Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger, President of the Transvaal--the other side of the Vaal River, is the name of the country--was born in the Cape Colony, October 10th, 1825. It is the commendation of the naturalist Mr. Distant, that Mr. Kruger has a "very large amount of natural wisdom," which is the softer way of saying that he is not an educated man, but one of the statesmen of Nature. He is, on the authority already quoted, "undistinguished in appearance," but has "a prodigious memory;" and "a weakness in resisting flattery and adulation which is not good for him," because, as his will is so pronounced and his authority so absolute, he is perpetually surrounded by the representatives of the rascalities in a strange variety of "concessions." The flattering description of this historical personage is that he is "very pious and self-reliant, which is provocative of bigotry and hot temper," and he is also "a rough diplomat of no mean rank." [Sidenote: A Story Picture of President Kruger] In Fitzpatrick's "The Transvaal from Within" we find this strongly drawn picture of Mr. Kruger: "To an English nobleman, who in the course of an interview remarked, 'My father was a Minister of England, and twice Viceroy of Ireland,' the old Dutchman answered, 'And my father was a shepherd!' It was not pride rebuking pride; it was the ever-present fact which would not have been worth mentioning but for the suggestion of the antithesis. He, too, was a shepherd, and is--a peasant. It may be that he knows what would be right and good for his people, and it may not; but it is sure that he realizes that to educate would be to emancipate, to broaden their views would be to break down the defences of their prejudices, to let in the new leaven would be to spoil the old bread, to give unto all men the rights of men would be to swamp forever the party which is to him greater than the State. When one thinks on the one-century history of this people, much is seen that accounts for their extraordinary love of isolation, and their ingrained and passionate aversion to control; much, too, that draws to them a world of sympathy. And when one realizes the old Dopper President hemmed in once more by the hurrying tide of civilization, from which his people have fled for generations--trying to fight both Fate and Nature--standing up to stem a tide as resistless as the eternal sea--one sees the pathos of the picture. But this is as another generation may see it. To-day we are too close--so close that the meaner details, the blots and flaws, are all most plainly visible; the corruption, the insincerity, the injustice, the barbarity--all the unlovely touches that will by and by be forgotten, sponged away by the gentle hand of Time, when only the picturesque will remain." [Sidenote: Paul Kruger at ten Years]