e creative thinking of a nation in the building.
His face might have been described as a little too regular--a little too
handsome perhaps for true greatness, but for the look of deep thought in
his piercing eyes. And the finely chiseled lines of character, positive,
clean-cut, vigorous. He had backbone.

And yet he was not a bitter partisan. He used his brain. He reasoned. He
looked at the world through kindly, conservative eyes. He feared God,
only. He believed in his wife, his children, his blood. And he loved
Virginia, counting it the highest honor to be--not seem to be--an
old-fashioned Virginia gentleman.

He believed in democracy guided by true leaders. This reservation was
not a compromise. It was a cardinal principle. He could conceive of
no democracy worth creating or preserving which did not produce the
superman to lead, shape, inspire and direct its life. The man called of
God to this work was fulfilling a divine mission. He must be of the very
necessity of his calling a nobleman.

Without vanity he lived daily in the consciousness of his own call to
this exalted ideal. It made his face, in repose, grave. His gravity came
from the sense of duty and the consciousness of problems to be met and
solved as his fathers before him had met and solved great issues.

His conservatism had its roots in historic achievements and the chill
that crept into his heart as he thought of this book came, not from the
fear of the possible clash of forces in the future, but from the dread
of changes which might mean the loss of priceless things in a nation's
life. He believed in every fiber of his being that, in spite of slavery,
the old South in her ideals, her love of home, her worship of God, her
patriotism, her joy of living and her passion for beauty stood for
things that are eternal.

And great changes _were_ sweeping over the Republic. He felt this to-day
as never before. The Washington on whose lights he stood gazing was
rapidly approaching the end of the era in which the Nation had evolved a
soul. His people had breathed that soul into the Republic. To this
hour the mob had never ruled America. Its spirit had never dominated a
crisis. The nation had been shaped from its birth through the heart and
brain of its leaders.

But he recalled with a pang that the race of Supermen was passing.
Calhoun had died two years ago. Henry Clay had died within the past two
months. Daniel Webster lay on his death bed at Mansfield. An