cottages in the park, and will presently have them occupied; while the Egyptian display, most of which is the personal loan of the Khedive, has reached New York. The Exhibition, in spite of all the obstacles which it had to overcome, is now certain of success. To be sure, those parts of the country to which its managers naturally looked at first for sympathy and encouragement, still stand aloof. Boston continues cold, New York indifferent and even partly hostile. Chicago's sympathies are generally bounded on the east by the Alleghany mountains, and the Centennial lacks for her the chief element of interest. St. Louis, Cincinnati and New Orleans have hitherto seemed only to know of it that it was to take place in Philadelphia. But the work has steadily gone on. It has demanded courage, patience and more than all a patriotic faith; and presently men will recognize how much has been accomplished, and her sister cities see what Philadelphia has silently done for the national honor, even if they do not thoroughly appreciate it nor thank her, as they doubtless never will.

Had it not been for the debate on the Amnesty Bill which Mr. Randall insisted-doubtless he could not have done otherwise—on bringing forward in advance of the Centennial Bill, the managers would by this time have been sure of the small sum which they still need and hope to get from Government. The United States has acted in this whole business with a narrow parsimony that can hardly be admired, and even now, at the last minute, the most that can be hoped is that they will subscribe the needed amount to the stock instead of giving it, as they ought to do. The debate, however, which has been precipitated by Mr. Randall's measure, and filled so full of feeling by Mr. Blaine, has interrupted the course of the appropriation, and at this writing there may be serious doubts of its passage. The very spirit which it was hoped the Centennial would exorcise has been aroused, and passions that were buried, if not dead, have arisen from the grave. But the fire was there, though the ashes seemed so cold and gray; and in the blaze that has sprung up, the Centennial Bill will be scorched, if not destroyed.

THE question has been generally debated whether Mr. Blaine has done himself good or evil by his recent actions. He has never represented the extremists of his party. Neither by nature nor by

training is he unforgiving. He has done what he has done upon calm reflection, and it is said against advice. Perhaps he felt that he must out-Morton Morton as he had out-Granted Grant; and as he took the wind out of the latter's sails on the school question, he must rob the former of the bloody shirt. No one in Mr. Blaine's place acts upon impulse, and but few, even after reflection, wisely. There is something in the White House fever that stirs the blood and dims the eye, that ties the tongue or wags it unwisely, that makes the man either doubtful and timid or full of a false and dangerous courage. That Jeff Davis was to blame for many things is true, and none hold him more sharply to account than do the Southerners, for they attribute to him many of their troubles. It may be true that he was in a measure responsible for the awful atrocities of Andersonville. In that case we should have tried and punished him, as we did the miserable wretch who paid for his crime upon the gallows. But we have never arraigned him for that crime, and now, ten years after the war, it seems neither magnanimous nor wise to single out a man relegated to obscurity and make a martyr out of him, in spite of fate and of himself. Davis is stronger in the South to-day than he was on Monday last, and through no act of his. And it does seem unpatriotic to open the Centennial year with discussions which must necessarily cause infinite pain and revive the memory of old feuds.

But,

Mr. Blaine of course had a purpose in what he did. And the rare luck which follows at his bidding, never left him in this struggle. His opponents were not wise enough to throw on him the onus of commencing the struggle, and by a calm and temperate behavior disprove his words and show his charges to be false. For a moment the Democratic leaders might have annihilated Mr. Blaine. - doubtless, he knew them well, and had counted all the risks. When Mr. Hill, of Georgia, got up, Blaine's point was made. It has been made at the expense of good feeling, it is true; it has destroyed the hopes on which we had built great things. It has broken down a pretty fabric, and spoilt a pleasant harmony; it has planted doubt in many a Northern mind, and rage in many a Southern heart; it has driven the Democratic party one step backward in the direction of its past well deserved defeats, and revived in some Republican hearts the old war fervor. Newspapers which spoke of Republicans and Democrats last week talk now of Union men and Reb

