Page:Nation v71 no1832.djvu/8

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The Nation.

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[Vol. 71, No. 1832

highly meritorious and successful. He had sacrificed his Cabinet position in defenco of pure government. He suffered, however, the fate of most martyrs, and his leadership was not entertained by a body which ended by nominating Greeley.

A partial return to public life was made tn 1876, when the Sixth Ohio District elect- ed Gen. Cox to the House of Representa tives at Washington by the largest majority over known. It was his hope that he might thus do something to sustain President Hayes. He did not serve a second term, whether ft was not assured him, or whether the time had come for him to choose for or against politics as a career. Ho felt the helplessness of the new member, unused to ‘the ropes. He saw how genuine debate is handicapped by the vastness of the House chamber and by the mob of inattentive members. Perhaps he had had enough of strife, for his character was essentially easy and amiable, however resolute and soldterly. Save for one speech on the stump in 1880 in support of his old associate Garfield, he retired altogether trom politics evon as a free lance or as a contributor to public Aiscussion in the press. He came near being drawn into the currency debate, for he had been persuaded by his friend Dana Hor- ton's arguments for the remonetization of silver; but he held aloof. He had, on quit- ting the Cabinet, resumed the practice of the law in Cincinnat!. He then removed to Toledo to become President of tho Wabash Rajlrosd. On the expiration of his Con- gressional term, he was made President of the Cincinnati University, and afterwards Dean of the Law School. A graduate of Oberlin College in 1861, he returned three years ago to that institution to end his days, having made a most agreoable arrangement by which his private library was added to that of the College, and he provided with 8 corner of his own, where his literary work could be pursued amid delightful surround- ings. Here he completed, among other works, his military memoirs now in course of publication by the Seribners, and he en- tered upon his vacation last month with a5 much buoyancy and expectation as ever. It was his summer custom to join one of ‘his sona in cruising in the Gulf of Maine, with headquarters at Magnolis, Mess, and in that place he died after a brief weakness on August 4.

‘We have purposely, in those “strenuous” days, begun our notice of a truly noble man and rare American at a point unrelated to ‘his military career, which, with his vari- ous writings, will chiefly cause him to be remembered by posterity. He was, how- ever, one of the first to ralse troops and take command in the civil war, passing (at- tor distinguished action on many fields trom ‘Wost Virginia to Maryland, Tennessee, and North Carolina) from a brigadier-general- ship to @ major-generalship, in which ca- pacity he earned the honors of the stubborn contest with Hood at Franklin. Of the war he became an historian In his monographs on ‘Atlanta,’ “The March to the Sea,’ ‘The Second Battle of Bull Run, as Connected with the Fits-John Porter Case,’ ‘The Battle of Franklin,’ and finally in the memoirs al- Teady referred to, of which he was reading the proofs when stricken down. He had been tor many years, and to the very last, the military critic of books for the Nation ‘and the Evening Post, and after the death of John C. Ropes he was easily the highest

authority with reference to the events and the strategy of the civil war. He wrote with great fluency, seldom amending bis proofs, and maintained to the end the vigor of thought and expression which marked his prime, His fairness was remarkable for a nature so hearty as to be almost forvid. If ‘his fudgment of Fits-John Porter seems un- warranted, or at least not that which will finally prevail, his admiration for Grant as a soldier was unimpaired by his expe- rience with him as a politictan-ridden Prest- dent. For Sherman, too, he had a high r gard, in spite of a certain brusqueness to- wards subordinates; for, as Gen. Cox used to remark, when the fight was raging no man could be more Chesterfieldian, and he con- ‘cluded that, on the whole, he should prefer, of all commanders he had known, to serve again under Sherman.

Gen. Cox did not go with his party the full length of tts opposition to President Jobnson, and this contributed in some mea- ‘sure to his dropping out of local politics In Ohio, He had a dread of negro suffrage, or rather be had a strong desire that the white race should shape the destiny of the coun- try. No more than others who have es- ‘sayed it could ho suggest # solution of the reconstruction problem wiser or more stable than that adopted by Congress. In 1865 he Proposed a scheme of segregation, but it found no echo. He witnessed with satisfaction the downfall of the carpet-bag régime, to which President Hayes gave the coup de grace that President Grant forebore to deal, though seeing it to be inevitable. He knew ‘that through or over existing forms the wealth, intelligence, and force of character of the South would assert iteclt and re- gain control of the government. The extent to which this process has actually gone on, with the growth of lynching and political terroriam such as shocks us to-day, could but seem to him deplorable.

