was necessary to avoid open spaces. Several times during the day he saw squads of Confederate cavalry passing along the road so near that he could hear their talk. Near nightfall he reached Diasen Bridge, where he successfully passed another picket. He kept on until nearly midnight, when he lay down by a great tree and, cold as he was, slept soundly until daylight. He now made a careful reconnoissance and found near the road the ruins of an old building, which, he afterwards learned, was called "Burnt Ordinary." He now found himself almost unable to walk with his injured foot, but, nerved by the yet bright hope of liberty, he once more went his weary way in the direction of Williamsburg. Finally he came to a place where there were some smoking fagots and a number of tracks, indicating it to have been a picket post of the previous night. He was now nearing Williamsburg, which, he was inclined to believe, from such meager information as had reached Libby before his departure, was in possession of the Union forces. Still, he knew that this was territory that was frequently changing hands, and was therefore likely to be under a close watch. From this on he avoided the roads wholly and kept under cover as much as it was possible; and if compelled to cross an open field at all, he did so in a stooping position. He was now moving in a south-easterly direction, and coming again to the margin of a wide opening, he saw, to his unutterable joy, a body of Union troops advancing to the road towards him.

Thoroughly worn out, Rose, believing that his deliverers were at hand, sat down to await their approach. His pleasant reverie was disturbed by a sound behind and near him, and turning quickly he was startled to see three soldiers in the road along which the troops first seen were advancing. The fact that these men had not been noticed before gave Rose some uneasiness for a moment, but, as they wore blue uniforms, and moreover seemed to take no note of the approaching Federal troops, all things seemed to indicate that they were simply an advanced detail of the same body. This seemed to be further confirmed by the fact that the trio were now moving down the road, apparently with the intent of joining the larger body; and as the ground to the east rose to a crest, both of the bodies were a minute later shut off from Rose's view. In the full confidence that all was right he rose to his feet and walked towards the crest, to get a better view of everything and greet his comrades of the loyal blue. A walk of a hundred yards brought him again in sight of the three men, who now noticed and challenged him.

VOL. XXXV. — 108.

In spite of appearances a vague suspicion forced itself upon Rose, who however obeyed the summons and continued to approach the party, who now watched him with fixed attention. As he came closer to the group, the brave but unfortunate soldier saw that he was lost.

For the first time the three seemed to be made aware of the approach of the Federals, and to show consequent alarm and haste. The unhappy Rose saw before the men spoke that their blue uniform was a disguise, and the discovery brought a savage expression to his lips. He hoped and tried to convince his captors that he was a Confederate, but all in vain; they retained him as their prisoner, and now told him that they were Confederates. Rose, in the first bitter moment of his misfortune, thought seriously of breaking away to his friends so temptingly near; but his poor broken foot and the slender chance of escaping three bullets at a few yards made this suicide, and he decided to wait for a better chance, and this came sooner than he expected.

One of the men appeared to be an officer, who detailed one of his companions to conduct Rose to the rear in the direction of Richmond. The prisoner went quietly with his guard, the other two men tarried a little to watch the advancing Federals, and now Rose began to limp like a man who was unable to go farther. Presently the ridge shut them off from the view of the others. Rose, who had slyly been staggering closer and closer to the guard, suddenly sprang upon the man, and before he had time to wink had twisted his gun from his grasp, discharged it into the air, flung it down, and ran off as fast as his poor foot would let him towards the east and so as to avoid the rest of the Confederates. The disarmed Confederate made no attempt at pursuit, nor indeed did the other two, who were now seen retreating at a run across the adjacent fields.

Rose's heart bounded with new hope, for he felt that he would be with his advancing comrades in a few minutes at most. All at once a squad of Confederates, hitherto unseen, rose up in his very path, and beat him down with the butts of their muskets. All hands now rushed around and secured him, and one of the men called out excitedly, "Hurry up, boys; the Yankees are right here." They rushed their prisoner into the wooded ravine, and here they were joined by the man whom Rose had just disarmed. He was in a savage mood, and declared it to be his particular desire to fill Rose full of Confederate lead. The officer in charge rebuked the man, however, and compelled him to cool down, and he went along with an injured air that excited the merriment of his comrades.

