JAMES A. GARFIELD

is now at work driving a canal-boat, now Republican leader of the House, now Senator, now President, and now the object of a weeping world’s affection.  See the poor boy Sherman, born in Lancaster, O. A short space flies past us, and he has cut his own communications and marched with his army into the enemy’s country.  The London Times says if he emerges from the unknown country with his army, he will be “the greatest captain of modern times.”  Soon his banners float on the coast, soon the cities are blazing behind his fearful stride, and soon the cruel war is over.  We behold the third son of a very large family of

TENNYSONS

begin writing verses.  He writes trash at first, but by and by he is proclaimed the greatest living poet, and his art of writing (all that part of his work which was difficult) is pronounced the greatest the world has ever seen.  We see the boy Lee, studying hard to sustain the illustrious name he bore, advancing in science to the great study of astronomy, becoming the intellectual credit of his surroundings, the tutor of the scholarly.  We behold him clasping the sword put in his hands by the greatest unsuccessful insurrection of all past time, and, seated on his horse, smiling at the awful repulse of

PICKETT’S IMMORTAL CHARGE AT GETTYSBURG,

saying, simply:  “We cannot always expect to have our own way in an attack,” when down in his great heart he knows that the proudest people ever defeated have cast the final die, and lost.  We stand over his ashes and feel that they are the ashes of a truly great man whom “unmerciful disaster followed fast and followed faster.”  We see James Gordon Bennett, the jibe of all the printers because of his crooked eyes.  Yet he dies the owner of the greatest money-making newspaper of all newspaper history, a journal which sends expeditions to Africa and squadrons to the north pole.  We see a “canny” Scotch boy at study.  He “takes wonderfully to German,” and soon the English world is hailing him as the “literary Columbus.”  He has shown them the greatness of Frederick, of Schiller, and Goethe.  He writes a history of the French Revolution, and calls it the “truth clad in hell-fire.”  He reads a library in a few hours, or, rather, he reads what he has not read—­and finally he lies down, hating the world, hating freedom, but full of genius, and men say “Carlyle is dead.”

A BOY CALLED VICTOR HUGO

is born in France.  At thirty he is famous.  Then for fifty years he wields an influence through the literatures of all nations second only to Shakspeare’s.  We see the sailor-boy Garibaldi, the commander-in-chief and savior of Uruguay in South America, the idol and king-maker of Italy, and the stern patriot without rank or gew-gaw on