Morning journal and courier., 1884-07-04

but forgot to notice the sedate, passionless, orderly administration that held the door open, and kept the peace for all. In studying the time of Adams, we think of the nation in observing that of Jackson, we think of Jackson himself. In him we see the first popular favorite of nation now well out of leading strings, and particularly bent on going alone. By so much as he differed from Adams, by so much the people liked him bet ter. His conquests had been those of war, always more dazzling than those of peace; his temperament was of fire, always more at- tractive then one of marble He was helped by what he had done, and by what he had not done. Even his absence of diplomatic training was almost counted 8 virtae, because all this training was then necessarily Eu- ropeap, and the demand has Tipened for a purely American product.
 It had been quite essential to the sele-re- spect of new republic, at the outset that it should have at It's head men who have coped with European statesmen on their own soil and not been discomfted This was the case with each of the early successors of Washing ton, and in view of his manifest superiority this advantage was not needed. Perhaps it was in different way sign of self-respect that the new republic should at last turn from this tradition, and take bodily from the ranks 8 strong and ill-trsined leader, to whom all European precedent-and, indeed, all other precedent-counted for nothing. In Jackson,
 moreOFSFs Gn0ro urSG appeared upon Our national stage the since familiar figure of the self made man. Other residents had sprung from the modest origin, but nobody had made an especial point of it. Nobody had urged
 Washington for office because he had been a surveyors lad; nobody had voted for Adams merely because stately old ladies designated him as 'that cobbler's son." But when Jackson came into office the people had al- most suTfeit of regular training in their chief magistrates. There was 8 certain zest in the thought of change, and the nation certainly had it.
 It must be remembered that Jackson was in many ways far above the successive mod ern imitators who have posed in his image. He was narrow, ignorant, violent, unreRson- able; he punished his enemies and rewarded his friends. But he was, on the other hand and his worst opponents hardly denied 1t -chaste, honest, truthful and sincere. It was not commonly charged upon him that he enriched himself at the public expense, or that he deliberately isvented falsehoods. And he was for time more bitterly hated than any one who ever occupied his high of fee; we may be very sure that these things would have been charged had 1t been possi- bIe. In this respect the contrast was enor- nous between Jackson and his imltators, and 1t explains his prolonged influence. He never was found out or exposed before the world, becau there was nothing to detect o. uu- veil his merits and demerits were visible as his long, narrow, firmly set features, or as the old military stock that encircled his neck. There he was, always fully revealed every body could see him; the people might take him or leave him-and they never left him.
 Moreover, there was after the eight years of Monroe and the four years of Adams an immense popular demand for something piquant and even amusing, and this quality they always had from Jackson. T. ere was nothing in the least melodramatic about him; he never posed or attitudinized- it would have required too much patience
 but he was always p quant. There was for merly good deal of discussion as to who wrote the once famoas 'tJack Downing" let ters, but we might almost say they wrote themselves. Nobody was ever less of 8 hu- morist than Andrew Jackson, and 1t WAS therefore the more essential that he should be the cause of humor in others. It was simply inevitable that during his progresses through the country there should be some amusing shadow evoked, some Yankee pa rOdy of the man, such as came from two or threS quarters under the name of Jack Down ing The various records of Monroe's fa- nous tours are as tame as the speeches which these expeditions brought forth, and John Quincy Adams never made any popular de- monstrations to chronicle; but wherever Jackson went there went the other Jack, the crude frst-fruits of what is now known through the world as American humors T Jack Downing was Mark Twain and Hosea Biglow and Artemus Ward in one. The i'm. petuous president enraged many and de lighted many; but it is something to know that under him a serious people first found that 1t knew how to laugh.