As there is "one glory of the sun, and another of the stars," it was not appointed unto Grant to be everything that is grand in humanity. Indeed, the very grandeur of the man consists in the harmonious development of all his faculties, rather than in the striking preëminence of a few, towering in lofty sublimity at the expense of all the others. He is not lacking in any essential quality of a great man, and his greatness is a combination of all the noble traits of character, instead of the morbid development of a few. He was not a great scholar. It was not his ambition or his destiny to be a Newton, a Humboldt, a Milton, or an Irving. The elements of a brilliant scholar would have shut him out from the distinction he has achieved. Grant's previous intellectual training had not prepared him to rival in scholarship those in his class who had been over the course before. The district school in a country town had been the limit of his advantages. The class which commenced the course with him was composed of eighty-seven members, only thirty-nine of whom were graduated. The routine and discipline of the institution are exacting and severe; and it is very much to any young man's credit that he goes through at all. The statistics show that the cadets fall out by the wayside, as the lines draw taut upon them. A majority of Grant's class went by the board, and No. 39--the lowest in rank who was graduated--seems to have been a better fellow than forty-eight others who "caved in," some of them, doubtless, from weakness of body, but most of them for the want of pluck. But Grant was not the unhappy No. 39, who by contrast appears in an unpleasant position at the foot of the class, though, as I have shown, he was really a plucky fellow. Grant was graduated the twenty-first in his class, which is certainly a very creditable position. I confess my surprise, when I consider the fact that Grant's attainments, when he entered the Military Academy, were hardly up to those of the ordinary second class in our grammar schools, while some of his classmates were graduates of colleges, and most of them had been over a part of the regular course before,--I confess my surprise that he was not No. 39, instead of No. 21. In spite of the giant will, and his developed pluck, it is a miracle that he was not of the number of those who fell out of the class during the four years' course. Certainly it is vastly more to his credit to have been able to graduate at all, than for many of the happy score who stood above to win their high rank. To have outdone eighteen of his companions in that unequal race was worthy the energy and perseverance of the man. He went through the entire course of his class, for no option was then allowed to the cadets in the choice of studies. He exhibited himself to the best advantage in the mathematics, and in the departments of tactics and engineering obtained his highest marks in these branches, thus early developing his military mind.