owever fallen, but he finds a kindly and supporting
welcome.

IV

Nor has he been content with merely blowing the trumpet for the battle
of well-doing; he has given to his precepts the authority of his own
brave example. Naturally a grave, believing man, with little or no sense
of humour, he has succeeded as well in life as in his printed
performances. The spirit that was in him has come forth most eloquently
in his actions. Many who have only read his poetry have been tempted to
set him down as an ass, or even as a charlatan; but I never met any one
who had known him personally who did not profess a solid affection and
respect for the man's character. He practises as he professes; he feels
deeply that Christian love for all men, that toleration, that cheerful
delight in serving others, which he often celebrates in literature with
a doubtful measure of success. And perhaps, out of all his writings, the
best and the most human and convincing passages are to be found in
"these soil'd and creased little livraisons, each composed of a sheet or
two of paper, folded small to carry in the pocket, and fastened with a
pin," which he scribbled during the war by the bedsides of the wounded
or in the excitement of great events. They are hardly literature in the
formal meaning of the word; he has left his jottings for the most part
as he made them; a homely detail, a word from the lips of a dying
soldier, a business memorandum, the copy of a letter--short,
straightforward to the point, with none of the trappings of composition;
but they breathe a profound sentiment, they give us a vivid look at one
of the sides of life, and they make us acquainted with a man whom it is
an honour to love.

Whitman's intense Americanism, his unlimited belief in the future of
These States (as, with reverential capitals, he loves to call them),
made the war a period of great trial to his soul. The new virtue,
Unionism, of which he is the sole inventor, seemed to have fallen into
premature unpopularity. All that he loved, hoped, or hated, hung in the
balance. And the game of war was not only momentous to him in its
issues; it sublimated his spirit by its heroic displays, and tortured
him intimately by the spectacle of its horrors. It was a theatre, it was
a place of education it was like a season of religious revival. He
watched Lincoln going daily to his work; he studied and fraternised with
young soldiery passing to the front; above all, he walk