application of these ennobling sentiments to the common mass and grovelling herd whose industries they squandered in riot and debauch, and whose bodies they hurled against battlement and battery to gratify ambition or caprice. But these revelations illuminated many an ingenuous soul among the young aristocracy, and with distorted rays penetrated the Cimmerian darkness which enveloped the people. They bore fruit in the heart and mind of one youth, to whom America owes much, and France everything,—the Marquis de La Fayette. As the centuries roll by, and in the fulness of time the rays of Liberty’s torch are the beacon lights of the world, the central niches in the earth’s Pantheon of Freedom will be filled by the figures of Washington and La Fayette. “It is idle now to speculate whether our fathers could have succeeded without the French alliance. The struggle would have been indefinitely prolonged and probably compromised. But the alliance secured our triumph, and La Fayette secured the alliance. The fabled argosies of ancient, and the armadas and fleets of modern, times were commonplace voyages compared with the mission enshrined in this inspired boy. He who stood before the Continental Congress and said, ‘I wish to serve you as a volunteer, and without pay,’ and at twenty took his place with Gates, and Green, and Lincoln as major-generals in the Continental army. As a member of Washington’s military family, sharing with that incomparable man his board, and bed, and blanket, La Fayette won his first and greatest distinction in receiving from the American chief a friendship which was closer than that bestowed upon any other of his compatriots, and which ended only in death. The great commander saw in the reckless daring with which he carried his wound to rally the flying troops at Brandywine, the steady nerve with which he held the column wavering under a faithless general at Monmouth, the wisdom and caution with which he manœuvred inferior forces in the face of the enemy, his willingness to share every privation of the illy-clad and starving soldiery, and to pledge his fortune and credit to relieve their privations, a commander upon whom he could rely, a patriot he could trust, a man he could love.