Oct. 20. What elements in the character of Alexander Pope escaped the notice of the biased and undiscriminating critics of his own time, and yielded only to such literary alchemy as finds illustration in Britannica biographies? 481

Oct. 21. What are mankind's chief obligations to Portugal, and what are the causes of the present decadence of its maritime power? 536

Oct. 22. Where originated the practice of smoking tobacco in pipes, and what is the magnitude of the pipe-making industry now? 110

Oct. 23. Who was Pizarro, and what expedition made him famous?

159

Oct. 24. What is the present perfcction of pottery as an art, and what remarkable variations are exhibited by the products of different periods and countries? 600

Oct. 25. What place in Latin literature is held by the comic dramatist, Plautus? 215 Oct. 26. What combination of circumstances caused Poland to disappear as a separate country from the map of Europe? 285

Oct. 27. Which was the greatest of the popes who bore the name of Pius? 151-157

Oct. 28. What interesting facts are presented by the history of plate and plate-engraving in the different countries? 178

Oct. 29. What qualities of style and methods of work caused Polybius's account of Roman affairs to take rank above that of Livy, though the latter undoubtedly enjoyed far superior fa

and the senator, was Judge Daniel Sherman, of Woodbury, in Connecticut; a man of commanding powers of mind, of sterling integrity,-a matter of course in the Sherman line,-who filled a variety of public posts during more than a third of a century, including the period of the American Revolution. The celebrated Roger Sherman was his cousin. And a thorough type of the family was this famous Roger Sherman.

When New Haven spoke out against the stamp tax, its most significant act was the election, September 17, 1765, of Roger Sherman to be one of their representatives-" one of the great men of his time," Bancroft says. Forty-four years of age, a member of the bar from 1754, few men of the time had his clearness of head and soundness of heart. Bancroft justly designates him, at his next conspicuous appearance, in 1774, a man "whom solid sense and the power of clear analysis were to constitute one of the master builders of our republic." "The parliament of Great Britain," said this clear-headed rebel, "can rightfully make laws for America in no case whatever."

In the great constitutional convention of 1787 no man stood nearer the top, by the side of Washington, than Roger Sherman. Only Benjamin Franklin was his senior in that body. Only George Washington was more than his peer. A product of self-culture, he bore the guinea stamp as hardly another man of his time, out of whatever university, did. The church, the college, the state, the judicial bench, Congress, committees of the first importance, and conventions of the greatest historical significance, claimed his services and found his leadership matchless, his character beyond reproach.

Taylor Sherman, the son of Judge Daniel Sherman, was grandfather to the senator. His wife, Elizabeth Stoddard, whom he married in the great year of liberty1787-was a woman of the strongest and sturdiest Puritan type-" the best type I have known," says her grandson, "of the strong-willed religious Puritan of the Connecticut School,". a woman who "maintained a masterly care of her children and her grandchildren." It fell to Taylor Sherman, as the agent of the official survey, to become familiar with, and to locate the seat of the family fortunes in, that section of Ohio known as the Western Connecticut Reserve.

The eldest son of Judge Sherman, Charles Robert Sherman, born in Norwalk, Connecticut, in 1788, and settled with his young wife at Lancaster, Ohio, in 1811, had, until his early death at 41 years of age, a very distinguished place in the creation of the State of Ohio out of a wilderness territory. He had entered at the date of his death upon the sixth year of his occupancy of the Supreme Judicial Bench in Ohio, and was, beyond a doubt, in public appreciation, the first citizen of the state, and one to whom would have been, if he had lived, entrusted the representation of the state in the senate of the United States.

A Typical

Commonwealth

The common wealth, which thus lost a conspicuously foremost citizen, stands in the history of the United States, with reference to the second great period of American development, somewhat as New England stands with reference to the first period of American development. Its original planting was the planting of the eastern front of an extensive territory, destined to be divided into six states, and not of that extensive territory alone, but of the vast region west of the Mississippi to the far shores of the Pacific.

