Unluckily, history cannot be made to order. It is the product of ages. The proper substitute for it, as well as for the spectacular effects of monarchy, in new democratic societies, is perfection. There is no way in which we can here kindle the imaginations of the large body of men and women to whom we are every year giving an increasingly high education so well as by finish in the things we undertake to do. Nothing does so much to produce despondency about the republic, or alienation from republican institutions, among the young of the present day, as the condition of the civil service, the poor working of the post-office and the treasury or the courts, or the helplessness of legislators in dealing with the ordinary every- day problems. The largeness of the country, and the rapidity of its growth, and the comparatively low condition of foreign nations in respect to freedom, which roused people in Fourth-of-July orations forty years ago, have, like the historical reminiscences, lost their magic, and the material prosperity is now associated in people's minds with so much moral corruption that the mention of it produces in some of the best of us a feeling not far removed from nausea. Nothing will do so much now to rouse the old enthusiasm as the spectacle of the pure working of our administrative machinery, of able and independent judges, a learned and upright bar, a respectable and purified custom-house, an enlightened and efficient treasury, and a painstaking post-office. The colleges of the country and the railroads, and indeed everything that depends on private enterprise, are rapidly becoming objects of pride; but a good deal needs to be done by the government to prevent its being a source of shame. Mrs. Stevenson, a Philadelphia lady; the president of the Civic Club in that city, delivered an address to the club some weeks ago on its work of reform, in which we find the following passage: