2 28 C. F. Adams there was no considerable American publishing house which had not brought out partial or complete editions of his works. They also were referred to as "innumerable."' In other words, when a generation that knew them not had passed away, the works of the two great masters of historical literary form in our day sold beyond all compare with the productions of any of the living writers most in vogue ; and this while the professorial dry-as-dust reaction against those masters was in fullest swing. With a vast amount of material unused, and much still unsaid, I propose, in concluding, to trespass still further on your patience while I draw a lesson to which the first portion of my discourse will con- tribute not less than the second. A great, as well as a very volumi- nous, recent historical writer has coined the apothegm, — " History is past politics, and politics are present History." The proposition is one I do not now propose to discuss, except to suggest that, how- ever it may have been heretofore, what is known as politics will be but a part, and by no means the most important part, of the history of the future. The historian will look deeper. It was President Lincoln who said in one of the few immortal utterances of the cen- tury, — an utterance, be it also observed, limited to two hundred and fifty words, — that this our nation was " conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal ; " and that it was for us highly to resolve " that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth." It was James Russell Lowell, who, when asked in Paris by the his- torian Guizot many years since, how long the Republic of the United States might reasonably be expected to endure, happily replied, — "So long as the ideas of its founders continue dominant." In the first place, I hold it not unsafe to say that, looking forward into a future not now remote, the mission of the Republic and the ideas of the founders will more especially rest in the hands of those agricul- tural communities of the Northwest, where great aggregations of a civic populace are few, and the principles of natural selection have had the fullest and the freest play in the formation of the race. Such is Wisconsin ; such Iowa ; such Minnesota. In their hands, and in the hands of communities like them, will rest the ark of our covenant. 'At least twenty (20) American publishing houses have brought out complete edi- tions of Macaulay, both his Miscellanies and the History of England. Many of these editions have been expensive, and they seem uniformly to have met with a ready demand. Almost every American publishing house of any note has brought out editions of some of the Essays. The same is, to a less extent, true of Carlyle. Seven (7) houses have brought out complete editions of his works; while three (3) others have put on the market imported editions, bearing an American imprint. Separate editions of the more popular of his writings — some cheap, others de luxe — have been brought out by nearly every American publishing concern.
