e lose one, we are all beaten with him, we
all fall down with our Caesar, and the grief glistens in every eye, the
shame burns on every cheek. Moralize as we may about the victories of
peace and the superiority of the goose-quill over the sword, there is
no achievement of human genius on which a country so prides itself as
on success in war, no disgrace over which it broods so inconsolably as
military disaster.

[Illustration: _General McClellan_]

There is nothing more touching than the sight of a nation in search of
its great man, nothing more beautiful than its readiness to accept a
hero on trust. Nor is this a feeble sentimentality. It is much rather a
noble yearning of what is best in us, for it is only in these splendid
figures which now and then sum up all the higher attributes of
character that the multitude of men can ever hope to find their blind
instinct of excellence realized and satisfied. Not without reason are
nations always symbolized as women, for there is something truly
feminine in the devotion with which they are willing to give all for
and to their ideal man, and the zeal with which they drape some
improvised Agamemnon with all the outward shows of royalty from the
property-room of imagination. This eagerness of loyalty toward
first-rate character is one of the conditions of mastery in every
sphere of human activity, for it is the stuff that genius works in.
Heroes, to be sure, cannot be made to order, yet with a man of the
right fibre, who has the stuff for greatness in him, the popular
enthusiasm would go far toward making him in fact what he is in fancy.
No commander ever had more of this paid-up capital of fortune, this
fame in advance, this success before succeeding, than General
McClellan. That dear old domestic bird, the Public, which lays the
golden eggs out of which greenbacks are hatched, was sure she had
brooded out an eagle-chick at last. How we all waited to see him stoop
on the dove-cote of Richmond! Never did nation give such an example of
faith and patience as while the Army of the Potomac lay during all
those weary months before Washington. Every excuse was invented, every
palliation suggested, except the true one, that our chicken was no
eagle, after all. He was hardening his seres, he was waiting for his
wings to grow, he was whetting his beak; we should see him soar at last
and shake the thunder from his wings. But do what we could, hope what
we might, it became daily clearer t