Modern Eloquence Volume Ii Part 15

[Applause.]

Gentlemen, many of the events which to-day bulk largely in our eyes will look strangely insignificant when seen through the vista of time; but of this I feel satisfied, that if the men of to-day by their actions can do anything to put upon a permanent basis cordial, friendly relations and co-operation between your Republic and the British Empire, these actions will grow in men's estimation larger rather than smaller, and generations to come will rise to call those blessed who put the relations of the two countries upon a sound and satisfactory footing.

[Applause.]

Gentlemen, however successful we may be, as I trust we shall be successful, in composing such differences as now exist--in the nature of things it is impossible but that difficulties from time to time will arise--in the future, how are we going to treat them? In what spirit shall we meet them as they arise? It sometimes seems to me strange that nations which, after all, are but collections of individuals should deal with their differences in a manner in which sensible men as individuals never would dream of treating them. [Applause.] We seem, somehow, when once we have taken up a position, to feel as if it were impossible to withdraw from it. We must adhere to it, whether originally we took it up wisely or unwisely, whether it was sound or unsound. We lash ourselves into a white heat over the differences that arise, although the relations that they bear to our national life and our national interests may be of comparative insignificance. If an individual were to deal in that way, always to stand out in every case for his strict rights, always to be prepared to contest everything, to adhere always to what he claims as his right, to get into a rage with his neighbor because he would not see as he saw himself--well, we should call that man an intolerably quarrelsome fellow who was not fit for civilized human society [cheers]; and yet, as nations, apparently there seems nothing strange in our doing that which, as individuals, we should be the last to dream of doing.

A friend, a former colleague of mine--now, alas! no more,--told me that he was, many years ago, travelling up to London with an owner of race horses who was accompanied by his trainer. When they arrived at the station near the metropolis where the tickets are collected, the ticket-collector came, and my friend said, "My servant has my ticket in the next carriage." The ticket-collector retired and presently came back rather angry and said, "I cannot find him." My friend said, "he is in the next carriage--or the next carriage but one; he is there." As soon as the ticket-collector retired for the second time the trainer leaned forward and said, "Stick to it, my Lord, you will tire him out."

[Laughter and cheers.] Is not that sometimes a little indicative of the spirit in which we are inclined to act nationally when we have taken up any position, even though it be a false one?

Gentlemen, it seems to me that these questions of our future relations with one another are questions of special moment just now. You are at a parting of the ways. It would be presumptuous, as it would be unwise, in me to forecast or to attempt to forecast the decision at which you will arrive on questions that have yet to be solved. But, putting these questions that remain for solution aside, and dealing only with the events as they are now known and fixed, it is impossible not to feel that this year marks an epoch in the history of the United States, and the relation which the United States is to bear to Great Britain, and the relation which Great Britain is to bear to the United States; and the spirit which is to animate those two peoples becomes of more importance than it ever has been before. I rejoice to see those flags joined as they are around this room to-night. [Applause.] G.o.d grant that they may never be flaunted in defiance of one another. [Applause.] I rejoice to see them united in concord, not in any spirit of arrogance toward other peoples, not as desiring to infringe the rights of any other power, but because I see in that union a real safeguard for the maintenance of peace in the world [applause], and because I see more than that--I see the surest guaranty of an extended reign of liberty and justice. [Prolonged applause.]

GEORGE STILLMAN HILLARD

THE INFLUENCE OF MEN OF GENIUS

[Speech of George S. Hillard at the banquet given to Charles d.i.c.kens by the "Young Men of Boston," February 1, 1842. The company consisted of about two hundred, among whom were George Bancroft, Washington Allston and Oliver Wendell Holmes.]

MR. PRESIDENT:--Our meeting together this evening is one of the agreeable results of the sympathy established between two great and distant nations by a common language and a common literature. We are paying our cheerful tribute of grat.i.tude and admiration to one who, though heretofore a stranger to us in person, has made his image a familiar presence in innumerable hearts, who has brightened the sunshine of many a happy, and cheered the gloom of many a desponding breast, whose works have been companions to the solitary and a cordial in the sick man's chamber, and whose natural pathos and thoughtful humor, flowing from a genius as healthy as it is inventive, have drawn more closely the ties which bind man to his brother man, and have given us a new sense of the wickedness of injustice, the deformity of selfishness, the beauty of self-sacrifice, the dignity of humble virtue, and the strength of that love which is found in "huts where poor men lie."

