European trip, Colonel?

_Answer_. I went with my family from New York to Southampton,
England, thence to London, and from London to Edinburgh. In Scotland
I visited every place where Burns had lived, from the cottage where
he was born to the room where he died. I followed him from the
cradle to the coffin. I went to Stratford-upon-Avon for the purpose
of seeing all that I could in any way connected with Shakespeare;
next to London, where we visited again all the places of interest,
and thence to Paris, where we spent a couple of weeks in the
Exposition.

_Question_. And what did you think of it?

_Answer_. So far as machinery--so far as the practical is concerned,
it is not equal to ours in Philadelphia; in art it is incomparably
beyond it. I was very much gratified to find so much evidence in
favor of my theory that the golden age in art is in front of us;
that mankind has been advancing, that we did not come from a perfect
pair and immediately commence to degenerate. The modern painters
and sculptors are far better and grander than the ancient. I think
we excel in fine arts as much as we do in agricultural implements.
Nothing pleased me more than the painting from Holland, because
they idealized and rendered holy the ordinary avocations of life.
They paint cottages with sweet mothers and children; they paint
homes. They are not much on Ariadnes and Venuses, but they paint
good women.

_Question_. What did you think of the American display?

_Answer_. Our part of the Exposition is good, but nothing to what
is should and might have been, but we bring home nearly as many
medals as we took things. We lead the world in machinery and in
ingenious inventions, and some of our paintings were excellent.

_Question_. Colonel, crossing the Atlantic back to America, what
do you think of the Greenback movement?

_Answer_. In regard to the Greenback party, in the first place,
I am not a believer in miracles. I do not believe that something
can be made out of nothing. The Government, in my judgment, cannot
create money; the Government can give its note, like an individual,
and the prospect of its being paid determines its value. We have
already substantially resumed. Every piece of property that has
been shrinking has simply been resuming. We expended during the
war--not for the useful, but for the useless, not to build up, but
to destroy--at least one thousand million dollars. The Government
was an e