gton was not an ideal statesman, nor Hamilton, nor Jefferson, nor
Lincoln, though each of them conceived grandly and executed nobly. They
loved truth for truth's sake, even as they loved their country. Yet no
one of them ever quite attained his conception of it.

Truth indeed is ideal. But when we come to adapt and apply it, how many
faces it shows us, what varying aspects, so that he is fortunate who is
able to catch and hold a single fleeting expression. To bridle this and
saddle it, and, as we say in Kentucky, to ride it a turn or two
around the paddock or, still better, down the home-stretch of things
accomplished, is another matter. The real statesman must often do as he
can, not as he would; the ideal statesman existing only in the credulity
of those simple souls who are captivated by appearances or deceived by
professions.

The nearest approach to the ideal statesman I have known was most
grossly stigmatized while he lived. I have Mr. Tilden in mind. If ever
man pursued an ideal life he did. From youth to age he dwelt amid his
fancies. He was truly a man of the world among men of letters and a
man of letters among men of the world. A philosopher pure and simple--a
lover of books, of pictures, of all things beautiful and elevating--he
yet attained great riches, and being a doctrinaire and having a passion
for affairs he was able to gratify the aspirations to eminence and the
yearning to be of service to the State which had filled his heart.

He seemed a medley of contradiction. Without the artifices usual to
the practical politician he gradually rose to be a power in his party;
thence to become the leader of a vast following, his name a shibboleth
to millions of his countrymen, who enthusiastically supported him and
who believed that he was elected Chief Magistrate of the United States.
He was an idealist; he lost the White House because he was so, though
represented while he lived by his enemies as a scheming spider weaving
his web amid the coil of mystification in which he hid himself. For he
was personally known to few in the city where he had made his abode; a
great lawyer and jurist who rarely appeared in court; a great political
leader to whom the hustings were mainly a stranger; a thinker, and yet
a dreamer, who lived his own life a little apart, as a poet might;
uncorrupting and incorruptible; least of all were his political
companions moved by the loss of the presidency, which had seemed in his
grasp. A