The party continued its retreat to Barhamsville, thence to the White House on the Pamunkey River, and finally to Richmond, where Rose was again restored to Libby, and, like the writer, was confined for a number of days in a narrow and loathsome cell. On the 30th of April his exchange was effected for a Confederate colonel, and on the 6th of July, 1864, he rejoined his regiment, in which he served with conspicuous gallantry to the close of the war.

As already stated, Hamilton reached the Union lines safely after many vicissitudes, and did brave service in the closing scenes of the rebellion. He is now a resident of Reedyville, Kentucky. Johnson, whose enforced confinement in Rat Hell gave him a unique fame in Libby, also made good his escape, and now lives at North Pleasantville, Kentucky.

Of the fifteen men who dug the successful tun

nel, four are dead, viz.: Fitzsimmons, Gallagher, Garbett, and McDonald. Captain W. S. B. Randall lives at Hillsboro, Highland County, Ohio; Colonel Terrance Clark at Paris, Edgar County, Illinois; Captain Eli Foster at Chicago; Colonel N. S. McKean at Collinsville, Madison County, Illinois; and Captain J. C. Fislar at Lewiston, I. T. The addresses of Captains Lucas, Simpson, and Mitchell are unknown at this writing.

Colonel Rose has served faithfully almost since the end of the war with the 16th United States Infantry, in which command he holds a captain's commission; and no one meeting him in these peaceful days would hear from his reticent lips, or read in the placid face of the veteran, the thrilling story that links his name in so remarkable a manner with the history of the famous Bastile of the Confederacy. Frank E. Moran.

HERE is a strong tendency -strongest perhaps in the worthiest if not greatest minds-to contend unduly for an ideal state of society. We could not advance one step without this tendency, but the excess of it is to be guarded against in practical social science. The tendency to push some one principle through to its ideal end, to make some few laws universal, and in so doing to override other principles and laws that are less obtrusive or that wear the suspicious garb of expediency, is one which has always characterized and vitiated human thought,-balanced, indeed, and rendered serviceable by even a stronger tendency to tread the path of mere expediency. Hence such men as George Fox and Fourier, Shelley and Emerson. The thing never to be forgotten by one engaged in the study of great subjects is that every principle, law, and method has its limits, and that it is played upon by other forces that seem to be opposite. The constant temptation is to become fascinated with either unity or complexity, forgetting one while we kneel before the other. The wise man encounters no question more difficult than how far to insist on ideal, and how far to be content with imperfect, conditions. It is the steadily recurring question between the conservative and the radical, and in every-day life, without which the judgment would have no field of action, and that thing called wisdom or common sense would have no existence because no ground of exercise. To pursue ideals or to consult expediency is small tax on our powers; rightly to join them is the special function

of wisdom.

This nation began its career under lofty ideals; personal liberty, freedom of conscience, social equality, government in the interest of the poor and defenseless, the contrast of the ideas and methods prevailing in Europe which prompted the first emigrations. The early settlers took up the line of progress in England, but leaped over its intermediate stages and formed a State of almost ideal perfection in its political forms. It can hardly be said that this nation developed its institutions; it decreed them, and the struggle has been to live up to them. We are finding out that we have too much liberty and too little restriction; enough law but a vast amount of lawlessness.

Liberty slips easily into license; we are impatient of restraint; we legislate in crude ways; our political action is without moral earnestness and dignity. In the main, we have followed in the line of the early ideals, but we insist on them in a blind way; we turn them into a cry and use them in a wholesale way and without much regard to consequences: "It is a free country - keep it free; the asylum of the poor and oppressed-let them. come; the refuge from tyranny - open wide the ports; the land of equal rights-give every man an equal chance." It will not be denied that these are brave words, full of noble sentiments, nor that the realization of them is to be sought. The only question is whether we can carry all this sail of lofty purpose and keep a steady keel; whether we must not ballast the ship of State with solid citizenship instead of filling its decks with a promiscuous throng. There is no question as to the value of liberty and equality and humanity as social factors, but only by what process they are to be realized. Public opinion inclines to the view that they are to be assumed with all their incidental evils, which are to be endured, or worked out, or left to correct themselves under their own educating and disciplining processes.

