The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-07-15
slmnson in TRANSFORMATION Scene.

Simpson i'm n TRANSPORTATION Sccne'
From the ~. Y. World.
Political Plutarchs are now busiy engaged
in furnishing nearly as many Lives OF
Grant as Grant has different names-irom his
sponsors in baptism, from Congressman
Hamar from the cadets at West Point, and
from 'boys round the corner" Most of
these biographies must be as bewildering to
Simpson as simpsons numerous names are
mystifying to his sponsors The latest of these
"Lives'' is the work Of an editor, assisted by
q brevet ma or general, the editor furnishing
the fiction with regard to "Grant's Mental
characteristics" but omitting his speeches
on Marshal Browns pups, and other ques-
tions of public policy, and the brevet
major general exhibiting "Grant as Great
Strategist," but suppressing the statistics of
his loss of men in the march from the Rapt-
dan to the James. We have not been favored
with a view of the volume entitled "Grant
as Man and Soldier" but from the ex-
tracts which we find in the journal of the
editor, who also edits Grant, we should say
that the sight would be fully equal to the
final transformation scene in the "White
Fawp," with far more figures and deal more
colorng. Fer, to sum up in brief, no human
being who has heretofore walked upon the face
of the earth has possessed like attributes He is
at once the wisest, most wonderful, and most
beautiful of men-seen through smoked glass
ibis eyes-are large, deep, leonine, and very
nothing can withstand, and of shining with
the steady light of benevolence and amia-
biity. The eyes Of Europe are as nothing to
the eyes of Grant, and an ordinary calcium
light is but farthing rush in comparison.
Such trash as this, to those who have seen
the utterly eXpressionless face which hatter-
ing chrOmo-lithographyf fails to ilumine, will
stamp the whole book as grand blatherskite
Of bosh. 1t is nothing else. Simpson is
tranfused and transfgured in grand
transformation scene and exhibited as
q demigod. His silence is not due to stu
pidity, but to sagacity; his reckless sacrifice
of human life was not slaughter, but strategy;
his few victories in war were not gained by
overwhelming numbers, but by great Moral
Ideas. With this sort of bosh and butter
country school districts and village libraries
will be stuffed till after the November cleo
tion. In this, as in other "Lives," the greatest
pains are taken to show what Grant is not,
and not to exhibit what he is. The people
would like to know the few facts which can
surely be ascertained and easily presented
in life so generally unimportant. For in
stance-How comes it that this prodigy OF
intellect was graduated at West Point as
near the foot OF his class as he convent
emily could geti Under what circum-
stances was his resignation asked and ac-
oepted by Major Rains in 1854 Is he
drunkard, as Phillips, Tilton, and other
radicals ipsinuate Does he know his own
namel Has he the mental and moral q 1a-
ties that fit him to be President? None of the
biographies inform the public on these points,
but, as compensations, we are told that he
has eyes which in beauty are matched only by
the tascir ating smile of Colfax. We note,
however, in this elite of Grant as Man and
Soldier" the attempt, as in other recent
biographies, to compare Grant with Napoleon
the Great, or Napoleon the Third-which of
the two? for he is no more comparable with
the last as statesman than he is with the first
as a soldier, or with either as man. Mayhap
these biographers of Simpson are iusdiously
preparing the public mind for possible Presi-
dent who may choose to subsequently elect
himself by bayonets to Presidency of ten
years, or by coup d'etat at once advance
himself to the throne of an Emperor. Not yet,
Hiram ULYSSES Sidney Simpson NapoleOn.