vitalize these mighty elements. The day must come when the pre-eminence of the United States in the field of material products will be rivalled by the existence of a literature as aspiring, as copious, and as brilliant as the spirit, resources, and destiny of the country; an American literature, breathing American ideas, and teaching respect and admiration for American government, furnishing to the young men and women of an impressionable age books which are American books, not foreign books; not the cheap books of fiction dedicated, as Matthew Arnold has said, to the “Goddess of Lubricity.”[115] The international unions, indicated as having their seats in Bern, it must not be forgotten, are practically the only ones which the world has to show. The _Bureau du Mètre_ in France, the only cognate institution in another country partaking of an international character, cannot be reckoned in the same class, being scientific and not commercial. It is noteworthy, as evidence of the high consideration given to these international unions, or rather to the location of their central bureaus in Switzerland, by its statesmen, that the directorship of the Postal Bureau was on its establishment accepted by an eminent member of the Federal Council, who thus voluntarily surrendered virtually a life-tenure position of the highest dignity, coupled with the certainty of succeeding to the Presidency of the Confederation, to assume a more laborious and responsible post, with little, if any, increase of salary. The acquisition by Switzerland of these important bureaus, with the world-wide scope of their operation, is properly regarded as forming a more effectual guarantee for its preservation as an independent state than any other that could be devised. These unions cannot fail to be also productive of a progressively improving understanding among all the states composing them, enabling their several systems to be compared, useful discoveries shared, legislation simplified and assimilated, the science of statistics facilitated, and efforts, not merely for the development of commercial, but also of the intellectual needs of their respective people, wisely stimulated and directed. These beneficent consequences must favorably reflect on the state furnishing the safe and common ground upon which this great work can be peaceably and skilfully prosecuted, and elevate it to an exceptional plane of importance and security, giving it an international function which is interesting to note. It will not do, in connection with these international bodies and episodes in Swiss history, to omit reference to the fact that the first great international court of arbitration of modern times had its sessions in Geneva, in 1872, by virtue of the Treaty of Washington between Great Britain and the United States to arbitrate what was known as the “Alabama Claims.” Over this most memorable court a distinguished citizen of Switzerland was chosen to preside. It was such an imposing