Another preliminary question-one which perplexes many minds-is: Should this nation, in view of its providential history and the divineness of its institutions, be interfered with?

a weighty question, for few will deny that there is a mysterious force directing the course of history, which is best named as Providence. To determine the relation between Divine will and human conduct is the never-settled problem in philosophy, and will not be raised here beyond saying that its application to national and to individual life is the same. Providence does not relieve either the individual or the nation from the necessity of using its faculties in determining action. It was a favorite expression of Dr. Mulford, that "the nation. fulfills its vocation in freedom," by which he meant, in part, that it is itself to work out its life by self-chosen processes. It is as free as man, and is not a necessary evolution of certain forces, nor the product of certain principles blindly followed and turned into laws of fate.

Such considerations as these underlie our subject and meet in advance the position of those who would settle this question of foreign

immigration with the brief logic that we are a free nation and must continue free; that, having started out as the asylum of the poor and oppressed, we should continue in this line, come what may; a logic that hurries into thoughtless enthusiasm, and cap-in-air hurrahs, and stump oratory over the vast resources and glorious privileges of this country, "the biggest on earth and quite able to take care of itself," a proposition that need not be disputed, but may be objected to as a substitute for statesmanship.

This method of reasoning was universal a generation ago, but it has given place in thoughtful minds to solicitude before the startling facts of immigration and the transformations of social and political life which threaten to follow. One may not be popular who contends for a closer restriction of immigration, but one may be sure of an audience which has sufficiently swerved from traditional notions to be open to conviction.

The Declaration of Independence has been thought to stand in the way of a restricted immigration. It is a brave utterance, but it is not a binding document. The organic law of the country offers no impediment to a sharply restricted immigration. While it defines and guards citizenship, especially by its amendments, it does not prescribe the terms on which citizenship may be transferred from other nations to this,- a matter that is left to State legislation; nor does it invite or forbid the transfer of other populations to this country. The silence of the Constitution on so grave a subject plainly indicates that it is to be regarded as a matter for legislation, which may vary according to circumstances.

It is a sound political principle that it is the first duty of a nation to secure the conditions necessary to its physical life.

It was once a favorite theory among sociologists that the perfect nation would be gained through the amalgamation of all races, the typical man being the union of alla plausible idea and one wearing a religious color, reflected from the declaration that of one blood are all the nations of the earth. But science no longer permits us to think in this direction. Whatever it may ultimately say of the origin of man, it has plainly shown that the best development of man is along certain fixed racial lines closely adhered to. Any mingling of the three families, the white, the yellow, the black, is always attended with disastrous physical and moral results. When the Aryan forsakes his family and mingles with either of the others, he mingles only to produce a progeny which runs out after a few increasingly weak generations. Nor do remote branches of the same family unite

favorably. There is a certain trend or propulsive force wrought into tribes and families the product of climate, food, habits, relig ion, and general environment—that seems destined to go on its own way and in its own place. The ancient emigrations were not rapid movements, but a slow pressing out, covering a degree of space in a generation, or moving along lines of similar environment. When a family moves to remote countries and mingles with other families, the subtle currents of thought and physical habit combine inharmoniously and with mutual injury. The mustangs of Mexico are the descendants of the Arab horse and are fit representatives of their riders. When the ripe or over-ripe apple of Mexico drops into our lap, it will be when an ill-combined blood has no longer enough vitality to retain its hold. The combinations of races by emigration which have been most successful have been that slow spreading of the Aryan along the Mediterranean and northward, where it met no change of environment for which it was not prepared, encountering tribes similarly nurtured, which it absorbed or annihilated; and that in Great Britain where the Teutonic tribes and the Normans made a short journey into a land not unlike their own. The Roman left no population in Britain. It does not follow that because tribes are of the Aryan stock they can safely mingle; the propulsive force of long-continued diverse environment may stand in the way. This point is emphasized by the fact that the invading emigrations carried their institutions with them, and, by conquering, secured for themselves the best possible environment and preserved their original habits. The successful emigrations did not conform to the ways of the countries to which they went, but, crossing the narrow sea, did not change their mind. The emigrations that have promoted civilization have been invasions by stronger tribes which carried and kept their institutions. Before such a fact a nation may well hesitate to admit an emigration of a weaker element which is required to give up its institutions. If it should prove beneficial, it would contradict all historical precedents. Nothing justifies a nation in admitting an emigration which cannot become both a healthy blood-factor and a sympathetic element in its population.

