I feel most keenly the honor which you confer upon me in connecting my
name with the interests of literature, I am embarrassed, in responding,
by the nature of my subject. What is literature, and who are men of
letters? From one point of view we are the most unprofitable of
mankind--engaged mostly in blowing soap-bubbles. From another point of
view we are the most practical and energetic portion of the community.
If literature be the art of employing words skilfully in representing
facts, or thoughts, or emotions, you may see excellent specimens of it
every day in the advertisements in our newspapers. Every man who uses a
pen to convey his meaning to others--the man of science, the man of
business, the member of a learned profession--belongs to the community
of letters. Nay, he need not use his pen at all. The speeches of great
orators are among the most treasured features of any national
literature. The orations of Mr. Grattan are the text-books in the
schools of rhetoric in the United States. Mr. Bright, under this aspect
of him, holds a foremost place among the men of letters of England.
Again, sir, every eminent man, be he what he will, be he as unbookish as
he pleases, so he is only eminent enough, so he holds a conspicuous
place in the eyes of his countrymen, potentially belongs to us, and if
not in life, then after he is gone, will be enrolled among us. The
public insist on being admitted to his history, and their curiosity will
not go unsatisfied. His letters are hunted up, his journals are sifted;
his sayings in conversation, the doggerel which he writes to his
brothers and sisters are collected, and stereotyped in print. His fate
overtakes him. He can not escape from it. We cry out, but it does not
appear that men sincerely resist the liberty which is taken with them.
We never hear of them instructing their executors to burn their papers.
They have enjoyed so much the exhibition that has been made of their
contemporaries that they consent to be sacrificed themselves.
Again, sir, when we look for those who have been most distinguished as
men of letters, in the usual sense of the word, where do we find them?
The famous lawyer is found in his chambers, the famous artist is found
in his studio. Our foremost representatives we do not find always in
their libraries; we find them, in the first place, in the service of
their country. ("Hear! Hear!") Owen Meredith is Viceroy of India, and
all England has applauded the judgment that selected and sent him there.
The right honorable gentleman (Mr. Gladstone) who three years ago was
conducting the administration of this country with such brilliant
success was first generally known to his countrymen as a remarkable
writer. During forty years of arduous service he never wholly deserted
his original calling. He is employing an interval of temporary
retirement to become the interpreter of Homer to the English race, or to
break a lance with the most renowned theologians in defense of spiritual
liberty.
A great author, whose life we have been all lately reading with
delight, contemplates the year 3000 as a period at which his works may
still be studied. If any man might be led reasonably to form such an
anticipation for himself by the admiration of his contemporaries, Lord
Macaulay may be acquitted of vanity. The year 3000 is far away, much
will happen between now and then; all that we can say with certainty of
the year 3000 is that it will be something extremely different from what
any one expects. I will not predict that men will then be reading Lord
Macaulay's "History of England." I will not predict that they will then
be reading "Lothair." But this I will say, that if any statesman of the
age of Augustus or the Antonines had left us a picture of patrician
society at Rome, drawn with the same skill, and with the same delicate
irony with which Mr. Disraeli has described a part of English society
in "Lothair," no relic of antiquity would now be devoured with more
avidity and interest. Thus, sir, we are an anomalous body, with very
ill-defined limits. But, such as we are, we are heartily obliged to you
for wishing us well, and I give you our most sincere thanks.
LITERATURE AND POLITICS
BY JOHN MORLEY
Mr. President, Your Royal Highness, My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen:--I
feel that I am more unworthy now than I was eight years ago to figure as
the representative of literature before this brilliant gathering of all
the most important intellectual and social interests of our time. I have
not yet been able like the Prime Minister, to go round this exhibition
and see the works of art that glorify your walls; but I am led by him to
expect that I shall see the pictures of Liberal leaders, including M.