A noteworthy point in the character of Washington and in the story of his career appears in the prophetic eye with which he regarded the undeveloped country beyond the Ohio, and in the fact that his first conspicuous appearance as a historical character was in the mission which he executed as a representative of British and American colonial interests, sent by the governor of Virginia, to challenge. the presence of a French armed force in the wilderness beyond the Ohio. The story of that mission, though but a hasty fragment reporting its incidents and its outcome, was yet a notable writing, and one which carried the name of the young Virginian all over Europe, because of the relation it bore to the impending conflict of English and French interests on the American continent. How Washington, with a handful of colonial soldiers, sought the French on the Ohio and drew the first blood in that conflict; how, later, he had part in the disaster of Braddock's bloody field and carried off from that terrible English defeat the highest soldierly distinction, has long been a familiar story. It is less known how, in the darkest mid

night of the Revolution, Washington contemplated, if utter defeat should leave no alternative, retreating beyond the mountains and into the wilderness, to maintain a cause, even if with temporary loss of a country; how, at the close of the Revolution, with a beggared and almost mutinous army, he persuaded the suffering troops under his command to patiently expect the possibility of recompense for their unpaid labors through a grant of lands for that purpose from the virgin Territory beyond the Ohio; and how, in pursuance of this suggestion, there was formed in Massachusetts and Connecticut, an Ohio Company, upon whose application to Congress the Ordinance of 1787, for the establishment of the Northwest territory, was passed. The part played by a clergyman-scientist of Ipswich, Mass., Rev. Manassah Cutler, in bringing about a union of New England and Southern interests in this matter, was of a significance difficult to exaggerate. Although little known to our history, Mr. Cutler was a figure worthy to be compared with Benjamin Franklin. He secured the support of leading Virginians for the scheme of the Ohio Companythat of a plantation with securities for development along the lines of liberty, education and religion, which had been the ideals of the planting of New England.

At a much earlier date an Ohio Company had been planned under the presidency of Lawrence Washington, the elder brother of George Washington. It was thus a mature tradition, representing alike Virginia and New England, which found expression in the earliest actual settlement, at Marietta and elsewhere, beyond the Ohio. If there is a third state entitled to a certain precedence in historical significance by the side of Massachusetts and Virginia, it is the state which initiated, in 1788, the development of the Northwest; and among the early creators of which was the young jurist, who had made so enviable a reputation at his death in 1829, and of whose eleven children-six sons and five daughters-two were William T. and John Sherman.

The future soldier, born February 8, 1820, was the sixth of these eleven children, and the future senator, born May 10, 1823. the eighth.

In the making of remarkable men, rich at once in intellectual powers and in moral

How John

Sherman Began

qualities, nature works most easily and most impressively through the agencies represented in the mother, and the father's mother. In the present case the vigorous and stalwart Puritan grandmother, of whom mention has already been made, secured those powers and qualities which were to constitute the figures of the general and the statesman known to all the world; while in the mother, Mary Hoyt, daughter of Isaac Hoyt, a prominent and wealthy citizen of Norwalk, Conn., a woman of unfailing gentleness and sweetness, patience and devotion, as well as courage and strength, there was given those deeper and inner characteristics which gave the stern soldier a side of infinite charm and have kept the dignified statesman warmhearted and tender, simple, gentle and kind, in every walk of life.

The mother's family, it may be noted, were of the Episcopal church, and, as in the case of the latest Winthrops, all her living children, and their families, were of the same fold, except as the children of General Sherman were nurtured in the Catholic communion by their mother.

John Sherman's schooling came to an end when he was hardly fourteen years of age. He had had about as much opportunity as George Washington at the same age, and, like young Washington, he became a surveyor, and from May, 1837, until the summer of 1839, made his experience as a surveyor an excellent school of self-culture.

