by the poor feather-witted Frenchmen, the nations have a comparatively easy task.  We cannot have equality, physical conditions having too much to do with giving the powers and accomplishments of men; we can only claim liberty under the supreme guidance of our Creator; but fraternity is quite a possible consummation.  Our greatest hero held it as the Englishman’s first duty to hate a Frenchman as he hated the Devil; now that mad and cankered feeling has passed away, and why should not the spread of common sense, common honesty, bring us at last to see that our fellow-man is better when regarded as a brother than as a possible assassin or thief?

Our corporate life and progress as nations, or even as a race of God’s creatures, is much like the life and progress of the individual.  The children of men stumble often, fall often, despair often, and yet the great universal movement goes on, and even the degeneracy which must always go on side by side with progress does not appreciably stay our advance.  The individual man cannot walk even twenty steps without actually saving himself by a balancing movement from twenty falls.  Every step tends to become an ignominious tumble, and yet our poor body may very easily move at the rate of four miles per hour, and we gain our destinations daily.  The human race, in spite of many slips, will go on progressing towards good—­that is, towards kindness—­that is, towards fraternity—­that is, towards the gospel, which at present seems so wildly and criminally neglected.  The mild and innocent Anarcharsis Clootz, who made his way over the continent of Europe, and who came to our little island, in his day always believed that the time for the federation of mankind would come.  Poor fellow—­he died under the murderous knife of the guillotine and did little to further his beautiful project!  He was esteemed a harmless lunatic; yet, notwithstanding the twelve millions of armed men who trample Europe, I do not think that Clootz was quite a lunatic after all.  Moreover, all men know that right must prevail, and they know also that there is not a human being on earth who does not believe by intuition that the gospel of brotherhood is right, even as the life of its propounder was holy.  The way is weary toward the quarter where the rays of dawn will first break over the shoulder of the earth.  We walk on hoping, and, even if we fall by the way, and all our hopes seem to be tardy of fruition, yet others will hail the slow dawn of brotherhood when all now living are dead and still.

September, 1888.

LITTLE WARS.

Just at this present our troops are engaged in fighting various savage tribes in various parts of the world, and the humorous journalist speaks of the affairs as “little wars.”  There is something rather gruesome in this airy flippancy proceeding from comfortable gentlemen who are in nice studies at home.  The Burmese force fights, marches, toils in an atmosphere which would cause some of the airy