In 1865 we had a debt of two billions seven hundred and seventy-two millions of dollars upon our hands, the debt accumulated from the great results of the war; we were compelled to pay from that debt one hundred and fifty-one millions of dollars in coin a year as interest, and that was a dreadful annual burden. In the year after the war ended, we paid five hundred and ninety millions of dollars over our counter in settling the business of the war and maintaining the ordinary expenses of the government. These tremendous burdens it seemed for a time we could not carry, and there were wicked men, and despairing men, and men who said we ought not to try to carry the burdens; but the brave nation said, This burden is the price of our country's life, all through it there is the price of blood and the price of liberty, and, therefore, we will bow our knees to the burden, we will carry it upon the stalwart shoulders of the nation.
[Letter to Professor Demmon December 16, 1871.]
... Since I entered public life, I have constantly aimed to find a little time to keep alive the spirit of my classical studies, and to resist that constant tendency, which all public men feel, to grow rusty in literary studies, and particularly in the classical studies. I have thought it better to select some one line of classical reading, and, if possible, do a little work on it each day. For this winter I am determined to review such parts of the Odes of Horace as I may be able to reach. And, as preliminary to that work, I have begun by reading up the bibliography of Horace.
The Congressional Library is very rich in materials for this study, and I am amazed to find how deep and universal has been the impress left on the cultivated mind of the world by Horace's writings.
The Student should study himself his relation to Society, to Nature and to Art—and above all, in all, and through all these, he should study the relations of Himself, Society, Nature, and Art to God the Author of them all.
Greek is perhaps the most perfect instrument of Thought ever invented by Man, and its Literature has never been equalled in purity of style and boldness of expression.
History is but the unrolled scroll of Prophecy. The world's history is a divine Poem, of which the history of every nation is a canto, and every man a word. Its strains have been pealing along down the centuries, and though there have been mingled the discords of warring cannon and dying men, yet to the Christian, Philosopher, and Historian—the humble listener—there has been a divine melody running through the song which speaks of hope and halcyon days to come.