Rochefort. I am not sure whether M. Rochefort will figure as a man of
letters or as a Liberal leader, but I can understand that his portrait
would attract the Prime Minister because M. Rochefort is a politician
who was once a Liberal leader, and who has now seen occasion to lose his
faith in Parliamentary government. Nor have I seen the picture of "The
Flowing Tide," but I shall expect to find in that picture when I do see
it a number of bathing-machines in which, not the younger generation,
but the elder generation, as I understand are waiting confidently--for
the arrival of the "Flowing Tide," and when it arrives, the elderly
gentlemen who are incarcerated in those machines will be only too
anxious for a man and a horse to come and deliver them from their
imminent peril.
I thought that I detected in the last words of your speech, in proposing
this toast, Mr. President, an accent of gentle reproach that any one
should desert the high and pleasant ways of literature for the turmoil
and the everlasting contention of public life. I do not suppose that
there has ever been a time in which there was less of divorce between
literature and public life than the present time. There have been in the
reign of the Queen two eminent statesmen who have thrice had the
distinction of being Prime Minister, and oddly enough, one of those
statesman (Lord Derby) has left behind him a most spirited version of
Homer, while the other eminent statesman (William E. Gladstone)--happily
still among us, still examines the legends and the significance of
Homer. Then when we come to a period nearer to ourselves, and look at
those gentlemen who have in the last six years filled the office of
Minister for Ireland, we find that no fewer than three (George Otto
Trevelyan, John Morley, and Arthur Balfour) were authors of books
before they engaged in the very ticklish business of the government of
men. And one of these three Ministers for Ireland embarked upon his
literary career--which promised ample distinction--under the editorial
auspices of another of the three. We possess in one branch of the
Legislature the author of the most fascinating literary biography in our
language. We possess also another writer whose range of knowledge and of
intellectual interest is so great that he has written the most important
book upon the American Commonwealth (James Bryce).
The first canon in literature was announced one hundred years ago by an
eminent Frenchman who said that in literature it is your business to
have preferences but no exclusions. In politics it appears to be our
business to have very stiff and unchangeable preferences, and exclusion
is one of the systematic objects of our life. In literature, according
to another canon, you must have a free and open mind and it has been
said: "Never be the prisoner of your own opinions." In politics you are
very lucky if you do not have the still harder fate--(and I think that
the gentlemen on the President's right hand will assent to that as
readily as the gentlemen who sit on his left) of being the prisoner of
other people's opinions. Of course no one can doubt for a moment that
the great achievements of literature--those permanent and vital works
which we will never let die--require a devotion as unceasing, as
patient, as inexhaustible, as the devotion that is required for the
works that adorn your walls; and we have luckily in our age--tho it may
not be a literary age--masters of prose and masters of verse. No prose
more winning has ever been written than that of Cardinal Newman; no
verse finer, more polished, more melodious has ever been written than
that of Lord Tennyson and Mr. Swinburne.
It seems to me that one of the greatest functions of literature at this
moment is not merely to produce great works, but also to protect the
English language--that noble, that most glorious instrument--against
those hosts of invaders which I observe have in these days sprung up. I
suppose that every one here has noticed the extraordinary list of names
suggested lately in order to designate motion by electricity; that list
of names only revealed what many of us had been observing for a long
time--namely, the appalling forces that are ready at a moment's notice
to deface and deform our English tongue. These strange, fantastic,
grotesque, and weird titles open up to my prophetic vision a most
unwelcome prospect. I tremble to see the day approach--and I am not sure
that it is not approaching--when the humorists of the headlines of
American journalism shall pass current as models of conciseness, energy,
and color of style.
Even in our social speech this invasion seems to be taking place in an
alarming degree, and I wonder what the Pilgrim Fathers of the
seventeenth century would say if they could hear their pilgrim children
of the nineteenth century who come over here, on various missions, and
among others, "On the make." This is only one of the thousand such-like
expressions which are invading the Puritan simplicity of our tongue. I
will only say that I should like, for my own part, to see in every
library and in every newspaper office that admirable passage in which
Milton--who knew so well how to handle both the great instrument of
prose and the nobler instrument of verse--declared that next to the man
who furnished courage and intrepid counsels against an enemy he placed
the man who should enlist small bands of good authors to resist that
barbarism which invades the minds and the speech of men in methods and
habits of speaking and writing.
