encompassing lines, leaving it to consequent sure process of
decay. Its friends forced the issue. To the ones and to the others the
harvest of generations, in the form it took, came unexpected and
suddenly--a day of judgment, a crisis, like a thief in the night. It
is a consummate proof of the accuracy of popular instinct, given time
to work, that the uprising of 1861 rested upon recognition of the
fact that the cause of the nation and of the world depended more upon
the preservation of a single authority over all the territory
involved, upon the consequent avoidance of future permanent
oppositions, than it did upon the destruction of a particular
institution, the life of which might be protracted, but under
conditions of union must wane and ultimately expire. The gradual
progress of decision by the American people was wiser than the abrupt
action asked by foreign impatience; and abolition came with less shock
and more finality as a military measure than it could as a political.
Its advisability was more evident. If statesmanship is shown in
bringing popular will to accord with national necessity, Lincoln was
in this most sagacious; but not the least element in the tribute due
him is that he was the barometer of popular impulse, measuring
accurately the invisible force upon which depended the energy of that
stormy period.

Before taking final leave of my shore experiences at the Naval
Academy, I will recall, as among them, the superb comet of the autumn
of 1858, which we at the school witnessed evening after evening in
October of that year, during the release from quarters following
supper. After the lapse of so nearly a half-century, the survivors of
those who saw that magnificent spectacle must be in a minority among
their contemporaries, whether of that day or this. Since its
disappearance there has been visible one other notable comet, which I
remember waking my children after midnight to see; but compared with
that of 1858, whether in size or in splendor, it was literally as
moonlight unto sunlight, or, in impression, as water unto wine. As the
astronomers compute the period of return for the earlier at two
thousand years, more or less, we of that generation were truly
singular in our opportunity of viewing this, among the very few "most
magnificent of modern times." The tail, broadening towards the end,
with a curve like that of a scimitar, was in length nearly a fourth of
the span of the heavens, and its bright