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THE DEMOCRATIC HEART.

While experienced politicians readily forecast the opposition of parties in any given contingency, not much appears in partisan literature descriptive of the fundamental qualities of human nature where- from party difference originally proceeds. What follows should evoke the genius of either of the two more considerable parties of all politics-not specially, as of two changing sets of men, but generally, as of two abiding styles of mind and character. It is addressed most hopefully to two important classes, either of which, unanimous, would be controlling: the non-partisan and the young-the uncommitted.

It is much-too much, to be uncommitted. A change of party is popularly odious. Men may correct any other mistake-change without obloquy in any other field, but there is no joy anywhere over a politician that repenteth. The side he reforms to has least faith in him. We choose our politics so young-we hold them so tenaciously! A man at twenty-one is seldom at his best; at fifty he will l usually confess that what he knew of politics at that age was of little importance; k yet then he chooses. One becomes a republican because his father was; another becomes a democrat because, egad, his father was not! Yet the world, after a wisdom of its own, holds them responsible for this early preference. We take no jury- man who has expressed his opinion; for men like that their theory should come p true; indeed men have killed their fellows only because they had said they would. Much of partisanship is but perfunctory to a premature committal; and however the opposition of parties may be toned be down by the fact, important are the lights and guides to a choice the renunciation of which is so beset with opprobrium and be disadvantage.

Young man, you have heard in the patois of a pretentious generation that the republican or radical party is "the party of intelligence and moral ideas. Our people, they say, average in the more respectable classes-the better informed. The protestant churches, the lyceums, the press, are largely republican; the great preachers as well as the laity, the lecturers, the of professors, are chiefly republican; we are the party of temperance, education, emancipation, and organized philanthropy; the democracy are the party of the obstructive and the recalcitrant, the non-conforming; the coarse fibre, the thick skin, thick blood and lax morality-the free liver, the free thinker, the free lover, the heavy intellect, the brutal instinct, the illicit purpose side easily with the democracy, whose gospel is license in all things, and whose warmest charity is for the criminal classes.

Come now! we should know each other better than this. The race is homogeneous; we have the same senses and the same reason; perhaps we see differently because we stand differently. Any one knows a good thing; it is the critic who knows how good. Only the unphilosophical mistake half-truths for whole ones; only the inexperienced fighter mistakes a bloody nose for murder in the first degree; and all this may be true as having a measure of truth in it, yet leave the democracy the stronger character, the broader brain, the deeper insight, the more advanced experience-in every way the masculine mind.

While republicans generally do indeed glorify literature and science, and cordially encourage good works, they need to be admonished that men may have less of special intelligence, and less ambition and concern therefor, yet be wiser, greater, better. One reads history in vain if he sees not that many problems find their solution in character alone, and that manly