of an accident succeeds him in the presidential chair : only the man, not the officer, goes home to God, with what of goodness and piety he had won. His manhood is all that he can carry out of the world; elected or rejected, a conqueror or conquered, it is now the same to him ; and it may be the humblest female slave who only earned the bread which her master only ate, and got an enforced concubinage for pay, takes rank in heaven far before the man whom the nation honoured with its highest trust, and for whom the official Senate and low-browed Church send out their hollow groans.
" The glories of our birth and State
Are shadows, not substantial things.
There is no armour against fate :
Death lays his icy hand on kings.
Sceptre and crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made,
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.
"Some men with swords may reap the field,
And plant fresh laurels where they kill ;
But their strong arms at last must yield,
They tame but one another still.
Early or late
They stoop to fate,
And must give up their murmuring breath
When they, pale captives, creep to death.
"The garlands wither on his brow :
Then boast no more his mighty deeds,
Upon death's purple altar now,
See where the victor victim bleeds.
All heads must come
To the cold tomb,
Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet and blossom in the dust."
If he could speak to us from his present position, methinks he would say: Countrymen and friends! You see how little it availed you to agitate the land and put a little man in a great place. It is not the hurrah of parties that will "save the Union," it is not "great men." It is only Justice. Remember that Atheism is not the first principle of a Republic; remember there is a law of God, the higher law of the universe, the Everlasting Right; I thought so once, and now I know it. Remember that you are accountable to God for all things ; that you owe justice
