_Paucís vívat humanum genus_: "for the few the race should live,"--this is the discarded motto of another age. The few live for the many. The clean and strong enrich the life of all with their wisdom, with their conquests. It is to bring about the larger equalities of opportunity, or purpose, that we exalt the talents of the few. This has not always been clear, even the history of the Republic. My own great grandfather, John Elderkin Waldo, said at Tolland, Connecticut, more than a century ago: "Times are hard with us in New England. They will never be any better until each farm laborer in Connecticut is willing to work all day for a sheep's head and pluck," just as they used to do before the red schoolhouses on the hills began to preach their doctrines of sedition and equality. There could never be good times again, so he thought, till the many again lived for the few. It is in the saving of the few who serve the many that the progress of civilization lies. In the march of the common man, and in the influence of the man uncommon who rises freely from the ranks, we have all of history that counts. In a picture gallery at Brussels there is a painting by Wiertz, most cynical of artists, representing the man of the Future and the things of the Past. A naturalist holds in his right hand a magnifying glass, and in the other a handful of Napoleon and his marshals, guns, and battle-flags,--tiny objects swelling with meaningless glory. He examines these intensely, while a child at his side looks on in open-eyed wonder. She cannot understand what a grown man can find in these curious trifles that he should take the trouble to study them. This painting is a parable designed to show Napoleon's real place in history. It was painted within a dozen miles of the field of Waterloo, and not many years after the noise of its cannon had died away. It shows the point of view of the man of the future. Save in the degradation of France, through the impoverishment of its life-blood, there is little in human civilization to recall the disastrous incident of Napoleon's existence. _Paucís vívat humanum genus_: "the many live for the few." This shall be true no longer. The earth belongs to him who can use it and the only force which lasts is that which is used to make men free.