Modern Eloquence Volume Iii Part 7

As to any present rivalry which may exist between those inst.i.tutions, we disclaim it altogether. We know no jealousy of Harvard College now. We acknowledge no rivalry except in the great enterprise of training upright and intelligent and good-principled men for the service and the glory of our common land. [Applause, and cries of "Hear! Hear!"] But there is one means to this end you may be sure we shall always insist upon--and that is the principle which we have received from our fathers, that manhood and character are better than knowledge. The training which our country demands is that which we intend always to give; and it is a training in manhood of intelligence, in manhood of character, and in a constant, ever-present faith in the providence and goodness of the living G.o.d. [Applause.]

I deem it proper here to remind you, that Yale College was foremost among the American colleges in cherishing the taste for physical science, and that these sciences, in all their forms, have received from us the most liberal attention and care. If any of you doubt this, we would like to show you our museum, with its collections, which represent all that the most recent explorations have been able to gather. In these well-ordered collections you would find as satisfactory an exhibition of results as you could ask for. [Applause.] You need not fear, however, that, because we believe in science, we have learned any more to disbelieve in the living G.o.d. As we stand in the midst of one of the halls of our splendid museum, and see arrayed before us all the forms of vertebrate life, from man down to the lowest type, and see how one and the other suggests the progress--the evolution, if you please--during we care not how many centuries of advancing life; the more closely we study these indications, the more distinctly do we see lines of thought, of intelligence, and goodness reflected from one structure to another, and all declaring that a divine thought and love has ordered each and all.

[Applause.] Hence we find no inconsistency between the teachings of this museum on the one corner and the teachings of the college chapel on the other. [Applause.] We therefore commit ourselves, in the presence of all these sons of New England, whether they live in this city of their habitation and their glory, or whether they are residents of other cities and States of the North and Northwest, to the solemn declaration, that we esteem it to be our duty to train our pupils on the one hand in enlightened science, and on the other in the living power of the Christian faith. [Applause.] We are certainly not sectarian. It is enough that I say that we aim to be enlightened Christian believers, and with those hopes and those aspirations we trust that the next generation of men whom we shall educate will do their part in upholding this country in fidelity to its obligations of duty, in fidelity to every form of integrity, in generous self-sacrifice on the field of contest, if it be required, and in Christian sympathy with the toleration and forbearance which should come after the fight. [Applause.]

HENRY CODMAN POTTER

THE CHURCH

[Speech of Rev. Dr. Henry C. Potter, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New York, at the seventy-third annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 23, 1878. Daniel F.

Appleton presided and proposed the toast, "The Church--a fountain of charity and good works, which is not established, but establishes itself, by G.o.d's blessing, in men's hearts."]

MR. PRESIDENT:--I take up the strain where the distinguished Senator from Maine [James G. Blaine] has dropped it. I would fain be with him one of those who should see a typical New England dinner spread upon a table at which Miles Standish and John Alden sat, and upon which should be spread viands of which John Alden and Miles Standish and the rest, two hundred and seventy-three years ago, partook. I would fain see something more, or rather I would fain hear something more--and that is, the sentiments of those who gathered about that table, and the measure in which those sentiments accorded with the sentiments of those who sit at these tables to-night. [Applause.] Why, Mr. President, the viands of which John Alden and Miles Standish partook did not differ more radically from the splendor of this banquet than did the sentiments with which the Puritans came to these sh.o.r.es differ from the sentiments of the men who gather in this room to-night. If it had happened to them as it happened to a distinguished company in New England, where an eminent New England divine was called upon to lead in prayer, their feelings would have been as little wounded as those against whom he offered up his pet.i.tion; or rather, if I were here to-night to denounce their sentiments as to religious toleration, in which they did not believe; their sentiments as to the separation of the Church from the State, in which they did not believe any more than they believed in religious toleration; their sentiments as to Democracy, in which they did not believe any more than they believed in religious toleration--those of us who are here and who do believe in these things would be as little wounded as the company to which I have referred. The distinguished divine to whom I have alluded was called upon to offer prayer, some fifty years ago, in a mixed company, when, in accordance with the custom of the times, he included in his pet.i.tion to the Almighty a large measure of anathema, as "We beseech Thee, O Lord! to overwhelm the tyrant! We beseech Thee to overwhelm and to pull down the oppressor! We beseech Thee to overwhelm and pull down the Papist!" And then opening his eyes, and seeing that a Roman Catholic archbishop and his secretary were present, he saw he must change the current of his pet.i.tions if he would be courteous to his audience, and said vehemently, "We beseech Thee, O Lord! we beseech Thee--we beseech Thee--we beseech Thee to pull down and overwhelm the Hottentot!" Said some one to him when the prayer was over, "My dear brother, why were you so hard upon the Hottentot?"

