90 A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER. 



capable of reaching beyond the next election. The 

 criticism of Europe alone can rescue us from the provin- 

 cialism of an over or false estimate of ourselves. Let us 

 be thankful, and not angry, that we must accept it as 

 our touchstone. Our stamp has so often been impressed 

 upon base metal, that we cannot expect it to be taken 

 on trust, but we may be sure that true gold will be 

 equally persuasive the world over. Real manhood and 

 honest achievement are nowhere provincial, but enter 

 the select society of all time on an even footing. 



Spanish America might be a good glass for us to look 

 into. Those Catharine-wheel republics, always in revolu- 

 tion while the powder lasts, and sure to burn the fingers 

 of whoever attempts intervention, have also their great 

 men, as placidly ignored by .us as our own by jealous 

 Europe. The following passage from the life of Don 

 Simon Bolivar might allay many motus animorum, if 

 rightly pondered. Bolivar, then a youth, was travelling in 

 Italy, and his biographer tells us that " near Castiglione 

 he was present at the grand review made by Napoleon of 

 the columns defiling into the plain large enough to con- 

 tain sixty thousand men. The throne was situated on 

 an eminence that overlooked the plain, and Napoleon on 

 several occasions looked through a glass at Bolivar and 

 his companions, who were at the base of the hill. The 

 hero Caesar could not imagine that he beheld the libera- 

 tor of the world of Columbus ! " And small blame to 

 him, one would say. We are not, then, it seems, the 

 only foundling of Columbus, as we are so apt to take for 

 granted. The great Genoese did not, as we supposed, 

 draw that first star-guided furrow across the vague of 

 waters with a single eye to the future greatness of the 

 United States. And have we not sometimes, like the 

 enthusiastic biographer, fancied the Old World staring 

 through all its telescopes at us, and wondered that it did 



