of the country gave no opportunity for its development; and the question is, Should we, in the absence of genius, have done better without such an academy to educate the available talent of the country to military service?  Goethe has said, that, to figure as a great genius in the world’s history, one must have some great heritage in the consequences of antecedent events,—­that Napoleon inherited the French Revolution.  Though Napoleon developed military art beyond his predecessors, there is no reason to suppose that a soldier with natural endowments equal to his could now become the inspirer of a similar degree of progress.  The ordinary method of appointment of cadets is described and vindicated by the author.  While it does not appear, a priori, to be the best possible, it must be said that it is hard to devise any better one.  It is always to be borne in mind that appointment does not by any means involve graduation.  Enough have graduated to supply the wants of the army in ordinary times, and these have been selected from about three times the number of appointees.  It is often said that equally competent persons would offer themselves from civil life.  To maintain this, it must be held, either that the education given by the Academy is not of important benefit, or that the same benefit may be attained without it.  But no one pretends to say that the education is not of the utmost importance; and, as Captain Boynton shows conclusively, we think, it is impossible for any one to attain it by unassisted study, either before or after entering the army, while it is utterly out of the power of any private institution to give a similar training.

Among the treasons incident to the Rebellion, none struck loyal minds more painfully than the desertion of the national right by Southern cadets and graduates of West Point.  Some supposed that the diligent inculcation of State-Sovereignty doctrine by every organ of Southern opinion could not alone have caused this breach of plighted faith, and it was charged against the education given at the Academy, that it was based on “principles which permitted no discrimination between acts morally wrong in themselves, and acts which, destitute of immorality, are, nevertheless, criminal, because prohibited by the regulations of the institution.”  The charge indicated a gross misconception of the subject.  The conduct-roll, which is to determine the standing of the cadet according to a total of demerit-marks, must include in one list delinquencies against all rules, whatever may be their source.  But besides this scale for classification, the military law, to which cadets, as part of the army, are amenable, refers all immoralities and criminalities to a military tribunal.  It would be well, if our collegians would try to estimate the effect, moral, intellectual, and physical, of the training of the Academy, as contrasted with that which they are receiving, and, in comparing a collegiate with a West-Point graduation, to remember that the cadet has been on service, and would have been discharged by his paymaster, if he had not done his duty, while in the colleges the professors serve for the pay, and would lose their bread and butter, if there were no degrees given.