Did he falter, or fail, or blunder in dealing with any of them? Read his messages to Congress, and his State papers, in the light of subsequent results, and make answer. His opinions were not only maintained with vigor and courage, but they were defended with logical directness. His insight was as penetrating and his judgment as comprehensive, as his courage was exalted; and time and events have demonstrated not only the honesty and purity of his purposes, but the clearness and sagacity of his mind. Retiring from the Presidency, he made a tour around the world, and was received everywhere with such honors and enthusiasm as had never before greeted a private citizen. Emperors and kings, great statesmen and great soldiers, were proud to do him homage, and the peoples of every race and tongue, thronging to see him, testified their appreciation of his exalted services in behalf of human liberty and popular government. And in every presence, under all circumstances, he remained the same unostentatious, sincere and modest man, as undazzled by his eminence as he had been patient in his obscurity. But the firm fiber of his manhood, it seems to me, had never been so clearly revealed as it was during the last year of his life. Suddenly, and in his old age, his competency was swept away, and an insidious disease fastened upon him. Trusting, with characteristic confidence—for he was so incapable of guile or hypocrisy that he never suspected it in others—he was betrayed, and reduced to penury. Without a murmur he gave up everything, not even reserving the trophies and mementoes presented to him by the people of this and other countries. Then, slowly dying, and knowing that death was inevitable, he calmly measured every moment of his ebbing life, and set about his last work. Like Sir Walter Scott, but under many more and far greater difficulties, he became an author in order to repair the wreck of his fortune, and has left behind him a book which will be read by more people than any other volume, except the Bible, that has ever been printed. That his Memoirs will be worthy of his fame, the brief extracts already published conclusively prove. In the field of literature as well as in those of war and of statecraft, he was unconsciously great. He wrote pure, compact, direct and vigorous English. He had the rare faculty of condensing a volume of meaning in a sentence, and of presenting scenes and events with masterly completeness of detail and richness of color.