I thank you for having allowed me the honor of saying a word as to the
happiest of all callings and the most imperishable of all arts.
GENERAL SHERMAN
BY CARL SCHURZ
Gentlemen:--The adoption by the Chamber of Commerce of these resolutions
which I have the honor to second, is no mere perfunctory proceeding. We
have been called here by a genuine impulse of the heart. To us General
Sherman was not a great man like other great men, honored and revered at
a distance. We had the proud and happy privilege of calling him one of
us. Only a few months ago, at the annual meeting of this Chamber, we saw
the familiar face of our honorary member on this platform by the side of
our President. Only a few weeks ago he sat at our banquet table, as he
had often before, in the happiest mood of conviviality, and contributed
to the enjoyment of the night with his always unassuming and always
charming speech. And as he moved among us without the slightest pomp of
self-conscious historic dignity, only with the warm and simple geniality
of his nature, it would cost us sometimes an effort of the memory to
recollect that he was the renowned captain who had marshaled mighty
armies victoriously on many a battlefield, and whose name stood, and
will forever stand, in the very foremost rank of the saviors of this
Republic, and of the great soldiers of the world's history. Indeed, no
American could have forgotten this for a moment; but the affection of
those who were so happy as to come near to him, would sometimes struggle
to outrun their veneration and gratitude.
Death has at last conquered the hero of so many campaigns; our cities
and towns and villages are decked with flags at half-mast; the muffled
drum and the funeral cannon boom will resound over the land as his dead
body passes to the final resting-place; and the American people stand
mournfully gazing into the void left by the sudden disappearance of the
last of the greatest men brought forth by our war of regeneration--and
this last also finally become, save Abraham Lincoln alone, the most
widely beloved. He is gone; but as we of the present generation remember
it, history will tell all coming centuries the romantic story of the
famous "March to the Sea"--how, in the dark days of 1864, Sherman,
having worked his bloody way to Atlanta, then cast off all his lines of
supply and communication, and, like a bold diver into the dark unknown,
seemed to vanish with all his hosts from the eyes of the world, until
his triumphant reappearance on the shores of the ocean proclaimed to the
anxiously expecting millions, that now the final victory was no longer
doubtful, and that the Republic would surely be saved.
Nor will history fail to record that this great general was, as a
victorious soldier, a model of republican citizenship. When he had done
his illustrious deeds, he rose step by step to the highest rank in the
army, and then, grown old, he retired. The Republic made provision for
him in modest republican style. He was satisfied. He asked for no higher
reward. Altho the splendor of his achievements, and the personal
affection for him, which every one of his soldiers carried home, made
him the most popular American of his day, and altho the most glittering
prizes were not seldom held up before his eyes, he remained untroubled
by ulterior ambition. No thought that the Republic owed him more ever
darkened his mind. No man could have spoken to him of the "ingratitude
of Republics," without meeting from him a stern rebuke. And so, content
with the consciousness of a great duty nobly done, he was happy in the
love of his fellow citizens.
Indeed, he may truly be said to have been in his old age, not only the
most beloved, but also the happiest of Americans. Many years he lived in
the midst of posterity. His task was finished, and this he wisely
understood. His deeds had been passed upon by the judgment of history,
and irrevocably registered among the glories of his country and his age.
His generous heart envied no one, and wished every one well; and
ill-will had long ceased to pursue him. Beyond cavil his fame was
secure, and he enjoyed it as that which he had honestly earned, with a
genuine and ever fresh delight, openly avowed by the charming frankness
of his nature. He dearly loved to be esteemed and cherished by his
fellow men, and what he valued most, his waning years brought him in
ever increasing abundance. Thus he was in truth a most happy man, and
his days went down like an evening sun in a cloudless autumn sky. And
when now the American people, with that peculiar tenderness of affection
which they have long borne him, lay him in his grave, the happy ending
of his great life may soothe the pang of bereavement they feel in their
hearts at the loss of the old hero who was so dear to them, and of whom
they were and always will be so proud. His memory will ever be bright to
us all; his truest monument will be the greatness of the Republic he
served so well; and his fame will never cease to be prized by a grateful
country, as one of its most precious possessions.
