A year ago this country was plagued and disgraced beyond any on the face
of the earth by swarms of professional politicians; by men who regarded
all legislation as one vast Lobby and Third House, and 'ability' as the
means of turning corruption to their own personal advantage. These
miserables, whether on the Northern or Southern side, tacitly united in
driving all legislation or congressional business from its legitimate
halls into the procrastinating by-paths, in order that they might make
speeches and magnify themselves unto Buncombe, and be glorified by the
local home press because of their devotion to--the party! The party!
That was always the word. Where are these men of froth and wind
now,--these heroes of the stump and the bar-room? Passing away into
nothing, at headlong speed, before the great storm of the times. Now and
then they 'rally'--there was one ghastly wig-and-hollow-pumpkin effort
at recovery in the trembling, rattle-jointed Peace Movement of these
last summer months. Where is it now? There answers a gay laugh and merry
stave from the corners of irreverent weekly newspapers:--

'The piece of a party, called the party of peace,
Like everything else which deceases,
Has gone where the wicked from trouble shall cease,
For the party of peace is in pieces.'

Or we may see now and then wretched election meetings, as of late in New
York, where a worn-out FERNANDO WOOD and others like him gabble
as much treason as they dare. It is all played out--Mozart, Tammany,
and all the trash. Rummy, frowsy candidates, treating Five-Point
graduates, and shoulder-hitting bravos yelling at the polls, are
beginning to be disgusting and anti-national elements. Their very
existence is an insult to these great, serious and glorious times of
manly war, when young men are beginning at last to 'think great.' A few
more gasps by the politicians and down they must go into infinite depths
of congenial darkness, to be remembered only as allied to 'the
abominable state of affairs before the war.'

It is no small thing to have driven so much of the old iniquity out; but
from this and that side come murmurs that there are but few signs of the
young genius coming in. Oh, for one hour of Dundee! Oh, for a WEBSTER in
the cabinet, whose right arm should go forth and take hold of England
and Frank-land of the East, while his left swept the isles of the South
with fearful power! Oh, for the fierce old Dandolo of America, who was