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On the other hand, Gen. Grant, having invested not a feather's weight of influence for or against colored suffrage, and having by his letter of acceptance held himself free to act as circumstances might dictate, and being disposed by his antecedents as a Democrat to place a very limited estimate on the intrinsic value of colored suffrage, will acquiesce heartily in any constitutional action which the votes of the majority of the people of a particular State, the decision of the Supreme Court, or the action of the majority in Congress, may render expedient. In short, the approaching election, however it may turn, can hardly dispose of the negro-question, which must continue to agitate the country until the colored race shall have risen to a higher intellectual and social position than they now occupy.

Since the election of a President leaves the political status of the colored race still open to be adjusted by future, and probably by State, legislation, and since no rights are foreclosed or questions settled by it, it is idle to predict either revolution or the subjuga tion of any State or community to negrorule as the result of it. In fact, as the suppression of the great rebellion determined that the preservation of the Union shall not depend on the election of a particular candidate to the Presidency, so the protracted after-struggle between Congress and President Johnson, culminating in his impeachment and escape by a single vote from removal, determines that hereafter political policies are to be shaped by the democratic power of Congress and not by the autocratic power of the President. The war for the Union established the supremacy of the Federal Government over the States. The triumph of Congress over fifty vetoes, and the trial and acquittal of the President, vindicated the supremacy of the legislative over the executive. Nor is this vindication rendered less effective by the acquittal of the President than it would have been by his removal. The power of the British Parliament to transfer the Crown was better illustrated by electing William of Orange and Mary, King and Queen of England, while James II. still remained alive and at liberty, than it would have been if he had been executed. In the former case a vacancy would have compelled an election. In the latter the election removed the King. So the conviction of President Johnson would have proved the power of Congress to remove; but his acquittal proved their higher power to remove or not

as they thought best. To remove would have demonstrated the temporary success of an antagonistic party; to forego removing was the calm vindication of conscious and absolute supremacy. The effect must be to vastly diminish the political importance of the election of President, and to increase relatively the importance of elections of Senators and Congressmen. By dividing the excitement incident to the settlement of im. portant political issues among many candidates and distributing it over several elections, instead of concentrating it upon one, the strain on our institutions is lessened, and the tendency to revolution as the result of presidential elections is happily diminished.

In the selection of their candidates both parties have done themselves signal justice. It is to be regretted that the vituperations incident to our mode of conducting a political campaign should descend to the littleness of attempting to obscure the military glory of Grant or the parliamentary abilities of Colfax, the political integrity of Seymour or the gallantry and courage of Blair. If Napoleon or Wellington or Jackson or Taylor was a butcher in being unwilling to lose a battle to save the lives of a few, when by gaining the battle he would save the lives of many, then is Grant a butcher. But, since in this sense all war is butchery, the butcher par excellence is the first of warriors. If to believe that the election of an anti-slavery President would result in secession and civil strife, and that the evils of slavery were far lighter than the horrors of civil war, proves a man a devotee of slavery, then were both Seymour and Grant advocates of slavery in the days prior to the war. If to believe that the South could never be subdued by force, that the war must be ended by compromise, and that emancipation only rendered compromise more difficult, were more than an error of judgment, then Mr. Seymour was guilty of something worse than such an error during the war.

After Gen. Grant has successfully commanded the armies of the Union, won in per son a score of hotly-contested battles against some of the ablest generals of the age, and planned and in their most important and dif ficult features executed the campaigns by which the rebellion was subdued, it is in vain to attempt to deny him the highest executive powers. Compared with the Atlas-burden of executive responsibility which he bore as General-in-Chief, the duties of President would be similar but light. He descends

from the command of a million and a half of troops to the control of forty thousand officeholders. The transition from General of the Army of Northern Virginia to President of Washington College, could hardly lighten the burden of Gen. Lee more than the transfer of Grant from the chief command of all our armies during the crisis of the struggle for the Union to the quiet administration of the duties of President of the United States would be attended by relief instead of anxiety.

