Those "wonderful people," too, (as they were characterised by Gen. Washington in '96,) in the midst of the terrific scenes which they were daily enacting, contrived to throw a grace and a beauty around their public acts, and to gild even their wildest projects with a moral sublimity that effectually concealed, at the time, all their folly and injustice, and gave them a rapturous reception throughout the United States. Thus, when, in the rage of reformation which seemed determined to leave nothing of the old order of things remaining, they resolved to abolish the calendar, and, in lieu of the barbarous names by which the months had been distinguished, to introduce a new nomenclature, founded on the exhibitions of nature, in the different seasons: there was a poetic beauty in the conception and a felicity of taste in the execution of which no other nation on earth seemed capable. Their months of buds, flowers and meadows, of harvest, heat and fruit, of vintage, fog and sleet, of snow, rain and wind, were so beautiful and so expressive, that they extorted the admiration even of the reluctant world. Even the wild project of propagating liberty by the sword, and folding the whole human family in their fraternal embrace, was so bold and generous and grand, that, in the contemplation of its magnificence, we forgot its folly. And when, in execution of this project, the young hero of the republic crossed the Alps, and by a series of victories that eclipsed the brightest boasts of ancient history, brought Italy, Austria and Prussia to his feet, it seemed as if heaven itself had set its seal to the high resolve.