156 HENRY HILL GOODELL 



a peace of political life, not the peace of political death. 

 "No North! No South! No East! No West! But one 

 people," — as our lamented Governor, in his matchless ad- 

 dress at Chattanooga, puts it, — "but one people, animated 

 by one purpose as splendid as ever the heart of man con- 

 ceived, — with one destiny, so grand and high that it fills 

 the future with a glory such as the sons of men never looked 

 on before." 



Old Homer in his blindness understood this when he put 

 into the mouth of the gallant Trojan these words: "Tell me 

 not of auguries. Let your birds fly to the East or to the 

 West. I care not in this cause; we obey the will of Zeus who 

 rules over us all, and our own best omen is our country's 

 cause." 



Did you ever think how large a part sentiment plays in 

 the great crises of the world? In the ordinary affairs of life 

 one acute Yankee peddler mind is worth more for service 

 to his day and generation than forty poetic souls ; but when 

 the storm and strife of politics split states, and we are where 

 steel and not gold will get us honorably and honestly out, 

 and the world is war, then it is that the sentimental side 

 of human nature, that sentiment that poets and thinkers 

 feel, steps to the front and leads where the peddler nature 

 dares not lead the way. The men who hold the widest sway 

 in the hearts of humanity, who have defended liberty when 

 assaulted, who have poured oil and healing balm into her 

 wounds after battle, are the men of this sort, men of this 

 deep, poetic instinct, this moral tenderness, this apprecia- 

 tion of the immortal. It is all that survives of the influence 

 of Greece and Rome, of every ancient state. Sparta, a land 

 of soldiers and slaves, gave us nothing; but the airy-minded 