ORATION OVER ALEXANDER HAMILTON[4]
BY GOUVERNEUR MORRIS
My Friends:--If on this sad, this solemn occasion, I should endeavor to
move your commiseration, it would be doing injustice to that sensibility
which has been so generally and so justly manifested. Far from
attempting to excite your emotions, I must try to repress my own; and
yet, I fear, that instead of the language of a public speaker, you will
hear only the lamentations of a wailing friend. But I will struggle with
my bursting heart, to portray that heroic spirit, which has flown to
the mansions of bliss.
Students of Columbia--he was in the ardent pursuit of knowledge in your
academic shades when the first sound of the American war called him to
the field. A young and unprotected volunteer, such was his zeal, and so
brilliant his service, that we heard his name before we knew his person.
It seemed as if God had called him suddenly into existence, that he
might assist to save a world! The penetrating eye of Washington soon
perceived the manly spirit which animated his youthful bosom. By that
excellent judge of men he was selected as an aid, and thus he became
early acquainted with, and was a principal actor in the more important
scenes of our revolution. At the siege of York he pertinaciously
insisted on, and he obtained the command of a Forlorn Hope. He stormed
the redoubt; but let it be recorded that not one single man of the enemy
perished. His gallant troops, emulating the heroism of their chief
checked the uplifted arm, and spared a foe no longer resisting. Here
closed his military career.
Shortly after the war, your favor--no, your discernment, called him to
public office. You sent him to the convention at Philadelphia; he there
assisted in forming the constitution which is now the bond of our union,
the shield of our defense, and the source of our prosperity. In signing
the compact, he exprest his apprehension that it did not contain
sufficient means of strength for its own preservation; and that in
consequence we should share the fate of many other republics, and pass
through anarchy to despotism. We hoped better things. We confided in the
good sense of the American people; and, above all, we trusted in the
protecting providence of the Almighty. On this important subject he
never concealed his opinion. He disdained concealment. Knowing the
purity of his heart, he bore it as it were in his hand, exposing to
every passenger its inmost recesses. This generous indiscretion
subjected him to censure from misrepresentation. His speculative
opinions were treated as deliberate designs; and yet you all know how
strenuous, how unremitting were his efforts to establish and to preserve
the constitution. If, then, his opinion was wrong, pardon, O pardon,
that single error, in a life devoted to your service.
At the time when our Government was organized, we were without funds,
tho not without resources. To call them into action, and establish order
in the finances, Washington sought for splendid talents, for extensive
information, and above all, he sought for sterling, incorruptible
integrity. All these he found in Hamilton. The system then adopted, has
been the subject of much animadversion. If it be not without a fault,
let it be remembered that nothing human is perfect. Recollect the
circumstances of the moment--recollect the conflict of opinion--and,
above all, remember that a minister of a republic must bend to the will
of the people. The administration which Washington formed was one of the
most efficient, one of the best that any country was ever blessed with.
And the result was a rapid advance in power and prosperity of which
there is no example in any other age or nation. The part which Hamilton
bore is universally known.
