of the world's song-writers.

To appreciate the genius and achievements of Rober! Burns, it is fitting to compare him with others who have been eminent in the same field. In the highest class of lyric poetry their names stand eminent. Their field covers eighteen centuries of time, and the three names are Horace, Beranger and Burns. It is an interesting and suggestive fact, that each of these sprang from the humble walks of life. Each may

be described as one

"Who begs a brother of the earth

To give him leave to toil,'

and each proved by his life and achievements that, however hard the lot of poverty, 'a man's a man for a' that.'

"A great writer has said that it took the age forty years to catch Burns, so far was he in advance of the thoughts of his times. But we ought not to be surprised at the power he exhibited. We are apt to be misled when we seek to find the cause of greatness in the schools and universities alone. There is no necessary conflict between nature and art. In the highest and best sense art is as natural as nature. We do not wonder at the perfect beauty of the rose, although we may not understand the mysteries by which its delicate petals are fashioned and fed out of the grosser elements of earth. We do not wonder at the perfection of the rose because God is the artist. When He fashioned the germ of the rose-tree He made possible the beauties of its flower. The earth and air and sunshine conspired to unfold and adorn it—to tint and crown it with peerless beauty. When the Divine Artist would produce a poem, He plants a germ of it in a human soul, and out of that soul the poem springs and grows as from the rosetree the rose.

"Burns was a child of nature. He lived close to her beating heart, and all the rich and deep sympathies of life glowed and lived in his heart. The beauties of earth, air and sky filled and transfigured him.

"He did but sing because he must,

And piped but as the linnets sing.'

"With the light of his genius he glorified 'the banks and braes' of his native land, and, speaking for the universal human heart, has set its sweetest thought to music:

"Whose echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow forever and forever,'

Here we will add a metrical version of the third ode in Horace's First Book, which General Garfield made in 1873:

TO THE SHIP WHICH CARRIED VIRGIL TO ATHENS.

What form, or what pathway of death him affrighted,
Who faced with dry eyes monsters swimming the deep,
Who gazed without fear on the storm-swollen billows,

And the lightning-scarred rocks, grim with death on the shore?

VI.

In vain did the prudent Creator dissever

The lands from the lands by the desolate sea,
If o'er its broad bosom, to mortals forbidden,

Still leap, all profanely, our impious keels.

VII.

Recklessly bold to encounter all dangers,

Through deeds God forbidden still rushes our race;
The son of lapelus, Heaven-defying,

By impious fraud to the nations brought fire.

VIII.

When fire was thus stolen from regions celestial,

Decay smote the earth and brought down in his train
A new summoned cohort of fevers o'erbrooding,

And Fate, till then slow and reluctant to strike,

IX.

Gave wings to his speed and swift death to his victims,
Bold Dædalus tried the void realms of the air,

Borne upward on pinions not given to mortals,
The labors of Hercules broke into Hell.

X.

Naught is too high for the daring of mortals,

Even Heaven we seek in our folly to scale:

By our own impious crimes we permit not the thunder
To sleep without flame in the right hand of Jove.

CHAPTER XXI.

C

QUESTIONS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.

ONTEMPORANEOUSLY with his entry into Congress, Garfield began a course of severe study of financial and political economy, going home every evening to his modest lodgings on Thirteenth Street, with an armful of books borrowed from the Congressional Library, into which he deeply burrowed. This study was superbly lucrative. For his financial views have always been sound and based on the firm foundation of honest money and unsullied national honor. His record in the legislation concerning these subjects is without a flaw. No man in Congress made a more consistent and unwavering fight against the paper money delusions that flourished during the decade following the war, and in favor of specie payments and the strict fulfillment of the nation's obligations to its creditors. His speeches became the financial gospel of the Republican party.

We will quote some texts from this gospel. In the course of his strenuous fight against the repeal of the resumption act, Mr. Garfield said:

"The men of 1862 knew the dangers from sad experience in our history; and, like Ulysses, lashed themselves to the