Drowning of Frank Pocoke, 455 Shooting the Rapids, 467 Emin Pasha, 515 CHAPTER I. HENRY M. STANLEY. Stanley is one of those characters which forcibly illustrate the effect of republican institutions in developing strong men. Despotism cannot fetter thought--that is free everywhere--but it can and does restrain its outworking into practical action. Free institutions do not make great men, but they allow those endowed by nature with extraordinary gifts free scope for action. This fact never had, perhaps, a more striking illustration than in the French Revolution. The iron frame-work of despotism had rested so long over the heads of the people that it had become rusted in its place, and no individual force or strength could rend it asunder. But when the people, in their fury, shattered it into fragments, there was exhibited the marvelous effects of individual character. A lieutenant of artillery vaulted to the throne of France and made marshals and dukes and kings of plebeians. A plebeian himself, he took to his plebeian bed the daughter of the Cæsars. He took base-born men and pitted them against nobles of every degree, and the plebeians proved themselves the better men. In other words, he put men against titles, and the tiles went down before the men. Thus, no matter how despotic he became, he and his marshals and new-made kings were the most terrible democracy. The mighty changes that were then wrought show what results may be expected when the whole world shall be thus set free, and every man be allowed to strike his best and strongest blow. When the race is thus let loose on the planet we inhabit, we shall see the fulfillment of that prophecy, "a nation shall be born in a day." The same truth is apparent in our own country, though its exhibitions are not so sudden and startling. Indeed they could not be, because this freedom of action has no restraints to break through, and hence no violent effort is required. Every man grows and expands by degrees without let or hindrance. In a despotism, Webster would probably have taught school in a log school-house all his days, and the "mill-boy of the slashes" never would have made the forum of a nation ring with his eloquence, nor the "rail-splitter" have become the foremost man of his time, nor the "tanner-boy" the president of the republic. Republican institutions never made any of those men--they simply allowed them to make themselves.