education as inadequately adapting them to their circumstances. As a matter of fact they did fall short of the glory of their ancestors in that no one of them held public office of first-rate national importance. But, on the other hand, none of them really competed with his illustrious predecessors. Each of them developed marked variations from the ante-bellum type, in one case so marked as to constitute a new species. If the ancestral energy is degraded, it is none the less abundantly present in them all.
Charles Francis II, the least highly individualized of the trio, was the one who most conspicuously fell into the stride of the new industrial, expansive America. At his graduation from Harvard in 1856 he had discovered no remarkable aptitude—for which he blames his teachers—and so gravitated into a law office. At the outbreak of the war, it slowly occurred to him to enlist; but, once in, he enjoyed the hard athletic life, and developed a drillmaster's pride in his company and in his regiment, at the head of which he rode into burning Richmond. His military duties disclosed to him his talent for organization, and also the disquieting fact that famous fighters and great organizers were frequently beneath his standard for gentlemen; Grant, for example, "was a man of coarse fibre, and did not impress with a sense of character."
But the war had toughened his own fibre and had opened his eyes to new careers for talents. When
