brows and bosoms that only a little
while ago beat with pride at an added weight of California paste or
Kentucky rock-crystal. The most showy equipages that flashed last summer
at Newport and Saratoga, were never seen between the bathing-beach and
Fort Adams, or between Congress Spring and the Lake, in the old days;
and on the "Dinorah" nights at the Academy[4] there have been new faces
in the most prominent boxes, almost as _outre_ and unaccustomed in their
appearance as was that of the hard-featured Western President, framed in
a shock head and a turn-down collar, meeting the gaze of astonished
Murray Hill, when he passed an hour there on his way to the
inauguration.

[Footnote 4: December 1862.]

Quite as notable a change has taken place in personal reputation. Many
of the men on whom the country depended as most likely to prove able
defenders in the day of need, have not only discovered to the world
their worthlessness, but filled up the fable of the man who leaned upon
a reed, by fatally piercing those whom they had betrayed to their fall.
Bubble-characters have burst, and high-sounding phrases have been
exploded. Men whose education and antecedents should have made them
brave and true, have shown themselves false and cowardly--impotent for
good, and active only for evil. Unconsidered nobodies have meanwhile
sprung forth from the mass of the people, and equally astonished
themselves and others by the power, wisdom and courage they have
displayed. In cabinet and camp, in army and navy, in the editorial chair
and in the halls of eloquence, the men from whom least was expected have
done most, and those upon whom the greatest expectations had been
founded have only given another proof of the fallacy of all human
calculations. All has been change, all has been transition, in the
estimation men have held of themselves and the light in which they
presented themselves to each other.

Opinions of duties and recognitions of necessities have known a change
not less remarkable. What yesterday we believed to be fallacy, to-day we
know to be the truth. What seemed the fixed and immutable purpose of God
only a few short months ago, we have already discovered to have been
founded only in human passion or ambition. What seemed eternal has
passed away, and what appeared to be evanescent has assumed stability.
The storm has been raging around us, and doing its work not the less
destructively because we failed to perceive that we