sprung out of the uncouth lawyer and the unlearned judge, who in arms had only the experience of a few months, acquired in a desultory war against wild Indians, and who was, not only without any previous training to his new profession, but also without the first rudiments of a liberal education, for he did not even know the orthography of his own native language.

Such was the man who, with a handful of raw militia, was to stand in the way of the veteran troops of England, whose boast it was to have triumphed over one of the greatest captains known in history.

But those who entertained such distrust had hardly come in contact with General Jackson, when they felt that they had to deal with a master spirit. True, he was rough hewn from the rock, but rock he was, and of that kind of rock which Providence chooses to select as a fit material to use in its structures of human greatness.

True, he had not the education of a lieutenant in a European army; but what lieutenant, educated or not, who had the will and the remarkable military adaptation so evident in General Jackson's intellectual and physical organization, ever remained a subaltern? Much less could General Jackson fail to rise to his proper place in a country where there was so much more elbow-room, and fewer artificial obstacles than in less favored lands.

But, whatever those obstacles might have been, General Jackson would have overcome them all. His will was of such an extraordinary nature that, like Christian faith, it could almost have accomplished

prodigies and removed mountains. It is impossible to study the life of General Jackson without being convinced that this is the most remarkable feature of his character.

So intense and incessantly active this peculiar faculty was in him, that one would suppose that his mind was nothing but willa will so lofty that it towered into sublimity. In him it supplied the place of genius-or, rather, it was almost genius.

On many occasions, in the course of his long, eventful life, when his shattered constitution made his physicians despair of preserving him, he seemed to continue to live merely because it was his will; and when his unconquerable spirit departed from his enfeebled and worn-out body, those who knew him well might almost have been tempted to suppose that he had not been vanquished by death, but had at last consented to repose.

This man, when he took the command at New Orleans, had made up his mind to beat the English, and, as that mind was so constituted that it was not susceptible of entertaining much doubt as to the results of any of its resolves, he went to work with an innate confidence which transfused itself into the population he had been sent to protect.

General Jackson found that the country he had come to defend was in the most defenseless condition. It had a considerable extent of coast, connecting with the interior through many water communications; and having hardly any fortified points, it was open on all sides.

Fortunately the man who was sent for the defense of Southern Territory was Southern born. He

was a native of South Carolina, and he had grown to hardy manhood on the forest-clad hills of Ten

nessee.

It is still more fortunate that he was equal to the occasion. He did not deplore, in helpless despair, the scarcity of his resources; he did not write to his Government that he could not defend New Orleans with his limited means; he never thought of retreating, or abandoning one inch of territory; he saw that he had to create everything for defense, and everything he did create.

des' ul to ry, irregular.

im promp' tu, made offhand.

or thog' ra phy, spelling.

phys i og' no my, cast or expression of the face.

prod' i gy, a wonder; a miracle.

prog nos' ti ca' ted, betokened; foretold.

sub' al tern, an officer in the army below the rank of captain.

sub lim'i ty, grandeur.

ty' ro, a beginner in learning anything.

GRANT.

HENRY WATTERSON.

(Extract from a Speech before the Society of the Army of the Tennessee.) I know full well that this is neither a time nor place for abstract economics, and I am not going to afflict you with a dissertation upon free trade or free silver. I came, primarily, to bow my head and to pay my measure of homage to the statue that was unveiled to-day. The career and the name which that statue commemorates belong to me no less than to you. When I followed him to the grave-proud to appear in his obsequies, though as the obscurest of those who bore any official part therein I felt that I was helping to bury not only a great man but a true friend. From that day

to this the story of the life and death of General Grant has more and more impressed and touched me.

I never allowed myself to make his acquaintance until he had quitted the White House. The period of his political activity was full of uncouth and unsparing partisan contention. It was a kind of civil war. I had my duty to do, and I did not dare trust myself to, the subduing influence of what I was sure must follow friendly relations between such a man as he was and such a man as I knew myself to be. In this I was not mistaken, as the sequel proved. I met him for the first time beneath my own vine and fig tree, and a happy series of accidents thereafter gave me the opportunity to meet him often and to know him well. He was the embodiment of simplicity, integrity, and courage; every inch a general, a soldier, and a man; but in the circumstances of his last illness, a figure of heroic proportions for the contemplation of the ages. I recall nothing in history so sublime as the spectacle of that brave spirit, broken in fortune and in health, with the dread hand of the dark angel clutched about his throat, struggling with every breath to hold the clumsy, unfamiliar weapon with which he sought to wrest from the jaws of death something for the support of wife and children when he was gone! If he had done nothing else, that would have made his exit from the world an epic!

Gentlemen, soldiers, comrades, the silken folds that twine about us here, for all their soft and careless grace, are yet as strong as hooks of steel! They hold together a united people and a great