And was not his a marvelous career? Cradled in the cottage, he spoke for years from the seat of the mightiest. Chosen and trained for his country's wars, he loved best the arts of peace. Schooled as a regular, he to the fullest extent and from the very first believed in the volunteer. Ignored by book and bureau soldiers at the start, despite the fine record of the Mexican campaigns, indebted to a Western governor for the opportunity refused him by the War Department, he held his modest way, uncomplaining, asking only to be made of use. One year had raised him from the twilight of a Western town to the triumph of Donelson; two years made him the victor of Vicksburg, the head of the armies of the West; three had set him in supreme command, deferred to even by those who late as '62 had sought to down him; four and the sword of the chivalric Lee was his to do with as he would--the rebellion crushed, the war ended--and then, with our martyred Lincoln lying in the grave ever watered by a nation's tears, small wonder was it that twice the people held Grant long years at their head, and when he had returned, from that globe-circling triumphal progress, in large numbers would again have called him to the White House, an uncrowned monarch, the chosen of sovereign citizens. Was he greater then than in the chain of ills that followed? Tricked by those he trusted, himself unskilled in guile, ruined financially by those he had been taught to hold infallible, and finally confronted by the dread conviction that, though barely beyond the prime of life, his days were numbered--was he ever amid the thunder of saluting cannon and the cheers of countless multitudes so great as when, with the grim destroyer clutching at his throat, he fought for life that through those matchless Memoirs he might earn the means to wipe out every possible obligation and provide in modest comfort, at least, for those he loved and must soon leave to mourn him? In those last heroic days at Mt. McGregor he stood revealed in his silent suffering, the ideal of devotion, endurance, and determination, until, his great work done, his toil and trials ended, his sword long since sheathed, his pen now dropping from the wearied, nerveless hand, he could turn to the Peace Ineffable and sink to rest--our greatest soldier--our honored President--our foremost citizen. Aye, soldier, statesman, loyal citizen he was; and yet more, for in purity of life, in love of home and wife and children, in integrity unchallenged, in truth and honor unblemished, in manner simplicity itself--though ever coupled with that quiet dignity that made him peer among the princes of the earth--in speech so clean that oath or execration never soiled his lips, unswerving in his faith, a martyr to his friendships, merciful to the fallen, magnanimous to the foe, magnificent in self-discipline, was he not also, and in all that the grand old name implies, Grant--the gentleman? JOHN MUIR.