The new harvest of applause which is gathered by the gifted minds of England, in a country separated from their own by three thousand miles of ocean, is a privilege peculiar to them, and one to which no author, however rich in golden opinion won at home, can feel himself indifferent. No brow can be so thickly shaded with indigenous laurels, as not to wear, with emotion, those which are the growth of a foreign soil. There is no homage so true and unquestionable as that which the stranger offers. At home the popularity of an author may, during his own life at least, be greatly increased by circ.u.mstances not at all affecting the intrinsic value of his writings. The caprice of fashion, the accident of high rank or distinguished social position, the zeal of a literary faction or a political party, may invest some "Cynthia of the minute" with a brief notoriety, which resembles true fame only as the meteor resembles the star. But popularity of this kind is of too flimsy and delicate a texture to bear transportation. It is only merit of a solid and durable fabric which can survive a voyage across the Atlantic.

It has been said, with as much truth as point, that a foreign nation is a sort of contemporaneous posterity. Its judgment resembles the calm, unbiased voice of future ages. It has no infusion of personal feeling; it is a serene and unimpa.s.sioned verdict, neither won by favor, nor withheld from prejudice. The admiration which comes from afar off is valuable in the direct ratio of its distance, as there is the same degree of a.s.surance that it springs from no secondary cause, but is a spontaneous and unbought tribute. An English author might see with comparative unconcern his book upon a drawing-room table in London, but should he chance to meet a well-thumbed copy of it in a log-house beyond our western mountains, would not his heart swell with just pride at the thought of the wide s.p.a.ce through which his name was diffused and his influence felt, and would not his lips almost unconsciously utter the expression of the wandering Trojan:--

"_Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?_"

It is also probably true that, in our country, English authors find their warmest and most impa.s.sioned admirers. It is as true of the mind as of the eye, that distance lends enchantment to the view. There are no hues so soft and delicate as those with which the imagination invests that which is unseen or faintly discerned. Remoteness in s.p.a.ce has the same idealizing effect as remoteness of time. The voice that comes to us from the dim distance is like that which comes to us from the dim past.

We know, but we do not feel, the interval which separates Shakespeare from Scott, Milton from Wordsworth, Hume from Hallam. We know them only by those airy creations of the brain which speak to us through the printed page. Solitude, and silence too, are the nurses of deep and strong feeling. That imaginative element which exalts the love of Dante for Beatrice, and of Burns for his "Mary in Heaven," deepens the fervor of admiration with which the pale, enthusiastic scholar, in some lonely farmhouse in New England, hangs over a favorite author, who, though perhaps a living contemporary, is recognized only as an absolute essence of genius, wisdom or truth. The minds of men whom we see face to face appear to shine upon us darkly through the infirmities of a mortal frame. Their faculties are touched by weariness or pain, or some humiliating weakness or unhandsome pa.s.sion thrusts its eclipsing shadow between us and the light of their genius. Not so with those to whom they speak only through the medium of books. In these we see the products of those golden hours, when all that was low is elevated, when all that was dark is illumined, and all that was earthly is transfigured. Books have no touch of personal infirmity--theirs is undying bloom, immortal youth, perennial fragrance. Age cannot wrinkle, disease cannot blight, death cannot pierce them. The personal image of the author is quite as likely to be a hindrance as a help to his book. The actor who played with Shakespeare in his own "Hamlet" probably did but imperfect justice to that wonderful play, and the next-door neighbor of a popular author will be very likely to read his books with a carping, censorious spirit, unknown to him who has seen his vision only in his mind.

Mr. President, I dwell with pleasure on the considerations to which an occasion like this gives birth. It is good for us to be here. Whatever has a tendency to make two great nations forget those things in which they differ, and remember those only in which they have a common interest, is a benefit to them both. Whatever makes the hearts of two countries beat in unison, makes them more enamored of harmony, more sensitive to discord. Honor to the men of genius who made two hemispheres thrill to the same electric touch, who at the same time, and with the same potent spell, are ruling the hearts of men in the mountains of Scotland, the forests of Canada, the hillsides of New England, the prairies of Illinois, and the burning plains of India.

