peaker of the House of
Representatives, and the chairmen of the two great financial committees
of Congress, among the five or six personalities whose influence
usually directs the Government of the United States.

But a true idea of this eminent position cannot be formed without some
light on its history; for the line of Secretaries of State sparkles with
the almost continuous luster of a long, luminous zone, in which
irradiate the dazzling names of Jefferson, one of the patriarchs of
independence in the foundation and organization of the United States,
the philosopher, the writer, the statesman, the creator of parties, the
systematizer of popular education, and the twice-elected successor of
Washington; of Randolph, through whose initiative the stain produced by
the word "slavery" was effaced from the provisional draft of the
American Constitution; of Marshall, the most eminent jurist in the
Republic, the oracle of the Constitution and the constructor of the
Federal law; of Madison, the emulator of Hamilton in the editing of _The
Federalist_; of Monroe, the asserter of the international doctrine of
the independence of this continent; of John Quincy Adams, the pioneer of
abolitionism in his radical condemnation of slavery; of Clay, the warm
defender of the South American colonies in their struggle for
emancipation; of Webster, the Demosthenes of the Union and of American
liberty; of Seward, the rival for election of Lincoln, but who, being
defeated by the latter, was invited by him to form part of his Cabinet;
of Forsyth, Calhoun, Everett, Marcy, Evarts, Blaine, Bayard, and Hay. It
is a path of stars, at the termination of which the administration of
Mr. Elihu Root does not pale.

The annals of the United States could be traced by the route of this
numerous constellation, whose radiant points sparkle around yon apex, to
send forth their beams today from yon gallery, illumining the Brazilian
Senate, transfiguring the scene of our ordinary deliberations, and
realizing, with the pomp of the evocation of this glorious past, the
spectacle of the visit of one nation to the other which the illustrious
Secretary of State presented before our eyes when, a few days ago, he
said in response to our eminent and worthy Minister for Foreign
Relations, that his coming in the official capacity of his office to the
land of the Cruzeiro constitutes a natural expression of the friendship
which the eighty millions of inhabitants of the gre