When this employment ended, he improved a long vacation in close application to study and reading, mainly of history, and early in 1840 entered upon the study of law in the office of his oldest brother, at Mansfield, Ohio. This brother, Charles Robert, had more of the gentle mother and less of the stalwart grandmother than John. The former was shy and sensitive when forced to speak to a jury, while the latter could without difficulty strike from the shoulder upon necessity, and even before his admission to the bar was able to take the fighting side of his brother's cases.

On the very day that he reached twentyone years of age, May 10, 1844, the already active young lawyer was admitted to the bar, and entered as equal partner into the lucrative practice of his brother, whose native timidity gave to the junior

partner a not unwelcome opportunity to devote himself to pleadings, oral or written, and to the struggle of debate and trial. It was in the day of primitive American railroads, flimsy in construction, and run with feeble engines, yet then, as now, creating business for lawyers.

The Mexican war, "purposely and unjustly entered upon to extend the institution of slavery," gave John Sherman one of his earliest political lessons. In sequel to this he had an experience, the record of which, as it is now printed, is one of the most striking pictures on any page of American history. It is especially worth quoting as an example of the exceedingly interesting reminiscences enriching the story of "John Sherman's Recoilections."

"In the winter of 1846-47, I for the first time visited the cities of Washington, New York, and Boston.

A Glimpse of

Daniel Webster

"My stay at the capital was brief, as I wished to go to New York and Boston. In New York I received from a relative a letter of introduction to Benj. R. Curtis, then an eminent lawyer, and latterly a more eminent Justice of the Supreme Court. When I presented my letter I was received very kindly, and, after a brief conversation, he said he was able to do me a favor; that he had a ticket to a grand banquet to be attended by the leading men of Boston at Plymouth Rock, on the anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, and that Daniel Webster would preside. I heartily thanked him, and on the next day, prompt on time, I entered the train at Boston for Plymouth. When I arrived at the hotel, which was also a station-house of the railway, I did not know a single person in the great assemblage. In due time we were ushered into the dininghall, where the banquet was spread. There was no mistaking Webster. He sat in the center of a cross-table, with the British minister on his right and Jeremiah Mason on his left. At the other end of the room sat Abbott Lawrence and other distinguished men. The residue of the guests, merchants, poets, and orators of Massachusetts,-filled every seat at the tables. I sat some way down on the side, and introduced myself to my neighbors on the right and left,

but my eye was on Webster, from whom I expected such lofty eloquence as he alone could utter.

"Much to my surprise, when the time came for the oratory to commence, Mr. Lawrence acted as toast-master. We had stories, songs, poetry, and oratory, generally good and appropriate, but not from Webster. And so the evening waned. Webster had been talking freely with those about him. He displayed none of the loftiness associated with his name. He drank freely. That was manifest to every one. His favorite bottle was one labeled 'brandy.' We heard of it as being more than a hundred years old.' It did not travel down to us. Webster was plainly hilarious. At this time the conductor appeared at a side door and announced that in fifteen minutes the cars would start for Boston. Then Webster arose, with difficulty; he rested his hands firmly on the table, and, with an effort, assumed an erect position. Every voice was hushed. He said that in fifteen minutes we would separate, never more to meet again; and then, with glowing force and eloquence, he contrasted the brevity and vanity of human life with the immortality of the events they were celebrating, which century after century would be celebrated by your children and your children's children to the latest generation.

"I cannot recall the words of his short but eloquent speech, but it made its impress on my mind. If his body was affected by the liquor, his head was clear and his utterance perfect. I met Mr. Webster. afterward on the cars and in Washington. I admired him for his great intellectual qualities, but I do not wonder that the people of the United States did not choose him for President."

In Washington at this time the observant young lawyer saw Mr. Douglas for the first time, and President Polk, "a plain man, of ordinary ability and more distinguished for the great events that happened during his presidency than for anything he did himself."

Washington at this time was a rambling town of about 30,000 inhabitants. Its streets were for the most part unpaved and unimproved, or, as in Pennsylvania avenue, badly paved and unattractive. What is now the best part of the city was then a dreary waste, where cows, pigs and goats had free pasture.