Publishers' Note



  In this volume the publishers reproduce only such
political expressions as seem to be historic and are in
a sense non-partisan, omitting merely campaign and
convention speeches, which, however striking, relate to
contemporary interests.
  The lectures show for themselves. The addresses,
beginning with the memorial to Prentice, delivered
upon the invitation of the Legislature of Kentucky in
i870, to the "Ideal in Public Life," delivered in 1903,
on the occasion of the Emerson centenary, including
the dedication of the Columb'an Exposition, in I892,
the Cross-swords speech of 1877 in the National
Cemetery at Nashville, and the many intermediate
contributions to the patriotic spirit of the time, notably
the Grand Army reception upon its first encampment
on Southern soil in i895, will need no word of in-
troduction to appreciative Americans.
  In the form of an "Appendix" the publishers add
to these addresses a series of articles from the Courier-
Journal which seem to have more than ephemeral in-
terest. These relate to "certain downward tendencies
in what is known as the Smart Set of Fashionable So-
ciety." They created a prodigious sensation when
they appeared, hardly less in London than in New
York and Newport and other seats of the mighty
Four Hundred, being translated into French and Ger-
man, and made the text in Paris and Berlin for a
critical revival among both the lay-preachers of the
press and the leaders of the pulpit and the schools.
The first of these articles was drawn out by a lamen-
table tragedy, and they grew into a series, under the
provocation of the newspaper criticisms which followed.
Although more than a year has passed, they continue
to be made the subjects of comment and controversy
among those who delight to moralize on this particular
theme; yet nothing was further from their author's
                         vii