Gov. Seymour possesses eminent abilities, and underlying his political career are amiable qualities of mind and heart, which are harmoniously attended by that external dignity and personal grace which should adorn the presidential office. Gov. Seymour's talents are greater in debate than in office, more rhetorical than executive. As a Senator, had the complexion of the New York Legislature admitted of his choice for that office, he might have won, by his suavity in discussion, something of that personal popularity, influence, and esteem from his opponents, which distinguish Reverdy Johnson. Diplomatic by nature, he would make an excellent Secretary of State. We have hardly a more admirable presiding officer. His disposition tends toward harmony and compromise. Like Gerrit Smith, he entertains no political opinion which he would not waive rather than see it made the cause of bloodshed. He is a peaceman, a compromiser, and reconciler, by conviction, instinct, and habit. Of course, when such a disposition, in revolutionary times, is brought into conflict with men impossible to persuade and willing to fight for their opinions, it yields, and whatever duties depend upon its vigor go unperformed. Horatio

While

Seymour would have made a good President under the order of things that prevailed before the war, when the most adroit compromiser was the greatest statesman. Grant is quietly and unaffectedly a gentleman of the military pattern, Seymour is conspicuously and attractively a gentleman of the drawing-room pattern. Both have treated their rivals generously, and have secured their hearty support and respect by so doing. Both would agree much more nearly in their political views, and in the political course they would pursue under the same circumstances, than the more violent followers and partisans of either would suppose. They would differ chiefly in that, while Seymour would use all the influence of the presidential office to further the political opinions of his party, Gen. Grant would administer the office

with that colorless freedom from party influ ences which is one of the most fortunate qualities of his own mind, and which has dis tinguished so eminently his military career. Under Seymour, every energy of the presidential office and patronage would be employed to secure, by peaceful and lawful means, the uncontrolled ascendency of the white race, and exclusion of the black from voting or holding office in any State, and especially in the Federal Government. Under Gen. Grant, few or no attempts would be made from the White House to guide or control the legislation of Congress, but the energy and patronage of the office would be employed with commendable freedom from political influences, and with an eye compar atively single to a vigorous, pure, and economical administration of details, to the reduction of expenses, to the collection of revenue, to the punishment of crime and protection of society.

In the respective availability of the two candidates before the people, the Republican party has reason for confidence but not for assumption. When it is remembered that President Lincoln was first elected only because the Democratic party were divided, and by a minority vote; that at his second election a change of only thirty-six thousand. votes, rightly distributed, would have elected McClellan, and that in the State elections held since the adoption of the present reconstruction policy by Congress, the Democratic party have carried the States of Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania (partially), Ohio, California, and Oregon, it will be seen that the contest will be close, and the result is not yet assured. If the Republican party are wise they will not rely strongly on carrying many of the Southern States. The President's last proclamation of amnesty and the Acts of Congress restoring disabilities of rebels have nearly ended the partial disfranchisement of the whites. The entire white population of the South outnumbers the black, in all but two or three States, by two to one. A few of the blacks can be brought to support the Democratic ticket to their own disfranchisement, as in Mississippi. Not a few whites that have voted for reconstruction on the present basis, in order to get back into the Union, will vote for disfranchising the blacks at the first opportunity.

On any question of supremacy of race at the South, therefore, the Republican party cannot count upon carrying the majority of the Southern States. In the Northern States

the momentum acquired by the party of the Union and Freedom during the war is very great, but is gradually diminishing as the war becomes a historic memory instead of an everpresent crisis. It is fortunate for the Republican party that in Gen. Grant's personal character is combined at once all that is admirable in military achievement, with more than a civilian's respect for law and order, and that the cry of military despotism has no terrors for a people who have watched his superior readiness to subject the military to the civil power. Gen. Grant's conservatism and freedom from political bias, especially upon reconstruction questions, his magnanimity toward the rebels whom he conquered with the sword and yet saved from punishment or persecution, his deference for the rightful authority of Congress as the supreme legislative and political power, his respect for law, and his desire for peace, give him a hold on the people as a statesman which his success as a soldier, however brilliant, could never have won. If any judgment may be formed of the sentiment of the people from the course of the more independent and nonpartisan press, and the public expressions of prominent civilians and soldiers who have

acted at times with either party, the friends of Gen. Grant may count, in the present stage of the contest, upon being largely reinforced by that floating and undecided vote which exercises the preponderating influence in all closely-contested elections.

Especially will this avail if, as appears probable from the revolutionary letter of Gen. Blair, written prior to his nomination, and the utterances of such Southern leaders as Wise, Vance, Hampton and N. B. Forrest, the Democrats themselves shall furnish the Republican orators and journals with evidence that even a strong minority of the Democratic party mean to revolutionize the Southern State Governments by force in the event of their success.

It may safely be predicted that the American people will elect the candidates of whichsoever party may seem to them most likely to perfect the reconstruction of the Union peacefully, to maintain harmony between the various sections, States, and races, and to administer the government with economy and fidelity.

Whichever party can be clearly convicted of contemplating violence and revolution is already defeated.

LITERATURE.

