cheerful delight in serving others, which he often celebrates
in literature with a doubtful measure of success. And
perhaps, out of all his writings, the best and the most human
and convincing passages are to be found in "these soil'd and
creas'd little livraisons, each composed of a sheet or two of
paper, folded small to carry in the pocket, and fastened with
a pin," which he scribbled during the war by the bedsides of
the wounded or in the excitement of great events. They are
hardly literature in the formal meaning of the word; he has
left his jottings for the most part as he made them; a homely
detail, a word from the lips of a dying soldier, a business
memorandum, the copy of a letter-short, straightforward to
the point, with none of the trappings of composition; but
they breathe a profound sentiment, they give us a vivid look
at one of the sides of life, and they make us acquainted with
a man whom it is an honour to love.

Whitman's intense Americanism, his unlimited belief in the
future of These States (as, with reverential capitals, he
loves to call them), made the war a period of great trial to
his soul. The new virtue, Unionism, of which he is the sole
inventor, seemed to have fallen into premature unpopularity.
All that he loved, hoped, or hated, hung in the balance. And
the game of war was not only momentous to him in its issues;
it sublimated his spirit by its heroic displays, and tortured
him intimately by the spectacle of its horrors. It was a
theatre, it was a place of education, it was like a season of
religious revival. He watched Lincoln going daily to his
work; he studied and fraternised with young soldiery passing
to the front; above all, he walked the hospitals, reading the