"Well," said he, "the fact is, when I opened my eyes and looked around, between the paragraphs in the prayer, at the a.s.sembled guests, I found that the Hottentots were the only people who had not some friends among the company." [Laughter.]

Gentlemen of the New England Society, if I were to denounce the views of the Puritans to-night, they would be like the Hottentots. [Laughter.]

Nay more, if one of their number were to come into this banqueting hall and sit down at this splendid feast, so unlike what he had been wont to see, and were to expound his views as to const.i.tutional liberty and as to religious toleration, or as to the relations of the Church to the State, I am very much afraid that you and I would be tempted to answer him as an American answered an English traveller in a railway-carriage in Belgium. Said this Englishman, whom I happened to meet in Brussels, and who recognized me as an American citizen: "Your countrymen have a very strange conception of the English tongue: I never heard any people who speak the English language in such an odd way as the Americans do."

"What do you mean?" I said; "I supposed that in the American States the educated and cultivated people spoke the English tongue with the utmost propriety, with the same accuracy and the same cla.s.sical refinement as yours." He replied: "I was travelling hither, and found sitting opposite an intelligent gentleman, who turned out to be an American. I went on to explain to him my views as to the late unpleasantness in America. I told him how profoundly I deplored the results of the civil war. That I believed the interests of good government would have been better advanced if the South, rather than the North, had triumphed. I showed him at great length how, if the South had succeeded, you would have been able to have laid in that land, first, the foundations of an aristocracy, and then from that would have grown a monarchy; how by the planters you would have got a n.o.ble cla.s.s, and out of that cla.s.s you would have got a king; and after I had drawn this picture I showed to him what would have been the great and glorious result; and what do you think was his reply to these views? He turned round, looked me coolly in the face, and said, 'Why, what a blundering old cuss you are!'" [Great laughter.] Gentlemen, if one of our New England ancestors were here to-night, expounding his views to us, I am very much afraid that you and I would be tempted to turn round and say: "Why, what a blundering old cuss you are!" [Renewed laughter.]

But, Mr. President, though all this is true, the seeds of our liberty, our toleration, our free inst.i.tutions, our "Church, not established by law, but establishing itself in the hearts of men," were all in the simple and single devotion of the truth so far as it was revealed to them, which was the supreme characteristic of our New England forefathers. With them religion and the Church meant supremely personal religion, and obedience to the personal conscience. It meant truth and righteousness, obedience and purity, reverence and intelligence in the family, in the shop, in the field, and on the bench. It meant compa.s.sion and charity toward the savages among whom they found themselves, and good works as the daily outcome of a faith which, if stern, was steadfast and undaunted.

And so, Mr. President, however the sentiments and opinions of our ancestors may seem to have differed from ours, those New England ancestors did believe in a church that included and incarnated those ideas of charity and love and brotherhood to which you have referred; and if, to-day, the Church of New York, whatever name it may bear, is to be maintained, as one of your distinguished guests has said, not for ornament but for use, it is because the hard, practical, and yet, when the occasion demanded, large-minded and open-hearted spirit of the New England ancestors shall be in it. [Applause.] Said an English swell footman, with his calves nearly as large as his waist, having been called upon by the lady of the house to carry a coal-scuttle from the cellar to the second story, "Madam, ham I for use, or ham I for hornament?" [Laughter.]

I believe it to be the mind of the men of New England ancestry who live in New York to-day, that the Church, if it is to exist here, shall exist for use, and not for ornament; that it shall exist to make our streets cleaner, to make our tenement-houses better built and better drained and better ventilated; to respect the rights of the poor man in regard to fresh air and light, as well as the rights of the rich man. And in order that it shall do these things, and that the Church of New York shall exist not for ornament but for use, I, as one of the descendants of New England ancestors, ask no better thing for it than that it shall have, not only among those who fill its pulpits, men of New England ancestry, but also among those who sit in its pews men of New England brains and New England sympathies, and New England catholic generosity! [Continued applause.]