WE have from the pen of a lady a new, and, judging from a cursory glance at several characteristic parts of it, a much improved, English version* of Lessing's dramatic chefd'œuvre, his widely and justly celebrated "Nathan the Wise." This is so much the more agreeable, as within a year or two past our attention has several times been called to the subject of Lessing, partly in a new biography of him, partly by a number of more or less extended notices of his life and writings. The contents of Nathan were too anique and attractive to allow them long to remain confined within the author's own language, and we are therefore not at all surprised to find an English translation as early as 1791, (but a little over a decennium after the first edition of the original,) and a second edition of this printed in London in 1805. Since that date the lovers of good literature

Lessing's Nathan the Wise. Translated by Eilen Frothingham. Ley poldt & Holt.

not familiar with the original, have known the work chiefly from W. Taylor's admirable "Historic Survey," (London, 1828,) in the first volume of which we find no less than 277 pages occupied with an examination of Lessing with especial reference to Nathan, from which long extracts are given in translation at the end. Taylor went so far in his admiration of the work as to recommend it for translation into the Oriental languages: "Asian heroes people the scene; the Eastern costume is sufficiently observed in the manners of the personages to adapt it for sympathy where the action passes; and it contains lessons of tolerance and liberality which Islamism as well as Christianity should aspire to learn. . . . The voice of genius can annihilate both space and time, and bind in immortal cooperation the chosen intellects of earth to forward the instruction of the human race, to ennoble its personal morality, and to ameliorate its public institutions." In spite of this high credential, it would

seem that Lessing had since the date of it (1828) been considerably neglected, except, perhaps, among the few who never shun the labor of studying literature in the originals, and it is therefore so much the more gratifying to meet with some renewed attempts to resuscitate the memory of his former influ

ence.

The history of this play is of itself literary curiosity, into the details of which, however, we have here no room to enter. The author had, by some of his critical writings, exposed himself to assaults from some of the perverse theologians of his country, and had for several years been involved in a somewhat virulent controversy with them. Of this he himself at last grew weary, but was, of course, not willing to give up his case without some monument of a defence, that could not be so readily assailed. He resolved to give to the world the positive and negative results of his polemics in the form of a drama, and thus to proclaim the doctrine of universal tolerance, exemplified in characters destined to command respect as ideals of art, if not as actual realities. In this he may be said to have had perfect success, for his Nathan was not only hailed as a new star in literature by the most intellectual of his contemporaries, but has ever since elicited more or less respect and even imitation, thus winning for itself a permanent place in modern literature.

The plot of the piece, the author himself avows, was suggested by one of Boccaccio's Novellas (Decamerone, giorn. I. nov. 3), in which the matchless Italian treats us to the most entertaining story concerning the Sultan's interview with Melchisedech the Jew, and the fable of the magic ring, narrated by the latter in reply to his majesty's somewhat perilous curiosity on the subject of religion. But this story, including even the episode of the ring, was scarcely any thing more than a suggestion, and the whole of it is modified (even in its fundamental conception) to such an extent as to make it almost entirely the poet's own invention. The real ring is here represented as possessed of the magic power of making its proprietor beloved of God and man, and this is claimed to be the only true test of its genuineness for centuries. We have here, therefore, a sort of proclamation of universal tolerance and humanity, the reflex of superior life, observation, and intellectual culture; and it is this high moral element which has won for the piece a degree of respect surpassed perhaps only by that for

Goethe's "Faust." Let us take a rapid glance at its argument.

The principal characters of the drama are Saladin, the Sultan; Sittah, his sister and com. panion; Nathan, a wealthy Jewish merchant and banker of Jerusalem; Recha, the adopted daughter of the Jew; Daja, a Christian young woman in his house, Recha's companion; and a young Templar who knows himself as Curd (i. e. Conrade) von Stauffen, but who in the end turns out to be Saladin's own nephew, as Recha the Jew's adopted daughter is found to be his niece and the Templar's sister. The scene is laid in Jerusalem, partly in or about Nathan's house, partly in the Sultan's palace. While Nathan is absent on a tour to Babylon his house takes fire, and his charming foster-daughter is already enveloped by the flames, when suddenly an unknown knight, conspicuous from his white mantle, rushes through the crowd into the burning mansion, and successfully fetches out the shrieking maiden, half dead from fright, but otherwise yet almost entirely unharmed. The mysterious knight is a young Templar, who with several others had shortly before been taken prisoner, and whose life was the only one Saladin had spared on account of an imagined resemblance to his lost brother. The rescue appears next to miraculous, and Recha, more especially, can look on her deliverer in no other light than that of an angel sent to her from heaven. But she is pained to find herself denied all opportu nity to thank him, and that, although she daily observes him promenading under the lindens close by her residence, he is a Templar, who, in his own estimation, has but performed one of the duties of his vow, and she a Jewess, with whom he neither can nor will have any dealings. It is on this account that the Templar always dismisses with disdain Daja's attempts to accost him on behalf of her mistress, and the latter has to content herself with a distant admiration, unable to induce the haughty stranger to exchange a word with her. It is not long, however, before the arrival of her father brings her not only an array of costly presents, but also decided change in the conduct of the Templar, who soon discovers in Nathan a Jew of no ordinary type, as he himself likewise claims to be a knight above the bigotry and prejudices of the common sort. In a word, they recognize each other at once as men of a certain equality of life-experience, if not of culture, and the Templar now hesitates no longer to accept the invitation to Nathan's