‘The distinction of Oberlin College was that it welcomed not only female students— a prime fnnovation—but colored. Of such an Institution Gen, Cox was proud to be both an alumnus and latterly a trustee. He mar- ried a daughter of President Finney, once famous as a revivalist preacher, and made his Inst home in a spot endeared to both dy the tenderest assoclations. His father was a master-bullder, whose home sometimes accompanied his contracts, and was actual- ly In Montreal when the future Gen. Cox was born on October 27, 1828 Mo. chanical aptitude “ran in the family, and produced among the numerous bro- thers a turbine wheel on which great expectations, not realized, were based. Gen. Cox was devoted to the microscope, and among his other diversions was a thor- ‘ough study of the cathedrals of Europe. He was the father of Kenyon Cox, the well- known artist and art critic. A daughter married a son of Gen. Pope.

‘We should do ourselves injustice it we withheld from this imperfect tribute to Gen. Cox the note of personal bereavement. For a generation we have enjoyed with him an Intimacy characterized by utter frankness and entire mutual esteem through all viciu- sltudes of opinion; enlivened by constant intercourse by letter, in connection with that attached and cordial collaboration which has lent s¢ much welght to the re: views of this Journal; and refreshed by visite, “alas! too few," in his annual east

tward journey. In a time of decadence

‘wo fool keenly the loss of one who threw all ‘his weight in the scale of that elder Amer!- canism which, to look only at his own State, has undergone so woful a substitutlon— for Chase, and Giddings, and Wade, for Hayes and Garfield, of Grosvenor and Foraker, of McKinley and Hanna.

AMONG THE NURAGHI

Sassant, SaDIVIA, June, 1900,

“Tile robustissimorum saxorum maceries, que adhuc Noraces vocantur, et ad instar rotundarum turrium, in insule locts agres- tibus et montuosis, passim conspicluntur.” ‘Thus wrote John Francis Fara, Bishop of Bossa, in the sixteenth century, in ‘De Choro- graphia Sardinie’ (frst edition, Turin, 1835); and beyond the time of Fara, as scholars tell us, similar references are found through Diodorus Siculus up to Aris- totle himself. In more recent times, att dente, local or other, serious travellers, or ‘mere inquisitive tourists (like the present writer) have found in these strange remains of a vanished race an interest none the less great from the fact that, saving thelr very obvious and tangible existence, almost every point bearing on their origin or thelr pur- ose {s still wrapped in the hase of obscurity ‘and conficting conjecture. So numerous, in- deed, are the monographson this subject that the stranger soon finds his Italtan yécabulary enriched with the uninviting terms suraghe- grafo and nuroghologo, to neither of which, It he be wise, will he dare to pretend.

‘As the rallway train proceeds along the ‘main Sardinian line from Cagliari to Sassari, the eminences and hillaides are frequently ‘observed to be topped by massive, conical towers of stone, bullt in horizontal courses of rough-hewn blocks without mortar or coment, which diminish in aize up to the flat, truncated top of the structure, When ‘Macomer, the nodus of the island, is reach- 4, the whole district appears fairly studded with these muragh; and trom here to Nuoro, situated near the great craggy outposts of the Gennargentu chain, or mountain contre of Sardinia, 1s consequently the most fa- vorable fleld for study, wnether long or short. Some of the best-preserved remains, as well as a few specimens of another char- acter, are likewise in this vicinity. Near the small paese of Bolotaha, close by, Nelgebaur (Turin, 1855) professed to have eertained the existence of no less than two hundred nuraght. It has been estimated that the total number contained in the {sland 1s upwards of three thousand; on this point most of the authorities agree. But by far the clearest impression of the vast num- bers of these towers, n good condition long. ‘ages ago, 16 to be obtained from an ad- mirable map of a small corner of Sardinia made by the Cav. Filippo Nissard!, Inspector of the Museo Nazionale at Cagliari, unfor- tunately as yet unpublished. The specific marks indicating nuraghl, whether ruined or Intact, are In some places so close together ‘as to remind one of the “Temperance Map" of London, in which each red spot stands for a tavern. As Dr. Nissardi's map represents the “‘nuraghography” of only the northwest- ern angle lying to the left of Porto Torres and Alghero, it Is much to be regretted that the authorities have not yet seen fit to en- able him to complete the survey of the taland defore the disappearance, through careless- noss or deliberate destruction, of many more of these interesting remains.

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