the Civil War broke out, and after some costly and bitter lessons at the beginning, the fighting spirit of the people was shown to better advantage than ever before.  The war was peculiarly a war for a principle, a war waged by each side for an ideal, and while faults and shortcomings were plentiful among the combatants, there was comparatively little sordidness of motive or conduct.  In such a giant struggle, where across the warp of so many interests is shot the woof of so many purposes, dark strands and bright, strands sombre and brilliant, are always intertwined; inevitably there was corruption here and there in the Civil War; but all the leaders on both sides, and the great majority of the enormous masses of fighting men, wholly disregarded, and were wholly uninfluenced by, pecuniary considerations.  There were of course foreigners who came over to serve as soldiers of fortune for money or for love of adventure; but the foreign-born citizens served in much the same proportion, and from the same motives, as the native-born.  Taken as a whole, it was, even more than the Revolutionary War, a true citizens’ fight, and the armies of Grant and Lee were as emphatically citizen armies as Athenian, Theban, or Spartan armies in the great age of Greece, or as a Roman army in the days of the Republic.

Another striking contrast in the course of modern civilization as compared with the later stages of the Graeco-Roman or classic civilization is to be found in the relations of wealth and politics.  In classic times, as the civilization advanced toward its zenith, politics became a recognized means of accumulating great wealth.  Caesar was again and again on the verge of bankruptcy; he spent an enormous fortune; and he recouped himself by the money which he made out of his political-military career.  Augustus established Imperial Rome on firm foundations by the use he made of the huge fortune he had acquired by plunder.  What a contrast is offered by the careers of Washington and Lincoln!  There were a few exceptions in ancient days; but the immense majority of the Greeks and the Romans, as their civilizations culminated, accepted money-making on a large scale as one of the incidents of a successful public career.  Now all of this is in sharp contrast to what has happened within the last two or three centuries.  During this time there has been a steady growth away from the theory that money-making is permissible in an honorable public career.  In this respect the standard has been constantly elevated, and things which statesmen had no hesitation in doing three centuries or two centuries ago, and which did not seriously hurt a public career even a century ago, are now utterly impossible.  Wealthy men still exercise a large, and sometimes an improper, influence in politics, but it is apt to be an indirect influence; and in the advanced states the mere suspicion that the wealth of public men is obtained or added to as an incident of their public careers will bar them from public life.  Speaking