ROGER ATKINSON PRYOR

VIRGINIA'S PART IN AMERICAN HISTORY

[Speech of Roger A. Pryor at the annual banquet of the New York State Bar a.s.sociation, given in the City of Albany, January 15, 1889. The President, Martin W. Cooke, introduced Justice Pryor in these words: "The next in order is the benediction. There is no poetical sentiment accompanying this toast, but if you will bear with me I promise you learning, poetry, and eloquence. To that end I call upon General Roger A. Pryor."]

MR. CHAIRMAN:--I don't know what I am to respond to. I have no text; I have no topic. What am I to talk about? I am not only unlike other gentlemen, taken by surprise, but I am absolutely without a subject, and what am I to say? I don't know but that, as His Excellency the Governor of this Imperial State expatiated, eloquently and justly, upon the achievements and glories of New York, it might be pardoned me in saying something of my own native State.

What has Virginia done for our common country? What names has she contributed to your historic roll? She has given you George Washington.

[Applause.] She has given you Patrick Henry, who first sounded the signal of revolt against Great Britain. She has given you John Marshall, who so profoundly construed the Const.i.tution formed by Madison and Hamilton. She has given you Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence. [Applause.] She has given you Madison and Monroe. Where is there such a galaxy of great men known to history? You talk of the age of Pericles and of Augustus, but remember, gentlemen, that at that day Virginia had a population of only one-half the population of the city of Brooklyn to-day, and yet these are the men that she then produced to ill.u.s.trate the glory of Americans.

And what has Virginia done for our Union? Because sometime a rebel, as I was, I say now that it is _my_ Union. [Applause.] As I have already said it was a Virginian--Patrick Henry--kinsman, by the way, of Lord Brougham, kinsman of Robertson, the historian, not a plebeian as some would represent, and one nominated by George Washington to be Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, which nomination was carried to him by Light-Horse Harry Lee--I mention that because there is a notion that Patrick Henry was no lawyer. He was a consummate lawyer, else George Washington would never have proposed him to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; and he was a reading man, too, a scholar, deeply learned, and he printed at his own expense Soame Jenyns'

work upon the internal evidence of Christianity. He was a profound student, not of many books, but of a few books and of human nature. He first challenged Great Britain by his resolutions against the Stamp act in 1765, and then it was that Virginia, apropos of what you said to-day in your admirable discourse--I address myself to Judge Cooley--Virginia was the first free and independent people on earth that formulated a written complete Const.i.tution. I affirm that the Const.i.tution of Virginia in 1776 was the first written Const.i.tution known to history adopted by the people. And the frontispiece and the fundamental principle of that Const.i.tution, was the Bill of Rights--that Bill of Rights, drawn by George Mason, you, gentlemen, in your Const.i.tution of New York, from your first Const.i.tution to your last, have adopted. So when you expatiate upon the merits of written-over prescriptive const.i.tutions, and with such eloquence and convincing force, I beg you to remember that this now forlorn and bereaved Commonwealth was the first people on earth that ever promulgated a formal, complete, written Const.i.tution, dividing the functions of government in separate departments and reposing it for its authority upon the will of the people. Jefferson gave you the Declaration of Independence in pursuance of a resolution adopted by the Legislature of Virginia, instructing the delegates in the Continental Congress to propose a Declaration of Independence. The first suggestion of your more perfect union came from the Legislature of Virginia in January, 1786, and your Federal Const.i.tution is construed upon the lines laid down by Edmund Randolph, and proposed in the convention as the basis of the Const.i.tution which resulted in your now incomparable, as Mr. Gladstone says, incomparable instrument of government.