Their influence, so far as it extends, is a peaceful and a humanizing one. When you have instructed two men with the same wisdom, and charmed them with the same wit, you have established between them a bond of sympathy, however slight, and made it so much the more difficult to set them at variance. When I remember the history of England, how much she has done for law, liberty, virtue and religion--for all that beautifies and dignifies life--when I realize how much that is most valuable and characteristic in our own inst.i.tutions is borrowed from her--when I recall our obligations to her matchless literature, I feel a throb of grat.i.tude that "Chatham's language is my mother-tongue," and my heart warms to the land of my fathers. I embrace with peculiar satisfaction every consideration that tends to give us an unity of spirit in the bond of peace--to make us blind to each other's faults, and kind to each other's virtues. I feel all the force of the fine lines of one whom we have the honor to receive as a guest this evening:--

"Though ages long have pa.s.sed Since our fathers left their home, Their pilot in the blast, O'er untravelled seas to roam, Yet lives the blood of England in our veins.

And shall we not proclaim That blood of honest fame, Which no tyranny can tame By its chains?

"While the manners, while the arts That mould a nation's soul, Still cling around our hearts,-- Between, let ocean roll, Our joint communion breaking with the sun.

Yet still from either beach The voice of blood shall reach, More audible than speech-- We are one."

It is now more than sixty-seven years since the rapid growth of our country was sketched by Mr. Burke, in the course of his speech on conciliation with America, in a pa.s.sage whose picturesque beauty has made it one of the commonplaces of literature, in which he represents the angel of Lord Bathurst drawing up the curtain of futurity, unfolding the rising glories of England, and pointing out to him America, a little speck scarce visible in the ma.s.s of the national interest, yet which was destined before he tasted of death to show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which then attracted the admiration of the world. There are many now living whose lives extend over the whole of this period--and during that s.p.a.ce, what memorable changes have taken place in the relations of the two countries! Let us imagine the angel of that ill.u.s.trious author and statesman, when the last words of that profound and beautiful speech were dying upon the air, withdrawing him from the congratulations of his friends, and unfolding to him the future progress of that country, whose growth up to that period he had so felicitously sketched:--"There is that America, whose interests you have so well understood and so eloquently maintained, which, at this moment, is taking measures to withdraw from the protection and defy the power of the mother country. But mourn not that this bright jewel is destined to fall from your country's crown. It is an obedience to the same law of Providence which sends the full-fledged bird from the nest, and the man from his father's house.

Man shall not be able to sever what the immutable laws of Providence have joined together. The chafing chains of colonial dependence shall be exchanged for ties light as air, yet strong as steel. The peaceful and profitable interchange of commerce--the same language--a common literature--similar laws, and kindred inst.i.tutions shall bind you together with cords which neither cold-blooded policy, nor grasping selfishness, nor fratricidal war, shall be able to snap. Discoveries in science and improvements in art shall be constantly contracting the ocean which separates you, and the genius of steam shall link your sh.o.r.es together with a chain of iron and flame. A new heritage of glory shall await your men of genius in those now unpeopled solitudes. The grand and lovely creations of your myriad-minded Shakespeare--the majestic line of Milton--the stately energy of Dryden, and the compact elegance of Pope, shall form and train the minds of uncounted mult.i.tudes yet slumbering in the womb of the future. Her gifted and educated sons shall come over to your sh.o.r.es with a feeling akin to that which sends the Mussulman to Mecca. Your St. Paul's shall kindle their devotion; your Westminster Abbey shall warm their patriotism; your Stratford-on-Avon and Abbotsford shall awaken in their bosoms a depth of emotion in which your own countrymen shall hardly be able to sympathize.

Extraordinary physical advantages and the influence of genial inst.i.tutions shall there give to the human race a rate of increase hitherto unparalleled; but the stream, however much it be widened and prolonged, shall retain the character of the fountain from which it first flowed. Every wave of population that gains upon that vast green wilderness shall bear with it the blood, the speech, and the books of England, and aid in transmitting to the generations that come after it, her arts, her literature, and her laws." If this had been revealed to him, would it not have required all the glow of his imagination and all the strength of his judgment to believe it? Let us who are seeing the fulfilment of this vision, utter the fervent prayer that no sullen clouds of coldness or estrangement may ever obscure these fair relations, and that the madness of man may never mar the benevolent purposes of G.o.d.

SAMUEL REYNOLDS HOLE

WITH BRAINS, SIR!