Such considerations are usually set aside as too general to enter into the practical conduct of a nation, and as pertaining to natural science rather than to government; but it is through indifference to just such generalities and scientific facts that nations are involved in calamities, confusions, and conflicts which last through centuries. The hardest problems

before this country are not moral, for the moral is amenable to effort; it generates its own course, cures its own evils, and transforms by its own divine alchemy. Our problems are largely physiological,- how to mingle, or rather not mingle, our diverse bloods so that the physical stock shall not degenerate, and how to keep the strong, fine strain ascendant. We have already several such problems on hand. The fatal feature of the early importation of blacks was not slavery,- for a strong nation may long safely cherish such an institution, but their presence as a large fraction and factor of the population. This problem cannot now be touched practically; ancient wrong binds the nation hand and foot, and its outcome must be awaited as we await the gathering of tempests,-powerless to avert, and trembling over the steady approach. We have also the Indian, happily a lessening factor, and probably not one to become a bloodelement nor a political force in the national life. There is a graver problem in that immense population in the South-west, liable at any time to be increased by additions of Mexican territory, a population of mixed Spanish and Indian blood, sharing in the degeneracy of the stronger stock and the inherent weakness of the other. In California this population was overwhelmed and nearly exterminated by the sudden and vast movement from the East in '49, but in New Mexico and the Mexico that is coming such a process cannot be expected. This population will enter, a weak and vitiating element, into the national body, where it will work immense mischief. In the mingling of greatly diverse bloods the weaker drags down the stronger. Nature, in such a case, does not work towards a cure, but by destruction protests against the mistake. The Indian drew the Spanish towards itself, and the mingled blood will act in like manner, a vitiating element, too large in these new territories to be crowded out as was done in California. This nation has already had two lessons on this subject, and has their unsolved problems on hand; namely, the negro, with whom the white mingles fatally, and the Mexican, with whom he mingles only to his hurt. It would seem to be the part of statesmanship to scrutinize this matter of race-mingling. Science is forcing theology, jurisprudence, sociology, to face facts and to change theories and methods, and it would not be amiss for statesmen to consult science as to what populations shall enter the ports of New York and San Francisco. It is the right and the duty of a nation, however originally constituted, to prevent physical degeneration of its stock. It is akin to that first duty and instinct of the individual, the preserva

tion of life,-overriding morals, or rather, creating its own law of morals. Such scientific scrutiny might embrace certain classes of certain nations, and especially that stratum of foreign population which has sunk below the average of its own national life. There is in all Europe an immense pauper class physically and mentally incapable of recuperation, fixed, like a natural species, in an enduring form, and another large class hovering on its border. In the changes brought about by steam navigation it is becoming possible for such populations to come hither in great numbers. Our wharves and cities already swarm with them, held back only by some feeble enactments as to paupers, which have regard only to our pauper institutions and not to the effect upon the vitality and well-being of the nation itself. There are no enactments that are scientific; none that make close and reasonable discrimination, or other than is based on economic interests. This is, indeed, a good general ground to go upon, based as it is on the principle that a man who can get across the Atlantic can earn his living. Property is to a certain degree an evidence of fitness, and, like children, is a hostage to fortune. But a nation is something more than economic; it is physical and intellectual and moral and political. If immigration is to be restricted at all, it should be on a basis inclusive of qualifications beyond those of property.

It is also a sound principle that a nation should secure, so far as possible, political homogeneousness.

In those nations where the government is monarchical, and therefore largely by force, there may safely be a lack of homogeneousness so long as the force is superior to the divergent influences, but in a democracy homogeneousness is the first requisite. If the people of a democracy do not think and feel within certain lines of sympathy they will not act together, and in that case the attitude of one party or class will be regarded by others as tyrannical. Government which is not understood always wears that aspect.

This nation began its career with a fair degree of homogeneousness. The Puritan and the Cavalier, the Dutchman and the Quaker, at least understood each other, and coöperated intelligently in the formation of the government. But we are to-day breeding a diversity in religions, languages, customs, conditions, blood, sentiments, and temperaments such as no nation, except possibly Russia, ever experienced. Granting the assimilating power of free and favoring institutions, of climate, food, education, and moral effort, the question remains whether the nation is able to digest the heterogeneous masses it is taking in. If we could rid