Furthermore, your great Northwest, your States of Ohio and Michigan, whose jurisprudence Judge Cooley so signally ill.u.s.trates, Indiana and others, to whom are you indebted that this vast and fertile and glorious country is an integral part of our Union? You are indebted to a Virginian, to Patrick Henry, then the Governor of Virginia, for the expedition to the Northwest headed by George Rogers Clark, as he was called, the Hannibal of the New World, who with three hundred untrained militia conquered for you that vast domain of the Northwest, which Virginia, in her devotion to the Union gave, a free donation with magnanimity surpa.s.sing that of Lear. She divided her possession with her a.s.sociates, and let me add, it has not been requited with the ingrat.i.tude of Lear's daughters, for the disposition and the policy of this Government toward Virginia at the end of the war, and toward the people of the South has been characterized by a magnanimity and clemency unparalleled in the history of the world. [Applause.]

You must remember that the war commenced, as you gentlemen believe, without provocation; we believe otherwise. This war so commenced, costing a million of lives and countless millions of treasure, has not been expiated by one drop of retributive blood. [Applause.] You must further remember, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, that at the formation of the Const.i.tution every distinguished Virginian was hostile to slavery and advocated its abolition. [Applause.] Patrick Henry, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, all without exception, were the enemies of slavery and desired its extinction, and why it was not then abolished I leave you gentlemen to determine by consulting history; it was certainly not the fault of Virginia.

Now will you pardon me, I have been led into these remarks because you did not give me a text, and I had to extemporize one, or rather adopt the suggestion of his Excellency, the Governor of this State. Now, here we are asked, why did Virginia go into the War of Secession? Let me tell you as one who was personally cognizant of the events. Twice Virginia in her convention voted against the ordinance of secession, the deliberate will of the people of Virginia, expressed under circ.u.mstances which did not coerce their opinion, was that it was her interest and her duty to remain loyal to the Union, but meanwhile a blow was struck at Sumter, war, actual war, occurred. What then was the course of Virginia? She said to herself, I know I am to be the Flanders of this conflict; I know that my fields are to be ravaged and my sons to be slaughtered and my homes to be desolated, but war has occurred, the South is my sister and I will go with her. It was a magnanimous and it was a disinterested resolution, and if her fault was grievous, grievously hath she answered it. When this war occurred, she, beyond dispute, occupied the primacy in the Union; she is to-day the Niobe of nations, veiled and weeping the loss of her sons, her property confiscated and her homes in ashes.

Perhaps, you may say, the punishment is not disproportionate to her trespa.s.s, but nevertheless there she is, and I say for her, that Virginia is loyal to the Union. [Applause.] And never more, mark what I say, never more will you see from Virginia any intimations of hostility to the Union; she has weighed the alternative of success, and she sees now, every sensible man in the South sees, that the greatest calamity that could have befallen the South would have been the ascendency of this ill-starred Confederacy. [Applause.] Because that Confederacy carried to the utmost extreme, to the _reductio ad absurdum_, the right of secession, carried in its bosom the seed of its own destruction, and even in the progress of war, welded together as we were under pressure, some were so recalcitrant, that the president of the Confederacy recommended the suspension of the _habeas corpus_ act for the suppression of disaffection, and let me say, rebels as we were, so true were we to the traditions of Anglo-Saxon liberty that we never would suspend for a moment that sacred sanction of personal freedom.

[Applause.] And, moreover, we see now, you will be surprised at what I say, I voice the sentiment of every reflecting man in Virginia, and woman too. We see now that slavery was a material and a moral evil, and we exult that the black man is emanc.i.p.ated and stands as our equal under the law.

Why didn't we see it before? You know the story of the view of the opposite sides of the shield. We had been educated under slavery, our preachers had taught us that it had the sanction of the Divine Scripture, we never saw any other aspect of the question, but now since it is changed, we look at it and we perceive that slavery is not only incompatible with the moral principles of government, but is hostile to the material interests of the country, and I repeat that to-day, if the people of the South were permitted to vote upon the question to re-establish African slavery, there would not be a hundred votes in the entire South, in favor of reshackling the limbs of the liberated negro.

