Of such training Mr. Lincoln was destitute, utterly, and the training which General Grant had received at West Point, where it was his fortune to attain only to advanced standing in the lower half of his class, was at the best the training thought to be necessary for the vocation of a soldier. That minority of critics overlooked the fact that the world had set the seal of its favorable judgment upon Cromwell, Washington, Franklin, Napoleon, Hamilton and others who had not the advantages of university training. Napoleon in a military school and Hamilton in Columbia College for the term of a year, more or less, did not rank among university men. That minority of critics did not realize the fact that colleges and universities cannot make great men. Great men are independent of colleges and universities. In truth, a really great man is supreme over college and universities. Lincoln was such a man in speech, in power of argument, in practical wisdom, by which he was enabled to act fearlessly and with success in the great affairs of administration. Such a man was General Grant on the military side of his career. With great military capacity, he was destitute of the military spirit. During the period of his retirement from the army after the close of the Mexican War he gave no attention to military affairs. When he came to Washington in 1865 as General of the Army, he was not the owner of a work on war nor on the military art or science. His military capacity was an endowment. It might have been impaired or crippled by the training of a university; but it is doubtful whether it could have been improved thereby, and it is certain that it was, in its quality, quite outside of the possibilities of university training. As General Grant approached the end of his career the voice of the critics, who judged men by the testimony of college catalogues and the decorations of learned societies, was heard less frequently; and his death, followed by the publication of his memoirs, written when the hand of death was upon him, silenced the literary critics at once and forever. Since the month of July, 1885, there has appeared on the other side of the Atlantic a set of military critics, of whom General Wolseley, Commander of the British Army, must be treated as the chief, who deny to General Grant the possession of superior military qualities, and who assert that General Lee was his superior in the contest which they carried on from February, 1864, to April, 1865. On this side of the Atlantic there is toleration, if not active and open support of General Wolseley's opinion. General Wolseley is entitled to an opinion and to the expression of his opinion; but his authority cannot be admitted. On the practical side of military affairs his experience is a limited experience only.