hat within the last five weeks, as members of the House
will recollect, an extra strut has characterized the gentleman's
bearing. It is not his fault. It is the fault of another. That
gifted and satirical writer, Theodore Tilton, of the 'New York
Independent,' spent some weeks recently in this city. His letters
published in that paper, embraced, with many serious statements,
a little jocose satire, a part of which was the statement that the
mantle of the late Winter Davis had fallen upon the member from
New York. The gentleman took it seriously, and it has given his
strut additional pomposity. The resemblance is great. It is
striking. Hyperion to a satyr, Thersites to Hercules, mud to
marble, dung-hill to diamond, a singed cat to a Bengal tiger, a
whining puppy to a roaring lion. Shade of the mighty Davis, forgive
the almost profanation of that jocose satire!"

This uncomely sparring match seemed to have no significance at the
time beyond the amusement it afforded and the personal discredit
it attached to the combatants; but in its later consequences it
has not only seriously involved the political fortunes of both
these ambitious men, but rent the Republican party itself into
warring factions. Still more, it has connected itself in the same
way, and not very remotely, with the nomination of General Garfield
in 1880, and his subsequent assassination. Such are the strange
political revenges of a personal quarrel.

During this session of Congress the policy of Military Land Bounties
was very earnestly agitated, and threatened the most alarming
consequences. Probably no great question has been so imperfectly
understood by our public men as the land question, and the truth
of this is attested by the multiplied schemes of pillage and plunder
to which the public domain has been exposed within the past thirty
or forty years. Among these the project of Land Bounties to soldiers
has been conspicuous. Of the millions of acres disposed of by the
Government through assignable land-warrants in the pretended interest
of the soldiers of the Mexican War a very small fraction was
appropriated to their use. The great body of the land fell into
the hands of monopolists, who thus hindered the settlement and
productive wealth of the country, while the sum received by the
soldier for his warrant was in very many cases a mere mockery of
his just claims, and in no instance an adequate bounty. The policy,
however, had become