Gentlemen, that is the att.i.tude of old Virginia, the Old Dominion, as we proudly call her, and as such I am sure you will pardon her, because when she was in the Union she never failed you in any emergency; when you were menaced by the invasion of the British, it was Winfield Scott and the c.o.c.kade Corps of Virginia that repelled the enemy from your sh.o.r.es. Old Virginia has always been true to the Union, if you blot from her history that recent episode which I say you have blotted generously from your memory, and she from hers; we stand now with you, and I have personal testimony of the fact, because coming among you, not only an utter stranger, and having against me natural prejudices as a rebel, nevertheless, I have been received in the State of New York with nothing but courtesy and kindness. Mr. Benjamin, in England, is no parallel instance, because he went among a people who sympathized with the Rebellion, and who, if they had dared to strike would have taken sides with the Rebellion, but I came here to those who naturally would have repelled me, but instead of rejecting me, they have kindly taken me to the bosom of their hospitalities and have rewarded me infinitely beyond my merits; and to them, and especially to my brother lawyers of the State of New York, I feel the profoundest grat.i.tude, in attestation of which I trust that when I go, my bones may rest under the green sod of the Imperial State. [Applause.]

JOSIAH QUINCY

WELCOME TO d.i.c.kENS

[Speech of Josiah Quincy, Jr., at the banquet given by the "Young Men of Boston" at Boston, Ma.s.s., February 1, 1842, to Charles d.i.c.kens, upon his first visit to America. Mr. Quincy was the President of the evening. About two hundred gentlemen sat at the tables, the brilliant company including George Bancroft, Richard H.

Dana, Sr., Richard H. Dana, Jr., Washington Allston, the painter, Oliver Wendell Holmes, George S. Hillard, Josiah Quincy, President of Harvard College, the Governor of the State, the Mayor of the city, and Thomas C. Grattan, the British Consul.]

GENTLEMEN:--The occasion that calls us together is almost unprecedented in the annals of literature. A young man has crossed the ocean, with no hereditary t.i.tle, no military laurels, no princely fortune, and yet his approach is hailed with pleasure by every age and condition, and on his arrival he is welcomed as a long-known and highly valued friend. How shall we account for this reception? Must we not at the first glance conclude with Falstaff, "If the rascal have not given me medicines to make me love him, I'll be hanged: it could not be else--I have drunk medicines."

But when reflection leads us to the causes of this universal sentiment, we cannot but be struck by the power which mind exercises over mind, even while we are individually separated by time, s.p.a.ce, and other conditions of our present being. Why should we not welcome him as a friend? Have we not walked with him in every scene of varied life? Have we not together investigated, with Mr. Pickwick, the theory of t.i.ttlebats? Have we not ridden together to the "Markis of Granby" with old Weller on the box, and his son Samivel on the d.i.c.key? Have we not been rook-shooting with Mr. Winkle, and courting with Mr. Tupman? Have we not played cribbage with "the Marchioness," and quaffed the rosy with d.i.c.k Swiveller? Tell us not of animal magnetism! We, and thousands of our countrymen, have for years been eating and talking, riding and walking, dancing and sliding, drinking and sleeping, with our distinguished guest, and he never knew of the existence of one of us. Is it wonderful that we are delighted to see him, and to return in a measure his unbounded hospitalities? Boz a stranger! Well may we again exclaim, with Sir John Falstaff, "D'ye think we didn't know ye?--We knew ye as well as Him that made ye."

But a jovial fellow is not always the dearest friend; and, although the pleasure of his society would always recommend the progenitor of d.i.c.k Swiveller, "the perpetual grand of the glorious Appollers," in a scene like this, yet the respect of grave doctors and of fair ladies proves that there are higher qualities than those of a pleasant companion to recommend and attach them to our distinguished guest. What is the charm that unites so many suffrages? It is that in the lightest hours, and in the most degraded scenes which he has portrayed, there has been a reforming object and a moral tone, not formally thrust into the canvas, but infused into the spirit of the picture, with those natural touches whose contemplation never tires.

With what a power of delineation have the abuses of his inst.i.tutions been portrayed! How have the poor-house, the jail, the police courts of justice, pa.s.sed before his magic mirror, and displayed to us the petty tyranny of the low-minded official, from the magnificent Mr. b.u.mble, and the hard-hearted Mr. Roker, to the authoritative Justice Fang, the positive Judge Starleigh! And as we contemplate them, how strongly have we realized the time-worn evils of some of the systems they revealed to our eyesight, sharpened to detect the deficiencies and malpractices under our own.

The genius of chivalry, which had walked with such power among men, was exorcised by the pen of Cervantes. He did but clothe it with the name and images of Don Quixote de la Mancha and his faithful Squire, and ridicule destroyed what argument could not reach.

