THE TEST OF A TRULY GREAT MAN. JOHN RUSKIN (b. 1819). I believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I do not mean by humility doubt of his own power, or hesitation of speaking his opinions, but a right understanding of the relation between what he can do and say and the rest of the world's sayings and doings. All great men not only know their business, but usually know that they know it; and are not only right in their main opinions, but they usually know that they are right in them: only they do not think much of themselves on that account. Arnolfo knows he can build a good dome at Florence; Albert Dürer writes calmly to one who has found fault with his work, "It cannot be better done;" Sir Isaac Newton knows that he has worked out a problem or two that would have puzzled anybody else: only they do not expect their fellow-men therefore to fall down and worship them.* They have a curious under-sense of powerlessness, feeling that the greatness is not in them but through them, that they could not do or be anything else than God made them; and they see something divine and God-made in every other man they meet, and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful. Modern Painters. OUR FATHERS. Hon. JOSEPH HOWE (1804-1873). [Written by the Hon. Joseph Howe for the Industrial Exhibition of Nova Scotia, November, 1854.] Room for the dead! Your living hands may pile But yet, amidst the tumult and the din Of gathering thousands, let me audience crave. When banners o'er our country's treasures wave, Unmarked to leave the wealth safe garnered in the grave. * Arnolfo di Colle, Italian sculptor and architect (1232-1300); Albrecht Dürer, German painter and engraver (1471-1528); Sir Isaac Newton, the great English astronomer and mathematician (1642-1727). The fields may furnish forth their lowing kine, And, while the rhetorician wins the ear, Not here? Oh yes, our hearts their presence feel: And names which in the days gone by were spells The spirit here our country's fame to spread, While every breast with joy and triumph swells, Banner and wreath should own our reverence for the dead. Look up! their walls enclose us. Look around! Whose sturdy hands the noble highways wound Through forests dense, o'er mountain, moor, and lea? Who spanned the streams? Tell me whose works they be, The busy marts where commerce ebbs and flows? Who quelled the savage? And who spared the tree That pleasant shelter o'er the pathway throws? Who made the land they loved to blossom as the rose? Who in frail barks the ocean surge defied, And trained the race that live upon the wave? What shore so distant where they have not died? In every sea they found a watery grave. Honor for ever to the true and brave Who seaward led their sons with spirits high, Bearing the red-cross flag their fathers gave; They'll seaward bear it still—to venture, or to die! The Roman gathered in a stately urn The dust he honored; while the sacred fire, Nourished by vestal hands, was made to burn From age to age. If fitly you'd aspire, Honor the dead, and let the sounding lyre And o'er the old men's graves go strew your choicest THE ABANDONMENT OF THE U.E. LOYALISTS. W. E. H. LECKY (b. 1838). * The part of the treaty with England which excited most severe criticism was the abandonment of the Loyalists. These unfortunate men had, indeed, a claim of the very strongest kind to the protection of England, for they had lost everything in her cause. Some had simply fled from the country before mob violence, and had been attainted in their absence. Others had actually taken up arms, and they had done so at the express invitation of the English government and of English generals. Their abandonment was described by nearly all the members of the Opposition as an act of unqualified baseness, which would leave an enduring stain on the English name. "What," said Lord North, "are not the claims of those who, in conformity to their allegiance, their cheerful obedience to the voice of Parliament, their confidence in the proclamation of our generals, invited under every assurance of military, parliamentary, political, and affectionate protection, espoused with the hazard of their lives, and the forfeiture of their properties, the cause of Great Britain?" It had hitherto nearly always been the custom to close a struggle which partook largely of the nature of civil war, by a generous act of amnesty and restitution. At the Peace of Münster † a general act of indemnity had been passed, and the partisans of the Spanish sovereign had either regained their confiscated properties or had been indemnified for their loss. A similar measure had been enacted in favor of the revolted *Treaty of Versailles, 1783, by which the United States were recognized as an Independent and Sovereign Power. The treaties here quoted were concluded as follows:-Peace of Münster (Treaty of Westphalia), October 24, 1648; Peace of the Pyrenees, November 7, 1659; Peace (Treaty) of Utrecht, April 11, 1713; Treaty of Versailles, September 3, 1783. a still Catalans by France at the Peace of the Pyrenees, and by England at the Peace of Utrecht, and Spain had frankly conceded it. The case of the American Loyalists was stronger one, and the Opposition emphatically maintained that the omission of any effectual provision for them in the Treaty of Versailles, "unless marked by the just indignation of Parliament, would blast for ever the honor of this country." This charge does not appear to me to be a just one. It is evident from the correspondence which has now been published, that Shelburne,† from the very beginning of the negotiation, did all that was in his power to obtain the restoration of the Loyalists to their civil rights and to their properties. He directed Oswald to make their claims an article of the first importance. He repeatedly threatened to break off the whole negotiation if it were not conceded, and he suggested more than one way in which it might be accomplished. Savannah and Charleston had, indeed, been evacuated; but New York was in the hands of the English till the Peace, and they might reasonably ask for a compensation to the Loyalists as the price of its surrender. A vast amount of territory to the south of Canada and to the east of the Mississippi had been conceded to the United States, to which they had very little claim, and it was proposed by the English that lands in the uninhabited country should be sold, and that a fund should be formed to compensate the Loyalists. Vergennes strenuously supported Shelburne, and urged as a matter of justice and humanity, that the Americans should grant an amnesty and a restoration. As far as can now be judged, his motives appear to have been those of a humane and honorable man. He knew that the Loyalists represented the real opinions of a very large section of the American people, and that he was himself mainly responsible for their ruin. If France had not drawn the sword, there is little doubt that they would still have been the leading class in America. The intervention, however, of Vergennes English pron., Cat'-alan; Spanish, Catalan'; an inhabitant of Catalonia, a province of N.E. Spain. + William Petty, Earl of Shelburne (1761), and Marquis of Lansdowne (1805), was Foreign Secretary, March-July, 1782, and First Lord of the Treasury, July, 1782-April, 1783. Charles Gravier, Count de Vergennes (1717-1787), became in 1774 Minister of Foreign Affairs. In behalf of France he concluded with England's revolted colonies a Treaty of Commerce (December 8, 1777), and a Treaty of Alliance (February 6, 1778). was attributed by Jay and Adams to the most malevolent and Machiavellian * motives, and the time had passed when a French minister could greatly influence American councils. The commissioners took their stand upon the constitutional ground that Congress had no power to grant what was demanded, for the Loyalists had been attainted by particular acts of particular State legislatures, and it was only these legislatures that could restore them. That there was no disposition in America to do so they honestly admitted. Franklin, whose own son was a distinguished and very honorable Loyalist, was conspicuous for his vindictiveness against the class; and he even tried to persuade the English negotiators that the Loyalists had no claim upon England, for their misrepresentations had led her to prolong the war. A History of England in the 18th Century (vol. iv., 1882). SONG. Blow, blow, thou winter wind, As man's ingratitude; Thy tooth is not so keen, Although thy breath be rude. Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly; This life is most jolly. Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, Though thou the waters warp, As friend remembered not. Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly; This life is most jolly. SHAKSPEARE: As You Like It, act ii., scene 7. Crafty, perfidious." Machiavelli, a Florentine writer of the fifteenth century, justified double-dealing in princes. |