a better place to live in today than it was yesterday. Happy is the
country, happy the metropolis of that country, whose fortunate young men
have this high conception of citizenship!

What is the ideal of their country which these young men cherish? There
was a moment--was there not for them?--in the late war for the Union,
when the republic was visible to them in its beauty, in its peril, and in
a passion of devotion they were eager--were they not?--to follow the flag
and to give their brief lives to its imperishable glory. Nothing is
impossible to a nation with an ideal like that. It was this flame that
ran over Europe in the struggle of France against a world in arms. It
was this national ideal that was incarnate in Napoleon, as every great
idea that moves the world is sooner or later incarnated. What was it
that we saw in Washington on his knees at Valley Forge, or blazing with
wrath at the cowardice on Monmouth? in Lincoln entering Richmond with
bowed head and infinite sorrow and yearning in his heart? An embodiment
of a great national idea and destiny.

In France this ideal burns yet like a flame, and is still evoked by a
name. It is the passion of glory, but the desire of a nation, and
Napoleon was the incarnation of passion. They say that he is not dead as
others are dead, but that he may come again and ride at the head of his
legions, and strike down the enemies of France; that his bugle will call
the youth from every hamlet, that the roll of his drum will transform
France into a camp, and the grenadiers will live again and ride with him,
amid hurrahs, and streaming tears, and shouts of "My Emperor! Oh, my
Emperor!" Is it only a legend? But the spirit is there; not a boy but
dreams of it, not a girl but knots the thought in with her holiday
tricolor. That is to have an abiding ideal, and patiently to hold it, in
isolation, in defeat, even in an overripe civilization.