and wherefore it does it. The change which four years of civil
war have wrought in the nation is great, and is sure to give it
the seriousness, the gravity, the dignity, the manliness it has
heretofore lacked.

Though the nation has been brought to a consciousness of its own
existence, it has not, even yet, attained to a full and clear
understanding of its own national constitution. Its vision is
still obscured by the floating mists of its earlier morning, and
its judgment rendered indistinct and indecisive by the wild
theories and fancies of its childhood. The national mind has
been quickened, the national heart has been opened, the national
disposition prepared, but there remains the important work of
dissipating the mists that still linger, of brushing away these
wild theories and fancies, and of enabling it to form a clear
and intelligent judgment of itself, and a true and just
appreciation of its own constitution tendencies,--and destiny;
or, in other words, of enabling the nation to understand its own
idea, and the means of its actualization in space and time.

Every living nation has an idea given it by Providence to
realize, and whose realization is its special work, mission, or
destiny. Every nation is, in some sense, a chosen people of God.
The Jews were the chosen people of God, through whom the
primitive traditions were to be preserved in their purity and
integrity, and the Messiah was to come. The Greeks were the
chosen people of God, for the development and realization of the
beautiful or the divine splendor in art, and of the true in
science and philosophy; and the Romans, for the development of
the state, law, and jurisprudence. The great despotic nations of