All over the world examples may be found which are lessons to
us. Could you go to Naples, you will find beyond the Grotto of
Phisillippo, where the soft waves of the delightful Bay make their
music on the shore--the tomb of the great Latin poet--Virgil. Men from
every clime go thither to pay their homage to his tomb, although two
thousand years have gone since his Epic was given to the world. His
tomb is still the mausoleum of Genius. It is respected, protected and
honored. Some of you have seen the monuments Scotland has reared to
her gifted men. Some of you have seen the tomb of Walter Scott, at
Dryburg Abbey, and have not only admired its beauty and repose, but
have admired the vigilant care with which it is guarded and protected.
Go to Rome! Beneath St. Peter's Bascilica, you will find there the
tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul. They are guarded ever by
priestly vigilance, and around them burn the ever-trimmed lamps of
religious veneration. At Paris, the great Napoleon sleeps, honored
in death beyond all human conquerors, in the _Hotel des Invalides_,
surrounded by a hundred banners, emblems of his victories and his
genius!
England has her Westminster Hall, wherein is enshrined her royal line,
and by a higher heritage a line of genius, from Chaucer, who sung the
dawn of English verse, to Macaulay, who illustrated her history in
the undying eloquence of his prose. France has her St. Denis, the last
abode of her kings, and Paris has its Pantheon, in whose vaults the
literary demigods are immortalized!
But I pass these reminiscences by. We have a tomb which, I trust, in
future, will be cared for and protected; and as long as woman is the
watcher, her faith and patience will guard it with vestal vigilance.
It is neither a trite nor an untrue saying, that if a man bears the
blade of patriotism, woman is the jewel in its hilt. She has and ever
will make that jewel shine, wherever there is a fair opportunity and
an ennobling civilization.
Why has this association of American women been formed? For the
purpose of purchasing, preserving, reclaiming and protecting that
spot we have just left, so sacred in our historic annals and in the
nation's memory. It is because the man who lies there buried is not
the mere hero of a novel--not the mere hero of to-day--not the mere
soldier who achieved with his own sword his own fortune--not your
Sultan Mohammed or Emperor Napoleon, who, with bloody ambition,
created an empire on the Bosphorus or a dynasty on the Seine. The
career of these heroes of the battle-field is as yonder blood-red
moon, just risen above the Potomac, compared with the bright
effulgence of the noonday sun, which shines with no borrowed light, as
an auriole around the memory of George Washington. He can be addressed
at this day, when he is so canonized in our hearts, only in the
language of that poetry which has likened him to the brightest imagery
which the material universe can furnish. He has been spoken of as the
illustrious but lost Pleiad in our American constellation.