Rulers, intoxicated by the lust of power and conquest, have lost their reason, and nations, following after, like cattle led to slaughter, seem as the bereft of Heaven "that knew not God." We read the story of our yesterdays as it unfolds itself in the current chronicle; the ascent to the bank-house, the descent to the mad-house, and, over the glittering paraphernalia that follows to the tomb, we reflect upon the money-zealot's progress; the dizzy height, the dazzling array, the craze for more and more and more; then the temptation and fall, millions gone, honor gone, reason gone--the innocent and the gentle, with the guilty, dragged through the mire of the prison, and the court--and we draw back aghast.

Yet, if we speak of these things we are called pessimists.
I have always counted myself an optimist.

I know that I do not lie awake nights musing on the ingratitude either of my stars or my countrymen.

I pity the man who does.

Looking backward, I have sincere compassion for Webster and for Clay! What boots it to them, now that they lie beneath the mold, and that the drums and tramplings of nearly seventy years of the world's strifes and follies and sordid ambitions and mean repinings, and longings, and laughter, and tears, have passed over their graves, what boots it to them, now, that they failed to get all they wanted?
There is indeed snug lying in the churchyard; but the flowers smell as sweet and the birds sing as merry, and the stars look down as loving upon the God-hallowed mounds of the lowly and the poor, as upon the man-bedecked monuments of the Kings of men.