This power belongs in an eminent degree to some of the personifications of our guest. A short time ago it was discovered that a petty tyrant had abused the children who had been committed to his care. No long and elaborate discussion was needed to arouse the public mind. He was p.r.o.nounced a perfect Squeers, and eloquence could go no further. Happy is he who can add a pleasure to the hours of childhood, but far happier he who, by fixing the attention of the world on their secret sufferings, can protect or deliver them from their power.

But it is not only as a portrayer of public wrongs that we are indebted to our friend. What reflecting mind can contemplate some of those characters without being made more kind-hearted and charitable? Descend with him into the very sink of vice--contemplate the mistress of a robber--the victim of a murderer--disgraced without--polluted within--and yet when, in better moments, her natural kindness breaks through the cloud, then she tells you that no word of counsel, no tone of moral teaching, ever fell upon her ear. When she looks forward from a life of misery to a death by suicide, you cannot but feel that there is no condition so degraded as not to be visited by gleams of a higher nature, and rejoice that He alone will judge the sin who knows also the temptation. Again, how strongly are the happiness of virtue and the misery of vice contrasted. The morning scene of Sir Mulberry Hawk and his pupil brings out in strong relief the night scene of Kit Nubbles and his mother. The one in affluence and splendor, trying to find an easier position for his aching head, surrounded with means and trophies of debauchery, and thinking "there would be nothing so snug and comfortable as to die at once." The other in the poorest room, earning a precarious subsistence by her labors at the wash-tub--ugly, and ignorant, and vulgar, surrounded by poverty, with one child in the cradle, and the other in the clothes-basket, "whose great round eyes emphatically declared that he never meant to go to sleep any more, and thus opened a cheerful prospect to his relations and friends"--and yet in this situation, with only the comfort that cleanliness and order could impart, kindness of heart and the determination to be talkative and agreeable throws a halo round the scene, and as we contemplate it we cannot but feel that Kit Nubbles attained to the summit of philosophy, when he discovered "there was nothing in the way in which he was made that called upon him to be a snivelling, solemn, whispering chap--sneaking about as if he couldn't help it, and expressing himself in a most unpleasant snuffle--but that it was as natural for him to laugh as it was for a sheep to bleat, a pig to grunt, or a bird to sing."

Or take another example, when wealth is attained, though by different means and for different purposes. Ralph Nickleby and Arthur Gride are industrious and successful; like the vulture, they are ever soaring over the field that they may pounce on the weak and unprotected. Their constant employment is grinding the poor and preying upon the rich. What is the result? Their homes are cold and cheerless--the blessing of him that is ready to perish comes not to them, and they live in wretchedness to die in misery. What a contrast have we in the glorious old twins--brother Charles and brother Ned. They have never been to school, they eat with their knives (as the Yankees are said to do), and yet what an elucidation do they present of the truth that it is better to give than to receive! They acquire their wealth in the honorable pursuits of business. They expend it to promote the happiness of every one within their sphere, and their cheerful days and tranquil nights show that wealth is a blessing or a curse, as it ministers to the higher or lower propensities of our nature.

"He that hath light within his own clear breast, May sit in the centre and enjoy bright day; But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts, Benighted walks under the mid-day sun; Himself is his own dungeon."

Such men are powerful preachers of the truth that universal benevolence is the true panacea of life; and, although it was a pleasant fiction of brother Charles, "that Tim Linkinwater was born a hundred and fifty years old, and was gradually coming down to five and twenty," yet he who habitually cultivates such a sentiment will, as years roll by, attain more and more to the spirit of a little child; and the hour will come when that principle shall conduct the possessor to immortal happiness and eternal youth.

If, then, our guest is called upon to state what are

"The drugs, the charms, The conjuration and the mighty magic, He's won our daughters with,"

well might he reply, that in endeavoring to relieve the oppressed, to elevate the poor, and to instruct and edify those of a happier condition, he had only held "the mirror up to Nature. To show virtue her own form--scorn her own image." That "this only was the witchcraft he had used;" and, did he need proof of this, there are many fair girls on both sides of the water who, though they might not repeat the whole of Desdemona's speech to a married man, yet could each tell him,

"That if he had a friend that loved her, He should but teach him how to tell _his stories_, And that would win her."