[Speech of Samuel Reynolds Hole, Dean of Rochester Cathedral, at a banquet given in his honor by the Lotos Club, New York City, October 27, 1894. Frank R. Lawrence, the President of the Club, in introducing Dean Hole recalled the fact that the Club had had the honor of receiving Dean Stanley and Charles Kingsley.]

GENTLEMEN:--I can a.s.sure you that when I received your invitation, having heard so much of the literary, artistic and social amenities of your famous Club, I resembled in feelings, not in feature, the beautiful bride of Burleigh, when--

"A trouble weighed upon her, And perplexed her, night and morn, With the burthen of an honor Unto which she was not born."

I could have quoted the words of the mate in Hood's "Up the Rhine," when during a storm at sea a t.i.tled lady sent for him, and asked him if he could swim. "Yes, my lady," says he, "like a duck." "That being the case," says she, "I shall condescend to lay hold of your arm all night."

"Too great an honor for the likes of me," says the mate. [Laughter.]

Even when I came into this building--though I am not a shy man, having been educated at Brazenose College, and preposterously flattered throughout my life, most probably on account of my size,--I had not lost this sense of unworthiness; but your gracious reception has not only rea.s.sured me, but has induced the delicious hallucination that, at some period forgotten, in some unconscious condition, I have said something or done something, or written something, which really deserved your approbation. [Applause.] To be serious, I am, of course, aware why this great privilege has been conferred upon me. It is because you have a.s.sociated me with those great men with whom I was in happy intercourse, that you have made my heart glad to-night.

It has ever been my ambition to blend my life, as the great painter does his colors, "with brains, sir;" and I venture to think that such a yearning is a magnificent proof that we are not wholly dest.i.tute of this article, as when the poor wounded soldier exclaimed, on hearing the doctor say that he could see his brains: "Oh, please write home and tell father, for he has always said I never had any." [Laughter.] Be that as it may, my appreciation of my superiors has evoked from them a marvellous sympathy, has led to the formation of very precious friendships, and has been my elevator unto the higher abodes of brightness and freshness, as it is to-night.

Yes, my brothers, it is delightful to dwell "with brains, sir,"

condensed in books in that glorious world, a library--a world which we can traverse without being sick at sea or footsore on land; in which we can reach heights of science without leaving our easy-chair, hear the nightingales, the poets, with no risk of catarrh, survey the great battle-fields of the world unscathed; a world in which we are surrounded by those who, whatever their temporal rank may have been, are its true kings and real n.o.bility, and which places within our reach a wealth more precious than rubies, "for all things thou canst desire are not to be compared with it." In this happy world I met Washington Irving, Fenimore Cooper, Hawthorne, Willis, Longfellow, Whittier and all your great American authors, historical, poetical, pathetic, humorous; and ever since I have rejoiced to hold converse with them. Nevertheless, it is with our living companions, with our fellow-men who love books as we do, that this fruition is complete, and so it comes to pa.s.s in the words of one whose name I speak with a full heart, Oliver Wendell Holmes, that "a dinner-table made up of such material as this is the last triumph of civilization over barbarism." [Applause.]

We feel as our witty Bishop (afterward Archbishop) Magee described himself, when he said: "I am just now in such a sweet, genial disposition, that even a curate might play with me." [Great laughter.]

We are bold to state with Artemus Ward, of his regiment composed exclusively of major-generals, that "we will rest muskets with anybody."

"Linger, I cried, O radiant Time, thy pow'r Hath nothing else to give; life is complete, Let but the happy present, hour by hour.

Itself remember and itself repeat."

And yet one more quotation we are glad to make, wherewith to make some amends for the stupidity of him who quotes lines most appropriate, by Tennyson, from the "Lotos-Eaters," and repeated by one who has just crossed the Atlantic:--

"We have had enough of action, and of motion we, Rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard, when the surge was seething free Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.

Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind, In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined On the hills, like G.o.ds together, careless of mankind."

Now, gentlemen, let me give, "evermore thanks, the exchequer of the poor." [Long applause.]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

_OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Photogravure after a photograph from life_

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

WELCOME TO THE ALUMNI

[Speech of Oliver Wendell Holmes as President of the day, at the annual dinner of the Harvard Alumni a.s.sociation, in Cambridge, July 19, 1860, inaugurating the practice of public speaking at the "Harvard Dinners."

That year also took place the inauguration of President C. Felton, an event to which the speaker alludes in his graceful reference to the "goodly armful of scholarship, experience and fidelity" once more filling the "old chair of office."]