the difference between a citizen of Greece and of Rome to-day and of the citizen who lived when they were republics! Pigmies and giants are the only two English words we have to express such difference; but to one who has seen and felt the difference, while travelling through their own lands, these words fail utterly to convey a true conception of the real difference which exists. And now, my good friend (the reader), I must bid you farewell. We have travelled a long way together--longer, perhaps, than has occurred to you as we have steadily pursued our course. Starting in our own times, and with events in some of which we have ourselves taken part, we have slowly ascended the river of time until we reached a point (the beginning of the Athenian Republic) nearly three thousand years from where we started. Then, retracing our way, we slowly descended the river, stopping long enough to gather a few grains of wheat at one place, a few grains of rye at another, a few grains of corn at another, and so on, and on, until we have got back to where we started. In the beginning of our journey we peeped into some dark places--places into which the light of history never before had shone, but which, from this time forth, will be as well known as any other facts of the great rebellion. All that I have done for you, in all these journeyings, is, at near the close of our pilgrimage, to select out the different kinds of grain, arrange them in form of proposition and proof, just as any other logician or rhetorician might have done, and then point out to you that, if we would be profited by these grains (of information), picked up on the way, and treat them in a certain manner, they would yield wholesome bread and sustain life (the life of our republic) for many years to come; whereas, treated in another way, these same grains would only make the vilest of whiskey, which, used wrongfully, could only lead to misery and final death here and eternal death hereafter. In some things, my friend (the reader), your knowledge is far beyond mine; in others, mine may be greater than yours, because of chances of information which happened to come in my way instead of coming in yours. While glad to learn anything I can from you, I have only done my duty, for which I claim no credit--only done as I would wish to be done by--in communicating to you such facts, and the unmistakable inference from such facts, as were secrets with others until they came to me, and secrets with me until I now communicate them to you, and through you and the printed page to the rest of the world.