for purely intellectual pleasures. I have, therefore, reason to rejoice in the possession of at least one of the prerequisites to literary success-a want of surplus moneybut prize as much a sufficient worldly estate to maintain my personal independence, which is essential to truth and fairness.

The grade and power of mind, as well as the passions, emotions, tastes and sensibilities of authors, in a great degree, prompt, mould and modify the literature of the times in which they write, causing it to brighten and sparkle under the magic touch of genius, or to descend into barrenness under dull and venal thinkers and writers. It softens by the recurring emotions of charity and philanthropy, and becomes caustic and pungent when prompted or guided by malice, envy, misanthropy, or ambition disappointed from any cause.

I have lived thirty years-long enough to have high hopes, but fortunately not enough to poison my pen by the asperities consequent on the envy of my few disappointments-yet, nevertheless, have witnessed far more of selfishness among men of education and cultivation, not prompted by poverty or want, than I formerly supposed could possibly exist among the men who are leaders in the churches, in the professions, in social and political circles and among those holding public offices.

Some of the contemporaries of whom I write have already died; some are old, have performed life's public task and folded the drapery of its honors and rewards around them and retired to private life to await the summons for exit from time; some are in the midst of full harvest labor of what they have sown in youth and early manhood; others are laboring in the early field—the virgin soil of life-with minds and hearts full-strung to the

work before them. It is of my seniors in age and merit that I write, and will doubtless omit many of equal merit with those who are mentioned by name. Georgia is great in area as well as men, and I do not profess to know all who are distinguished or deserve to be.

There is probably no standard more difficult to be well understood, much less to be fully and satisfactorily described, than that of man's greatness. It has been written and spoken of, represented in marble and on canvas. It has deluged the reading world with words, figures and tropes, with triumphs and tragedies, until we are left in uncertainty and doubt, not to say ignorance, of what it is or has been in any age of the world. We have liberty to erect ideal statures of strength, power and beauty, and to compare men, alive and dead, with those idealities. We may describe actions we regard as grand and momentous, and pronounce judgment of greatness upon the actors and authors; but others, viewing the transactions with different understanding, and with different shades of the light of truth, may regard the actions unimportant, and the achievements of men, made notorious by them, the results of chance and of accidental circumstances.

No matter what endowments any given man may have had by nature, or what education and training he may undergo, no meed of greatness will ever be awarded to him by mankind until he is placed in such position, and at such period, and under such emergencies as cause great events to transpire, or great results to flow from his actions, either in reality or in the opinion of those who are interested in or affected by those events or results. It often transpires that greatness is attributed to a leader or a projector on one side when, in truth, success is the result of weakness and want of capacity on the part of the op

posing parties or forces. The reputation for greatness often arises to individuals for the success of plans and movements which result from and are necessary sequences of appliances and surroundings; and not unfrequently the thinking powers, knowledge, and skill of subalterns are attributed to him who fortunately is the head and leader at the time.

On the other hand, men in place and power are often censured for failures which result from circumstances beyond the control of any one man or mind. They are condemned for not doing what is not in the power of man to do with the aid and support at command. Events and circumstances have often summoned men who held power and responsible positions to the discharge of duties for which they were not qualified; and men of great capacities have lived and died without distinction for want of position and power and great emergencies to call forth their efforts.

But one man ever achieved what Alexander did; and but one man ever held at the outset of his career such power in the face of only such opposition as Philip left to his son. There was never but one Napoleon Bonaparte, but also never but one Republican France struggling against the domination of the monarchies of Europe. There was never but one Lord Nelson, and never but one opportunity to make another that could have immortalized genius as the commander of the British navies was immortalized. England may subsist a thousand years and rear a thousand men every way his equal in military skill and power before she will have the opportunity to glorify another as Wellington was glorified. Virginia may propagate her crop of men of the blood of Randolph and Lee, and of Jefferson and Washington, for centuries to come,

and never present another Father of his Country, or Author of The Declaration of Independence.

The three great statesmen coming from the East, the West and the South-all of whom have now gone to their long homes-Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, unrivalled in the estimate placed on them by the American people, may have now living many equals in all the essential elements of true greatness who have no field in which to operate, and no emergency of circumstances to call them out and to develop their powers of thought and of speech; who, when they die, will pass quietly into unmarked graves and leave no biographers to portray their merits.

Greece had but one Demosthenes; but, in all her lengthened and unrivalled career of glory in the arts of peace and war, she perhaps had no period or situation that could have so distinguished another. Rome had but one Cicero, and but one Golden Age to gild his fame to the cycles of hoary Time.

The splendors of Raphael and Angelo dazzle the world in their own and following ages; but it is probable that at no stage of civilization would the taste and passion of Italy, or any other country, for the art that so immortalized them, have crowned even their equals, if they had been found, with wreaths of glory so bright and so enduring.

The lessons taught in profane and sacred history, in the display of notably vicious men, are full of instruction on human meanness and depravity. Historic development of forbidding circumstances, and with worldly power and prominence to render crime illustrious, find their counterparts in a thousand forms in every country and age, without their attending importance to make notorious and perpetuate them.

There was only one Job, subjected to the extreme trials that exhaust human patience without yielding, whose life is reported in the Divine Oracles; but millions have died unheralded who exemplified his virtues. There was only one Judas who ever had the opportunity to betray the most priceless of all trusts-the Saviour of the world. But the earth has since been cursed by millions ready to betray, for no higher reward than Judas got, every truth. and virtue that Christ came to inculcate and establish.

It is by comparison that we may approximate the true standard and grade of individuals. We compare stars with stars in order to classify them and determine their magnitude. This is to the astronomer a practical undertaking, because the stars change not; nor do the circumstances under which they are seen expand or diminish them. But men in different situations at the same time, and in the same country, and men of different countries and ages have to be seen in the changing light of their peculiar situations, and of circumstances that surround them, in order to form any just opinion of their capacities for great actions and achievements. Every country, and every age, has a history written or a tradition received in lieu of historic record. Providence has so graded gifts to man, and so apportioned them among the countries and the succeeding ages, that no period or clime is bereft of men so endowed or surrounded as to have attracted the attention of their contemporaries; some for distinguishing virtues, and others for notable vices, but of acknowledged genius or mental power.

America, from the time of her earliest settlements, through the stages of rapid progress and development, has shared very largely in the munificence of the Creator, both in mind and heart. The circumstances have been