els, and where quiet reigned upon the Potomac on Monday last may be heard to-night the voices of angry men. It was, no doubt, Mr. Blaine's well-laid plan to bring about just this state of things. It was a deliberate move in a complicated and dangerous game. But it has not had, nor could it have under any circumstances, the personal or party effect for which its author did it; for it was the deed of a Politician in the narrow sense. The Politician is short-sighted, because selfishness is always so, and the Politician is its incarnation. The Statesman is far-sighted, for he looks beyond himself. The one acts for himself, the other for the State: this for to-day, that for tomorrow and all time. The Statesman would have seen that in our day the true history of the war can never be written-that all we can do is to gather the material; that Congress is no place in which to make history if we could; that any discussion like this would only strengthen prejudice, revive party feeling and embitter sectional hate, fixing the very stains we had hoped to wash away. He would have set himself to accomplish a task which time and circumstance were making easy for him, and would have sought to bind rather than to sever. The Politician could not see that what the People want is Peace and Unity, and that no transient fury would change a national purpose fixed for good. To him it seemed easy to arouse again the old war spirit which, like the spirit of liberty in Madame Roland's words, has so many crimes committed in its name; and that if it were aroused and awakened, the victory of his party would be won. The truth is that while the Republican party would and ought to win always upon that issue, it is no longer a living issue with this people. It is dead and buried, and cannot be revived to bear infinite blunders on its back. Both sections of the country long for peace— the time invites it-these Centennial anniversaries make anything besides jar on the common heart. What should be thought of one who throttles this new-made friendship and tender confidence for partisan or personal gain? Mr. Blaine has made reputation where he did not need it, and lost it where he needed it most. He has shown himself a true Politician and a ready debater, when what we want of all things is a Statesman. The debate which he has aroused endured four days. The public time has been consumed-sectional spirit aroused men's passions stirred-and nothing gained by it. Jeff. Davis is not made worse in Northern, but much better in Southern eyes. The Republican party is not strengthened anywhere.

Mr. Blaine is no nearer the White House. done the country any good?

Has the whole thing

THE extraordinary revolution, for such it may be called, which has placed Mr. Caven at the head of Common Council, deserves more than a passing notice. The Rings which have so long misgoverned us, have for years been supreme in that body. There, if anywhere, the power of the bad element was greatest. Most of the schemes which defrauded the tax-payer and destroyed the confidence of men in the government, passed at some time through one branch or the other, or found assistance at the members' hands. But the last two years, even in Philadelphia, have not been favorable to modern statesmanship; and recently the individuals who have governed us, true to the adage, began to fall out among themselves. Shrewd advantage was taken of this and the people have their due— and Mr. Caven is now President of the Common Council. Elected to the body some years ago as a Municipal Reformer against the Republican candidate, though always a good and consistent Republican and the truer and better for not only being honest, but ready to do something for the sake of virtue-he stood up almost alone in defiance of the Ring. His reward has come sooner than it generally does, and in a different form; and he now rules where he was hardly suffered to serve. He is believed to be capable as well as honest, and is known to have plenty of pluck. In his appointments he has done the best he could with the material in his hands, and has allowed no hesitation to prevent his meting out to his enemies, who are at the same time those of the people, some portion of the punishment which they deserve. From the head they have gone down to the foot; from the top they have fallen to the bottom; and there, where they are harmless, they may be suffered. to remain until their seats in Councils can be filled by honest men.

GUDRUN THE TRUSTY.

S one enters the magnificent gallery of German literature, a marine view in water-colors hangs over against a firm landscape in oils called the Nibelungen Nôt; it is the Song of Gudrun, and these two are the first and perhaps the greatest of all that follow. The Gudrun can not lay claim to any tragedy like that which, muttering through the long and solid stanzas of the Nibelungen, bursts at last in the utter ruin of the royal house of Burgundy-onthe-Rhine. Raids by sea, beleaguering of castles, fierce combats on wild sea-beaches, and a peal of marriage bells at the end-were it not an anachronism to talk of bells in a poem of doubtful Christianity these elements go to the making of the Gudrun. It is true it has the genuine flavor of the Baltic, a sea which at its brightest wears a peculiar smile, if not exactly cold, yet containing some hint of possible days of evil; nevertheless the Gudrun is essentially a comedy, in which the humor is quiet and self-contained.

Like the Nibelungen, the size of this poem is not calculated to attract hasty readers. Two parts can be readily separated from each other, the second being about Gudrun herself, the former about her father and grandfather! To such absurdity reached the taste of the various poets who had a hand in its lines, and, one may add, of the feudal audiences of those poets about the year 1200. If then we are to venture on the seventeen hundred stanzas composing the Gudrun, it must be to give only the most important verses set apart by the painful commentators of Germany as the true kernel of the story.

Among these commentators the majority are of the patriotic type, who are unwilling to take from Germany the smallest credit in the line of literature; not so, however, the Scandinavians. They point out the prototype of the first half of the song of Gudrun in the Edda, and plainly hint the probability of the whole of it being theirs; but to this the learned Germans will not consent. What we do know is that only one manuscript exists, and its dialect places the writing of the song, as we now have it, in southeastern Germany. To us it is of minor importance whether the various myths of Germany arose in its own bosom and were exported to Norway, or whether Norway engendered them; we may take a middle course, and allow the same traditions to all branches of the Teutonic race.