house, where he then freely meets the fascinating being whose life his intrepidity had saved. Conrade, however, soon finds that a lady of Recha's qualities of mind and heart cannot be met without being loved; he is therefore after a while determined to possess her, and this so much the more after he has learned from Daja that Recha is in reality a Christian girl, brought up in the Jew's house without knowledge of her origin. When Nathan, aware of the same fact, hesitates with his cor.sent, declaring a third party necessary to decide, the impetuous Templar well-nigh com. promises the safety of his friend by hypothetically submitting the case to the patriarch of the province, who in the blindness of his zeal pompously claims all Jews found in pos. session of a Christian child liable to the stake, and demands summary execution of the law. Fortunately, however, the danger in this instance cannot become a serious one, Nathan happening to have the entire confide ce of both Saladin and Sittah. It is agreed by both parties to delay the matter for a while, and eventually to get the Sultan to decide. Meanwhile new circumstances of no little interest are brought to light. The Templar has a conference with Saladin, and the curiosity of the latter is again piqued, as he compares the features of his visitor with those of the portrait of a cherished lost brother in his hand. Nathan, on the other hand, is agreeably surprised when the monk, sent by the patriarch to make inquisition into a crime against the church, recognizes hin as the Israelite who, eighteen years before, generously took charge of the infantdaughter which he, then one of her father's grooms, had been intrusted to deposit in some one's hands for safety. The helpless little creature of but a few weeks' age had shortly before lost its mother, a German lady von Stauffen, while the father, Sir Wolff von Filneck, was suddenly ordered off on a new expedition, and was unable to take the infant with him. The noble act was so much the more to Nathan's credit, as he was then still sorrow-stricken over the loss of his wife and all his sons, seven in number, whom, during his absence, some Christian fanatics had cruelly assailed and murdered. In evidence of the truth of his assertion, the monk produces and delivers to Nathan a small breviary, which he affirms to have taken from the pocket of his master, after the latter had fallen at Ascalon, and in which he suspects recorded, in Arabic characters, a complete register of the family of Sir von Filneck. Finally

the Templar and the Jew both make their appearance at the Sultan's palace, the former to urge his suit for the hand of Recha, the latter to make known to Saladin the recent most surprising revelation of the monk. Imagine now the Templar's surprise, when Nathan presently informs him that his real name is von Filneck, and not Curd von Stauffen (the latter being that of the uncle who adopted him), and that Recha is in reality Blanda von Filneck, his sister! And what is Saladin's astonishment, when in his turn he learns that Wolff von Filneck was not a German or a Frank, but an Oriental who had only married in Europe; and then, from some additional comparisons based upon the breviary, discovers evidence that the Oriental in question was his own missing brother, Assad, and the young couple before him the children of that brother, his own niece and nephew! The Templar, although but a moment before an impatient suitor, nevertheless does not find it difficult to recognize in Recha the recovery of a lost sister; and after the return of their senses they presently all express delight in so unexpected a reunion.

This solution has been censured as too abrupt and tranquil, while by others the entire action has been pronounced a dramatio failure (hence Schiller's curtailment for the stage), having more of the character of "an interesting episode" linked to an idea than of a real action. All this is but too true from a rigidly artistic point of view. We have here a mere miniature-picture intended to illustrate an idea; but we must not forget that this idea is one no less august and noble than that of universal humanity and of the moral unity of the race as exhibited in superior culture, above the merely accidental differences of nationality, religions, and conditions of life. Hence the author could correctly assert of it: "I was conscious of my aim, and this is one below which one might fall without the loss of any honor. If any therefore choose to condemn, I shall be silent, but not ashamed."

But whatever faults the critics may have discovered in the action, the characterization of the piece evinces so much that is genuine and excellent, that it has justly been the subject of admiration. The characters naturally divide themselves into two groups, of which the one comprises the representatives of the free religion of humanity, the other the more or less sincere adherents of the positive system. Conspicuously at the head of the first stands Nathan, the corner and foundation

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