His unsuspecting confidence in professions, which he believed to be
sincere, led him to trust too much to the undeserving. This exposed him
to misrepresentation. He felt himself obliged to resign. The care of a
rising family, and the narrowness of his fortune, made it a duty to
return to his profession for their support. But tho he was compelled to
abandon public life, never, no, never for a moment did he abandon the
public service. He never lost sight of your interests. I declare to you,
before that God in whose presence we are now especially assembled, that
in his most private and confidential conversations, the single objects
of discussion and consideration were your freedom and happiness. You
well remember the state of things which again called forth Washington
from his retreat to lead your armies. You know that he asked for
Hamilton to be his second in command. That venerable sage knew well the
dangerous incidents of a military profession, and he felt the hand of
time pinching life at its source. It was probable that he would soon be
removed from the scene, and that his second would succeed to the
command. He knew by experience the importance of that place--and he
thought the sword of America might safely be confided to the hand which
now lies cold in that coffin. Oh! my fellow citizens, remember this
solemn testimonial that he was not ambitious. Yet he was charged with
ambition, and, wounded by the imputation, when he laid down his command
he declared in the proud independence of his soul, that he never would
accept any office, unless in a foreign war he should be called on to
expose his life in defense of his country. This determination was
immovable. It was his fault that his opinions and his resolutions could
not be changed. Knowing his own firm purpose, he was indignant at the
charge that he sought for place or power. He was ambitious only for
glory, but he was deeply solicitous for you. For himself he feared
nothing; but he feared that bad men might, by false professions, acquire
your confidence, and abuse it to your ruin.
Brethren of the Cincinnati--there lies our chief! Let him still be our
model. Like him, after long and faithful public services, let us
cheerfully perform the social duties of private life. Oh! he was mild
and gentle. In him there was no offense; no guile. His generous hand and
heart were open to all.
Gentlemen of the bar--you have lost your brightest ornament. Cherish and
imitate his example. While, like him, with justifiable and laudable
zeal, you pursue the interests of your clients, remember, like him, the
eternal principle of justice.
Fellow citizens--you have long witnessed his professional conduct, and
felt his unrivaled eloquence. You know how well he performed the duties
of a citizen--you know that he never courted your favor by adulation or
the sacrifice of his own judgment. You have seen him contending against
you, and saving your dearest interests, as it were, in spite of
yourselves. And you now feel and enjoy the benefits resulting from the
firm energy of his conduct. Bear this testimony to the memory of my
departed friend. I charge you to protect his fame. It is all he has
left--all that these poor orphan children will inherit from their
father. But, my countrymen, that fame may be a rich treasure to you
also. Let it be the test by which to examine those who solicit your
favor. Disregarding professions, view their conduct, and on a doubtful
occasion ask, "Would Hamilton have done this thing?"
You all know how he perished. On this last scene I can not, I must not
dwell. It might excite emotions too strong for your better judgment.
Suffer not your indignation to lead to any act which might again offend
the insulted majesty of the laws. On his part, as from his lips, tho
with my voice--for his voice you will hear no more--let me entreat you
to respect yourselves.
And now, ye ministers of the everlasting God, perform your holy office,
and commit these ashes of our departed brother to the bosom of the
grave.
FOOTNOTE:
[4] Funeral oration by Gouverneur Morris, statesman and man of affairs,
pronounced before the porch of Trinity Church, New York City, over the
body of Alexander Hamilton, just prior to the interment, July 14, 1804.
EULOGY OF McKINLEY
BY GROVER CLEVELAND
To-day the grave closes over the dead body of the man but lately chosen
by the people of the United States from among their number to represent
their nationality, preserve, protect and defend their Constitution, to
faithfully execute the laws ordained for their welfare, and safely to
hold and keep the honor and integrity of the Republic. His time of
service is ended, not by the expiration of time, but by the tragedy of
assassination. He has passed from public sight, not joyously bearing the
garlands and wreaths of his countrymen's approving acclaim, but amid the
sobs and tears of a mourning nation. He has gone to his home, not the
habitation of earthly peace and quiet, bright with domestic comfort and
joy, but to the dark and narrow house appointed for all the sons of men,
there to rest until the morning light of the resurrection shall gleam in
the East.
All our people loved their dead president. His kindly nature and lovable
traits of character and his amiable consideration for all about him will
long be in the minds and hearts of his countrymen. He loved them in
return with such patriotism and unselfishness that in the hour of their
grief and humiliation he would say to them: "It is God's will; I am
content. If there is a lesson in my life or death, let it be taught to
those who still live and have the destiny of their country in their
keeping."